In the morning a ranger called Tammy, who we had met briefly the night before, took us on a game drive to give us an introduction to the wildlife in the area as part of our research, as to what we could do in The Barn. We were lucky to see many of the animals in their natural habitat, that as a result of the Kuzuko Foundation's hard work and dedication to conservation.
The animals we saw, in order, were; two male lions (Matt and Kalahari), a porcupine, lots of ververt monkeys, buffalo with their red-billed oxpecker companions, ostriches, a baboon, antelopes, black wilderbeast, tortoises, a herd of elephants, a jackal, red hartebeest, lots of kudus, and an impressive looking glossy starling. We also looked at many types of indigenous plants, rhino and lion footprints, and all sorts of dung!
For lunch, it was back to the Lodge where we met Gerhard, the General Manager of Kuzuko, and talked about the future of Kuzuko and our Barn project. Due to the limited time we have, we all agreed that good planning would be essential to achieve as much as possible within the four weeks.
Afterwards it was back into the Land Cruiser with Tammy, Catherina and Gerhard for a short 4km drive to Hopewell to finally see the Barn in the flesh. It was really exciting to see it for the first time in real life instead of just a photo!
It's a great space, and we all had plenty of good ideas of what we could do with it. However, the condition of the Barn was a lot worse than we had imagined just from the pictures. A lot of work was going to be needed just to bring the Barn itself into any kind of servicable condition. The biggest worry being the many cracks in the walls, especially the one at the front doors, which you can easily see daylight through!
After a lot of discussion of various ideas, it was back to the Reception for the rest of the day to start getting those ideas down on paper and begin formulating a plan of attack.
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