Resource guardianship week 1

Dear readers.

Yes it is my last course in conservation and it's nine weeks long. It's called resource guardianship and we started off by setting ground rules as we are a group of 9 students and the boys are less then the girls. We were told we have about 35 unit standards that we have to unpack in these 9 weeks and we received some of them the first day and unpacked them.We then went to the horse stalls and they explained to us how they use wasps to control the amount of flies. These wasps sting the fly pupae and they then come out miss formed and they can not finish their life cycle.The wasps are flightless,crawling, nocturnal animals and they are put out once a month depending on the last times effectiveness. Every time they are put out they are colour coded so that if a problem occurs they can follow up on the batch colour.

Every Wednesday is EM day. This is a fluid we spray also to control flies and it is not harmful to animals nor people. This fluid stops the egg from breaking open because it hardens the egg. It smells like wine or OBS and it tastes like nothing. We use 12L back packs to carry it and spray it and it is diluted 500ml for each L of water. It is a cheap and effective method to use, it costs R5 a liter.

We also throw it down the toilet and basin drains because it breaks down the unwanted and keeps it from clogging. We have specific measurements for a basin and toilet and we measure it off out of the bottle because it's not diluted when thrown in a drain.

This is where the fun starts...We were given orders to remove the bullrush from the waterhole at the girls house because it takes over and then the animals don't want to go there anymore. This is one of the three water holes that needed cleaning and it was so much fun! We went in with gumboots and we got very wet whilst trying to remove these plants.We all had our tumble and mine was flat on my stomach! We made the best of it and worked together as a team to get the job done.

 This is a group photo of us after all the hard work and fun. We were all thinking how are we getting our clothes clean!

This is team work at its best. We cut the grass in sections and we rolled it out of the water. It was really heavy and there was spiders everywhere as well as platannas.









We also did fire drills because the fire season is almost upon us and we have to be ready if anything happens. We suited up in our kits and they explained to us in witch groups we are and what task you will be doing when it happens. The alarm goes off and you dress as quick as possible and there is a group of fire fighters that train on Sondela that will help.

This is Karen and Zanderi and they are dressed in protective clothing, a helmet, face mask and they are equip with a rubber broom to sweep the left over small flames so they die.

These are the fire fighters that train on Sondela and will be helping us if something occurs.









The weekend job is different to the site guides duties because we have to now do horse rides and donkey car rides. When we are finished we go out in the veld and check fences or fix any other problems that had occurred. We may be more girls then boys but we will prevail in our tasks and do our best! Enjoy the week.