The Badgers are back in Belgium!

So ya the badgers are back in Belgium and are already missing SA a lot, wtf is it with the shitty temperatures here and all the unfriendly people wandering around the streets.

But ok enough complaints, you guys probably wondered what we did during our last two weeks, right? We did community conservation work, this includes: reforestation with the Rastafarian's at the Kayalethu River Trail (a majestic Fynbos area!!!), workshops with local kids from the Township (Sinethemba Youth Development Centre and at the Percy Mdala high school) and coastal animal monitoring at Robberg Marine and Nature reserve.

The badgers have to say that those two weeks were awesome and it was so nice to work together with Eugene everyday and of course all the other people we came in contact with where nice. So being everyday in the trail for our fight against alien invasive vegetation with Eugene was fantastic such as all the workshops we did with all the kids. And the species count at the Robberg hike was just fabulous so pretty and such an awesome bird life around that area. (pics will follow soonish)Ya we are definitely gonna miss the times we spend around magical Judah Square where the biggest Rastafarian community of South Africa is situated, the Rastas are all so extremely friendly and nice also towards Belgian badgers :)

The badgers could write plenty more stuff but you know we are back in Belgium now so if you wanna know more and hear more stories about what we did just ask one of the badgers when they are not hiding in their badger hall. (we are not really the type of badgers who spend half their life inside of a badger hall asleep :) )

Oh ya and the badgers also succeeded in their mission to smuggle some Ganja aka Elephant dung to Belgium :)

To end this message the badgers wanted to thank everyone from Edge of Africa for making all of this possible (and keep up the good work!), everyone from the PHL who gave us the chance to do this as our in the field internship experience, our parents, friends and of course girlfriends.

Thanks everyone and the badgers definitely will find their way again to magical South Africa!

Two weeks Everything Elephant project

Ok it’s time for a decent update peeps I know some of you have been waiting for this for ages. So ya here it is THE UPDATE!!!! Two weeks without a good update it’s a lot we have to tell and sorry but we can’t tell it all, internet is not always our best friend here and we have also to take advantage from the fact that we are in magical SA.
The past two weeks we worked at a elephant sanctuary, the badgers did a lot of stuff over here. Our main duty was to take care of the orphan baby elephants and giving them their daily bottles of milk. The names of the two babies are Mashudu (the boy) and Thato (the girl) they get everyday 5 times milk and each of them get 4 liters of milk. This also has to be done at night but not for the badgers since badgers don’t work at night they just hunt for their braai meat. Other duties at the park where: cutting down alien invasive plants to feed the elephants with, cleaning the boma’s from all the elephants, helping the guides with tourists and also give tourists info about the ellies, cutting fresh fruits, data entry for the research, doing the elephant behavior research, thinking out new ideas, park maintenance, our own alien invasive project and feeding the Dassies (google them they are intresting!) 
Ok now we are just gonna write down all the names from the ellies:
The breeding herd:
Sally is the “Big Mama” of the Elephant Park, Thambile means soft-natured, Nandi means “a sweet thing”, Thandi means love, Tosha from the name Etosha National park where she is from, Keisha, Shungu means patience, Thato means ‘wheel’, Mashudu means Congratulations.
The bachelor herd:
Harry means ‘Protector of the home’, Namib is derived from the word, Namibia which is where he comes from, Shaka was named after the great Zulu warrior, Shaka Zulu.
Also we wanted to write a thanks to the Guides and the Boma guys at the Elephant Park it was wonderful to work togheter with all of u guys and we will never forget these two weeks. Thanks for all the interesting stuff u guys learned us about elephants and other stuff. And all the other staff members from the park off course.
So our two last week’s start from now on and we will work together in these two weeks with the Rastafarians at the Khayalethu River Cleanup Project, teach school kids at the Percy Madala high school and also with the Sinethemba kids (this is a day care centre for street kids) those kids are soccer stars.

Voor de nederlandstalige lezers diedeze blog volgen sorry dat het niet in het nederlands is maargebruik een vertaal programma en dit zou perfect moeten werken allesinds toch redelijk, dus denk eraan google kan soms je beste vriend zijn op het internet en maak er dan ook gebruik van. Alles is meer dan goed met de 2 belgische dassen hier en de twee weken countdown is ingegaan.

Addo Elephant Park!

So first of all the badgers did the highest bridge bungee jump in the world and yes it was a rush of adrenaline going through their blood.

Ok about Addo, we did lotts of game rides in Addo, spotted plenty animals and we did waterhole species counts. (This get used by South African National Parks) So what animals did the Badgers spot? --> warthogs :) , lotts of Elephants, meerkats, buffalo's, too many kudu's, mongoose's, blackback jakhals', Eland, lotts of birds(will write later the names down on the blog), ...
Addo was great and we learned a lott of new intresting things.

Moved to knysna!

owké, here's an update of what we are doing here!

We moved to Knysna, an amazing town, situated at the Southern Cape coast. The town is known for oyster hatchery. So everywhere you can eat oysters!
Right next to us is a peaceful lagoon. Two great sandstone cliffs form the mouth of the lagoon which connects it with the sea. The one side is highly developed with houses, but the other side is a big nature Reserve. A little further there are forests situated where the biggest Rastafarian community of South Africa live. In the weekend we explored the town, and enjoyed the nice weather.

On Monday, we did a whole day removal of invasive species, together with a rastafarian, named Eugene. Awesome guy!
An invasive specie here is the pine tree ('grove den' in dutch). It was hard work, but quite amusement! We have seen a lot of different plants, birds and insects. It's al new for us! South African bumble bees are hugh! And local kids with little dreads are running around :)

Tuesday we went into the forest for tracking dung, spores, scratches and bark damage of wild animals. Some of the animals we found some tracks of are bushbuck, bushpig, chacma baboon and blue Duiker. Other animals that also live there are, Honey badgers, Caracals, Leopards and Porcupines.

Tomorrow, we're going to jump from the highest bungee jump brigde of the world! 216 meters high! ( If we don't shit in our pants :p)

Al right, that's it for the update!
Ciao and greetz from the 2 Belgian Badgers in SOUTH AFRICA!!!!

Rifle adventures!

So ya I would say the title speaks for itself. But today was the Badgers their last day at the Garden Route Game Lodge and damn we are gonna miss this place fo shizzle! This morning we fed the elephants again like every morning. Than Patrick came to pick us up to get three male cows from a milkfarmer --> Lion food!!! So ya we fed those to the Lions a pretty exciting job with some adrenaline. After that we got a rifle and a darting rifle course and off course the Badgers got to test the Rifle's!!! Enough said! And ya we did much much more interesting work and stuff today but I would say once again watch the pictures they tell more than words do.

Tomorrow we leave to Knysna no clue about internet situation's over there but when we can we keep the blog as updated as possible!

Ciao and greetz from the 2 Belgian Badgers in SOUTH AFRICA!!!!

Adrenaline Day!

So ya today I'm just gonna write about some excited new stuff/work the Badgers did! We had to track a female cheetah with a VHS tracking system and that was pretty exciting and when we found her before we saw her we could see some crows circling around her in the air so ya that is basically a sign she was pretty close. So after finding and getting kinda close up to her and we got to know that a cheetah does not really attack a person as long as you don't run or move fast (still the first adrenaline rushed through our badger blood). After that we prepared some meat for her with calcium so she gets strong bones and does not break them like the cheetah on Sunday.

After that it was time to move to the lions area where we went in to clean out all the skeletons from the dead cows, horses, ... A smelly job and a pretty dangerous job (so once again a adrenaline rush for the badgers), and one of the badgers was sitting in the back of the truck and the lions where running pretty fast and we had one close call, so we could have been able to make the blog into one Belgian Badger in South Africa :)

Ok ya no don't worry it all was safe and ya just watch the pics soon I guess. We did more work off course today but I Just wanted to give this little update.

First BRAAI and first two days working in the field!

Ok time for another little update from the Badgers. So we had our first two days of work and to cut the story short it was nice and included some of this: Elephant monitoring, cleaning the Elephant's Boma, feeding the Elephants, cutting of Acacia branches (this is an alien species in South Africa, came from Australia and is everywhere in the forests) with machetes, repairing some roads in the reservate, feeding the buffalo's (yes the BIG 5 ones! and apparently those one are the most dangerous) luzerne with copper for their immune system, ........ just watch the pics they tell enough. And last night the Badgers had their first Braai (this is a BBQ) and is a social event here and the Badgers did it with Hein and Piet it was a fun night met veel vleis en bier!

Ok so ya that's it for this update time to chill for the Badgers!

Goeiemore Suid-Afrika :)

So this morning the badgers wake up and they discover that their is no internet/electricity and they are like damn what are we gonna do now today on our chill out day before the Big 5 program starts on monday! But just 30 minutes later this colleague (already forgot his name my bad) of Piet walks in and asks us if we wanna join them to go to the cheetah reserve where a wounded cheetah is gonna be shooted with a rifle that has a Ketamine dart in it. So that they can fix his broken leg and put him after that in a boma where he can revalidate. So ya just watch the pics! After that we met the Rastafarian's (which was AWESOME just like all the other stuff today) and helped them with building the boma for the Cheetah. Ok that's it for this update. Cooking time for the Badgers!

Strange moment of the day: I was scratching the dogs in the garden and all of the sudden a Giraffe walks by :)

The badgers arrived in South Africaaaaaa!

So the badgers arrived safe in South Africa after a whole night of fighting against sleepyman at the Johannesburg airport. We got picked up by Dayne and Roger at the George airport today than they drove us to a place that kinda looked like a small zoo (but much nicer), here they keep animals (Lions, Cheetah's, Leopards, Panther, Tiger, Jakhalsen, Wild dogs: mm those where hiding, Hyena, Lynx, Rooikat, Caracal ...) that where used as pets or from a circus or a zoo or for "fun" hunting so obviously they can't life in the wild anymore and got now a better future than before. Here we switched from cars and got a ride from Piet to the place we are now staying in (soon to fall asleeeeeeeep) and damn it's just way to nice for words. Right now the view out the window is: two elephants, two springbok's and one eland! Ok pics might follow soon depends if the Badgers stay awake :)

Oh and did I mention that it was really nice how good they take care here for us? Just really good, ok gone to enjoy the outside view and sun.

Will the Badgers be able to adapt in their new habitat, and get along with all the magical animals? The journey starts tomorrow morning at 7 o'clock in the Brussels airport! From there they set their way to London than to Johannesburg. In Johannesburg they will have an all nighter at the airport. But than Saturday morning they fly to their end destination George.

The badgers advise you to stay tuned! Follow the whole journey on this blog, with exclusive reports and hot pics!