Namushasha means Nice in Namibian (written July 8th)

So I was prepared, at least mentally, to have to camp and sleep on the ground and be uncomfortable and dirty and dusty this whole trip. But so far we’ve only camped 4 days. And those 4 days were really quite nice. We’re in Namibia in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE! The nearest town to speak of is 120 km away. Its so far out in the middle of nowhere that usually groups of tourists get flown in because driving takes so long! But, for being in the middle of the African bush, its absolutely gorgeous! We are staying in a lodge. They have a campground, but UF researchers have been coming here for so long that the managers have a deal where they charge us the same amount for a room that they do to camp! So we have been sleeping in comfy beds with our own bathroom and shower that has hot water past 4pm! God has completely blessed us with this place.

Yesterday, we finally got going on actual research stuff. Which means we drove around in a car for hours getting completely dusty and hot and lost, but we saw animals! Lots of animals. I saw my first elephants, including a baby one that Tim said couldn’t be very old at all! We saw a lot of other animals including lion prints! Tim’s putting up a remote camera close to where we found the lion print so hopefully we’ll get some cool pictures.

We’re here with two other girls, Erin and Lauren. They’re both very nice and its been fun to get to know them on this trip. Erin is in Tim’s department and is working on her PhD, so she’s out here doing research on ground cover and satellite imaging. I’ve been learning a lot about satellites and GPS and imaging in the last couple days. And Lauren is an undergrad who is working on a thesis project. She’s pretty cool too. When we got here, Lauren hadn’t slept in a bed in 7 weeks! She was so excited about the bed and shower and laundry! I can only imagine!

~chels

**The title is completely made up. I have no idea what Namushasha means other than it being the name of this lodge.  And I don’t think that Nambian is even a language, they mostly speak a mix of German, Africaans and English and then there are the tribal languages.**

Pictures of the Lodge

The view from the balcony...

I think its weird sometimes to post pictures of bathrooms, but this one was really cool. The towel bar holder-thingy was a replica of a sable horn. It was pretty cool looking.

The mosquito nets made the whole room feel very safari and African.