Study Abroad, Botswana: From Badminton to Biomass

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the results from the 2018 Badminton World Cup: everyone brought their A-game as tent-mates battled opposing teams for their claim to fame. All matches were well fought and came down to close wins. Switzerland (Kelsey and Michelle) put up a good fight against Ghana (Juan and Alistair), but in the end, Ghana won the student bracket and faced Dr. Meyer in the final match. The day culminated when Dr. Meyer dropped into the splits to hit the birdie one final time over the net; an epic moment.

After Sunday’s fun and games, it was back to work. We started on transects that stretch 100 meters each across the ranch. Every 10 meters we removed the biomass from 1m², weighed it, and recorded the value. We also got some practice in the less enjoyable side of field work - data entry - in which we entered all the values for vegetation plots we have been surveying over the last few weeks.

Last night was the first New Moon since we have been here and we got a beautiful view of the stars. Without any light pollution, we are able to see the Milky Way, hundreds of stars, and some planets. We used star maps to locate constellations and honed our camera skills to capture the breath taking moment. We were able to see the Southern Cross, the False Cross, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. We even named our own bright, twinkling star, the “dancing star”. While star-gazing we were able to see multiple shooting stars light up the sky.

Today was our last day of field work. In the next few days we will be packing up camp and preparing to head out to our next destination on Monday, the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Time to enjoy our last couple of days at Thakadu Bush Camp.