Kuzuko Interns Drop off and Mechanics Training

Every time we go to Kuzuko lodge it becomes more, and more apparent that this is the way forward for these great kids we have the privilege to work with, This time like the last is no exception, including our practical application of all of the lessons we have been going over with the boys, we had the major honour of dropping off two of the now young adults at the lodge for their very own training and apprenticeships at this wonderful and inspiring place known as Kuzuko, the place of glory.

For Siphe, its his second cycle working as an apprentice in the kitchen under a truly skilled Chef, and he has been doing really well with the change in pace and the high quality of service that is required to succeed in this industry, he has been doing so well that within his first cycle the head of the catering department saw the potential this young man has, and negotiations for a permanent contract started, and it looks like we will become a permanent fixture at the lodge.

For our little rising star Nyeleti, it will be her first time ever working at an establishment as prestigious as Kuzuko, and the opportunity for an 18 year old girl to gain experience in the industry is a once in a lifetime chance. The bravery of this young girl to leave all she has ever known for the unknown challenges that will arise from this opportunity can not be understated. She will be placed in the restaurant as a waitron, with a particular emphasis on the barista station, as it is one of her interests she expressed to us during one of our previous shadow sessions in the restaurant. We are so proud and honoured that we could have the chance to see this awesome child thrive.

For our three aspiring safari guides we had another full schedule planned, turned out to be more fun than work, as usual. We had the chance to camp on the property again, and used the setup of the camp to see how much they retained from the previous setup. It went better than expected but not perfect, the tree boys had a little trouble with the set up of the heavy canvas tent, they do have a little trick to them. But once you get the hang of it its a piece of cake to set up and down.

The king of the fire contest was also still in full swing, but the notorious winds of the Karoo had put a major speed bump in the proceedings of the crowning, it was a collective victory for the boys. Even though it was a steamy 34 degrees celsius during the day, as soon as the sun was setting with the high winds it cooled down dramatically, and of course the only one of our party to bring a jacket was Savannah, so the four men were suffering slightly with the clod, at least the fire was hot and the food was cooked.

The next morning we all got up a little hungry for some knowledge, but mostly breakfast. We try to plan for every possible obstacle that may present itself but we are only human, we wanted to make breakfast as quick and easy as humanly possible so we packed some high protein cereal to take with on our trip, milk, sugar for the boys, and spoons, but we did not plan for the vessel to contain the food. So the first mission was a scavenger hunt for bowls… Front reception sent us to the staff village, and we were told to go up to the lodge for the bowls, the drive and breakfast took an hour out of our schedule, but lesson well learned. Along with the drive to the lodge we started another little competition with the boys, a bird I.D challenge, the premise was simple, spot the bird visual or audio and if we can confirm that the id was accurate a point is awarded to the individual. It was a major success and eventually developed into a major highlight of the entire trip, but more on that later.

After breakfast we headed to the workshop where we met Mr. Marius the super hero of the reserve and the man that is the literal driving force that keeps the entire collective running, the mechanic. We did a quick briefing with him and he went over some of the general equipment he uses everyday. Our true mission was to show the boys the inns and outs of the vehicles that they would have to have a general familiarity with if they were to peso this as a career.

Every guide receives a daily checklist of equipment to inspect to ensure proper functioning of the vehicle and it was important that we stress the importance of taking this seriously, any technical malfunction the vehicle may go through as a result of negligence on the guides part will result in the guide taking accountability for the potential costs. Obviously an important duty that can not be skimmed over.

We studied the list and addressed each of the listed checks that need to be done, showed them where these sites are and how to check thoroughly, everything from the battery to the lights, fuel, engine fluids, tyres and all the equipment needed to do an onsite flat tyre change. After we thought the boys are comfortable with the checks we again pitted them against each other, head to head in a time trail to see who can accurately and effectively get through the checklist the quickest. It was a lot of fun and all of them did really well. But the winner was none other than Kambaku.

With a general idea of where everything is on the vehicle we moved over to another basic skill every human needs to know. How to change a tyre. It may seem small but we are always surprised to find out how many people do not know this basic skill. After a demonstration from Marius the boys all had a try by them selves, easy job for all of them, only struggle point was the lifting of the tyre back on the wheel drum, so we helped with that. Mission accomplished. Even though we knew for a fact that this department was not on national high interest level for any of the boys, they all really enjoyed working on the car and figuring out where everything goes and how to do all of the necessary checks that are not only necessary for a job such as this, but can be extremely useful in everyday life, to to mention the confidence boost, and the independence it instills in these young men.

We finished at the workshop with a little chat about the importance of responsibility and good stewardship of the things that are interested to you.

We went to the little communal area close to the campsite for a little rest and refreshment, we all washed the worksop sweat off and had a little break from the heat under the roof by the restrooms. While we were waiting for our lunch that the lodge has graciously prepared for us, the birding challenge ramped up a lot and the boys all became quite competitive by pulling out the birding guide book from the car and through some questionable teamwork and some sabotage amongst each other they really started to get a hang of using the book effectively. It was a lot of fun to see them figure it out. Lunch arrived and we had a lovely meal together the lodge prepared a lovely chicken burger and French fries for each of us.

A little side project that we have been considering for the boys to get the a little ahead of the general curve is to have them become comfortable with driving. And after the gracious donation we received from Enslin’s parents Amanda and Gerhardt we finally felt super confident that we will start implementing that. We started with a basic introduction to driving where all of the parts are that they would be using, we found a nice straight-ish stretch of road where they each had an opportunity to drive the truck. They did so well and were basically natural drivers, each had their ons struggles with the clutch and acceleration control but got the hang of it quite quickly, and it was not a stressful experience for any of us, it was calm and patient teaching and the boys do respond super well to the calm encouragement. After they started to get the hang of the driving part we introduced another little speed hump into the driving exercise, we had implemented a mock game drive for the boys to participate in. As we were driving on the road Savannah or Enslin would point out an imaginary animal, and the “guide” then had to bring the car to a full stop and discuss the animal in question, with the rest of us being the guests asking questions about the animals and trying to trip up the “guide” with trick questions. It was a great exercise about the importance of vehicle control as awe as multitasking with the guests inquiries. There was multitude of hilarious and ridiculous questions that the group of guests managed to come up with, and the guide stayed calm and answered the questions in a very respectful accurate manner. While all of this was going on there was still a lingering bird challenge in the back ground ,and the boys racked up a good few points on this exercise.

After completing their very first driving lesson we all decided to see what the local water hole is looking like. Kuzuko is an extremely dry and arid region, but they have been getting quite a lot of rain in the past few months. For the spot we wanted to visit it was quite apparent that even though they have been having a good rainy season, the heat takes its toll on the water resources in the are. The dam is big and had a lot of water still in it, but you can see that the water has been receding quite quickly, and it was a great bit of fun trying to traverse the muddy, slimy, sludgy, and relatively thorny at time bank of the dam, we wanted to see if there have been any recent activity of wild animals and if the boys could do some revision of tracking, but the heat was great and the balance of all of us questionable, so slip and slide was the name of the game. Honestly, we were just biding time till 4 o’clock for all of the guests at the lodge to depart for the afternoon drive, so we could head on up and enjoy the cool refreshing pool.

It was here that the whole point system spun out of control. Getting up to the lodge in the warm weather we were disappointed to hear that the boys weren’t all too keen on jumping into the pool to cool off, so some incentive had to be introduced. We all agreed that the first one in had the opportunity to accumulate an instant boost in points with 5 added on the existing tally, and Kambaku jumped on the opportunity to get ahead of the rest. (Up to this point they were all basically neck and neck for the winning spot) The other two soon followed suite after the adventurous Kambaku, and it was at this point that we noticed that Nci Nci Quaqqa had some difficulties and some confidence problems with being in the water. We know for a fact that all of the kids at the safe house can swim, but knowing the basics of swimming does not install the confidence to be able to enjoy it to its fullest. We tried to bribe him with points to swim the breadth of the pool but it did not seem to be worth the potential danger he thought he might be in if he tried, next we tried to have the other two show him its not a big deal and hoped that this may spurt him on to take the “leap”, also this could not encourage him to try, only when Enslin finally said that he would go into the water with him did he consider giving it a go, and with that lever of security he did it and succeeded and saw that it was not the mountain he expected, just a lack in confidence in his own abilities, and for that we gave him 3 points. Unintentionally we unleashed a bidding war amongst the boys trying to convince us that if they did something we would then have to give points, we agreed but stipulated that the deed they perform must be worth the points. So we did breath holding competitions, Kambaku and Nci Nci Quagga lost points for cheating, we do not tolerate un sport man ship behaviour, but all and all it was a great time, after we finished we headed back down to the camp site to prepare for dinner. It was business as usual for the king of the fire competition but now with the added stakes of points, needles to say the winner was once again the wind, because it took the combined efforts of all the boys to start the fire. Ichelisi was also feeling overly confident and made huge promises that he would be the one to grill the chicken skewers and cook the garlic bread, but his plans to be the hero was foiled by the drop in temperature so he spent most of the night huddled away in the tent while Enslin did the cooking. Early mornings equal early nights, we were all in bed by 20h00, but there was the prospect of seeing a famous meteor shower that was supposed to be at its apex that night, the only one that saw anything was the ever vigilant Savannah.

The next morning we got the boys up before the heat of the day set in, and we were all quite relieved because the clouds came in and gave us a little reprieve from the intense daily heat. Freddy met up with us not long after we had set down the camp and tidied the area, and we all got onto his vehicle and made our way to the start of the hiking trail for our walk to go see the famous Kuzuko cave paintings. The hike was pretty eventful, with Freddie there the boys all wanted to shine and show off all the things they have learned over the course of our stay, and with all of the interesting things they were able to point out successfully they did impress him immensely and amassed pretty impressive scores.

Freddie’s knowledge about the indigenous fauna and flora are as expected very extensive and his interpretation of all of the rock art was infighting to say the least, it was especially special to Nci Nci Quagga because as far as he knows nows he is quite closely related to the Khoi/San people of south Africa, so learning about the history of his people in the are was something he has expressed to us in the past. Freddie took us to three different sites and highlighted the art and explained a lot from the reason the art was put there and how to interpret. We ended the hike at a huge overhang in the cliff that was a frequent stop over place for the nomadic travellers and the evidence was literally all over the walls. From the charred roof of the overhang, evidence that they made big fires frequently and all of the hand prints from all of the different families that frequented the area all over the walls as a physical symbol to any humans resting in the spot that they existed and that they were there.

We ended our trip with goodbyes to Siphe and Naledi at the lodge, and as we headed home, the boys were very soon out cold from a weekend full of new experiences. We have been amazed by their ever growing confidence the more we spend time with them, and introduce them to the very wide range of skills and experiences we have been doing. It is truly inspiring to see them grow in hope for bright futures.