EHRA

Elephant Human Relations Aid.
My final volunteer experience. Working in the Namibian desert building walls and dams for the elephants. There is a build week followed by a patrol week. Meeting up with the group of 13 other people was great. Coming from all different countries but with the common bond of wanting to help the elephants was inspiring to say the least.

The building week was tough. Collecting rocks of various sizes, shoveling sand and mixing cement. I have never made cement before. Then building a rock wall. The project this week was to finish the wall started the week before.

Looked like quite a daunting task… but we did it. It felt good to have a accomplished it. During the build week we were pleasantly surprised to be invited to a wedding. We quit building early to get ready for the wedding. Went over in great anticipation. Meeting the villagers was fun as we all learned the appropriate greeting, “Ohshilee nowa”. The ladies put on dances for us and we socialized with the locals and them with us.

We watched the groom’s family come in and do the tradition paying of the money. We met the bride and groom.

Little did we realize that no wedding would take place that day. It was the giving of the money and cow and partying. Later that night the groom would go to see his bride and the next day they would have a ceremony.

The party would go on for 3 days. We had to finish the wall so we didn’t go the next day, but could hear them partying all night and into the next day. We were privileged to see what we did though. With the wall done, we went back to base camp and got ready for patrol week.
Patrol week consisted of tracking the elephants.

We saw many elephants and camped in awesome places… each unique and different.

The weekend brought us back to Swakopmund. I went quad biking, camel riding, desert exploring and visited sandwich harbor.

Next 2 week session with ehra. I was somewhat apprehensive because it was such hard work and I did enjoy the last groups camaraderie. Unsure of what the next session would be, I was pleasantly surprised by the end of the session. It is so interesting meeting people from all over the world.

Volunteers were from France, Germany, England, Holland and USA. All are passionate about wildlife, preservation and exploring the world.
This week our build was to reinforce a reservoir which was leaking.

Being a water source we had a couple of unexpected but exciting close encounters with elephants.

We finished the build right on time and the land rover club came to thank us with cold beer and champagne.
Patrol week was next as we searched the area for elephants and other wild game.

We traveled far to 2 different river banks and camped at yet more awesome places. Every night it seemed like we were on the surface of a different planet. The terrain was soo varied and beautiful.

Now my time volunteering is over. Going to Johannesburg for 6 days before I head home. I am looking forwards to my retirement. Where I will go next and what i will do could be anything. I will leave my options open. Exciting to find out what it will be.