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It was with great delight that we had the pleasure of being able to take 5 children from the Epworhts childrens home to join our junior rangers on our trip to Marakele the end of Sept. We realised just how much we take for granted, some of these children had never even been anywhere beyond the immediate surrounding area of the home and school and maybe a short outing now and then. So to take them to the bush was totally new to them and wow what an experience to see it through the eyes of these children, and to think everybody has seen animals in the wild either in books or TV we are wrong these children had not! Su-Marie Swanepoel (a trail guide) from PTA region Hr's shared her knowledge with us and I am sure each child came away with a new outlook on conserving our heritage. There were quite a few laughs along the way as in many cases some of the children had never seen some of the animals we saw, and the names given were classic. ie:Warthog=Big dooooog, seeing our resident ostrich brought about shrieks of fear to see such a huge bird, but this soon changed as they were taught how to handle coming into contact with the animals around. To have six rhino within 10 metres was unbelievable, although an over eagear tourist got himself trapped behing a tree as he did not notice the rhino gathering around so close. Su-Marie needed to step in and perform a"rescue" to prevent any possible unpleasantness.
The Friday night a gust of wind came up from nowhere and blew our gazebo/kitchen over thus we used our state of the art kitchen as you will see below, fortuanately the tents were caught in time. Sat night we had plenty rain and some of us were soaked in the morning nevertheless a good time was had by all.

Sounds like you had a great experience Mellory.

Nothing as wonderful as experiencing something through the eyes of a child, Mellory
Did you take any photos ?

Well done!

Mellory.

Brilliant Mellory

That is so true

Great stuff!

Thank you all for the comments.. Oddesy I do have pics and was really hoping to sort them out and commenting on what the children learnt as I went along, but as it is very time consuming and this is a very busy time of year for me so I will post pics of what the children saw in the park, as well as pics the "wild" creatures themselves

Our State of the art Kitchen after the wind storm

A really "wild" creature my daughter


Time for some learning


Listening to recorded sounds and trying to identify them

Wow that must have been a fantastic experience...seeing the park through such fresh eyes is a real privelege. We had the pleasure of seeing a school bus of children visiting the park this August when we were at the Sweni waterhole. The looks of absloute joy and awe on the faces at the windows was truly inspiring.

The kids I teach here in the UK are all fascinated when I show them any of my pics...I knwo seeing it for real for them would be amazing!!

Gemma

Oh yes Emma it was really amazing and as I go throught the pics I get excited all over again!

This was one of the culprits that caused lots of shrieks and laughter along the way.


And these...



Any guesses what reaction this ellie got?................................................

KICK@$$!!!!
This is nice. How constructive I am suitably impressed
Makes one feel empowered to do more

It was an education for us as well taking these children to the Park