Friday 13 May 2011

CCF Greatest Hits

Two and a half years is a significant amount of time to spend anywhere and working somewhere like CCF ensured that there were not many dull moments! So to close the chapter on CCF here is a look back at the most significant elements that made up my CCF experience.

Xena

What can I say? I fell in love with this cat the moment I laid on eyes on her. My only regret at leaving CCF is that I wont get the chance to see her hunting for herself in the Bellebenno game camp (she is a future release candidate).  I can but dream that maybe some CCF cheetahs may one day be released into the Solitaire area and I can put in a request for a certain cat :)


The Bellebenno Release Project
As stated in previous blogs being involved in the project that saw us release Chanel and the Choc sisters into Erindi Game Reserve was the highlight of my time at CCF. I still find it hard to believe I got to walk behind cheetahs in the bush and observe them hunting right in front of me.


A Close Call
Pictures speak for themselves, a day I wont forget.


The Blog
I started this blog the very day I flew out to Namibia in August 2008 and thought only my mum and a few friends would read ever it. But surprisingly it's picked up a respectable audience, Kate's family are regular readers, I was blog of the week on a South African travel agency website and a regular Italian CCF volunteer (Hi Betty!) translates it into Italian and distributes it to her friends in Italy. So why have I chosen a pic of gay giraffes for this bit? Well, I had a browse through this blog's stats the other day and believe it or not my blog entry about our tall gay friends is the African Adventure's biggest hit and if you type in the words 'Gay Giraffes' in a Google image search this pic is the first one that comes up! Fame at last! It seems there are a lot of people out there interested in the subject.......yes it is a bit worrying! :-/

Boskop
My home for two and half years and scene of many legendary parties! My ipod will forever contain the Boskop party playlists I made for special occasions, lots of great memories with lots of great people!


Kate
I think its fair to say that meeting Kate is not only one of the most significant moments of my CCF years but also my life. Its not all been a bed of roses and we've had ups and the downs. But by going through the difficult times we have learned a hell of a lot about each other which has made our relationship much stronger.  Obviously the fact we have moved on to N/a'an Ku Se together shows how we feel about each other and that we see our future together, which is quite funny when I look back to when we first starting seeing each other and were trying to keep it a secret. We were very discreet and kept things very professional whilst at work, so much so in fact that some short term volunteers who were with us then only found out we were a couple when we made if Facebook official over a year later! The pic below is unintentionally our first pic as a couple thanks to Kate's wandering hand :) It was around this point that keeping things a secret from our colleagues became almost impossible and we had to come clean!
 
I know many people who couldn't imagine working with their other half but despite the odd disagreement Kate and I work very well together. We've even somehow managed to sync ourselves so that when one of us is stressed out the other one remains calm to defuse the situation. We are also both quite happy to just be boring and curl up in bed with a cup of tea and watch some TV at the end of a hard day. I'm sure we will face big challenges at N/a'an Ku Se but our experience at CCF has trained us well and we can't wait to start our new life together ........ Everyone say awwwww :)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I still read Matt!! That is a horrible picture of me. And we all knew! :) Miss you guys. My greatest hit was you almost driving into a tree to wave a high school girls:)

Matt Cleverley said...

ok, for the last time the fact they were school girls had nothing to do with it!! I would have waved if they were a bunch of old ladies! i'm just a polite person :)