Introduction

Alex ( Alexander)

Firstly I would like to ask my readers what are their definition of a dream job. I always answer it simply by using a phrase one of my friends, whom old enough to be my father but yet he is as energetic as a teenage girl seeing her favorite boy band play live, and he said to me one day that if you do what you love then you never have to work another day. I took that phrase very seriously, perhaps more than he wanted me to, and thought to my self, you are a Namibian born and raised who still has his life ahead of him and while your still young take your chances. I finally decided to start looking for lodge work. it was not long into 2016 when I was contacted by Zelda game and guest farm offering me the job that I was dreaming about. I now work as their field guide and during the day I would oversee the general farm work, gardens for the lodge and maintenance.

The fist month was a blur, I was thrown into the deep end and had to learn to swim and sitting here today thinking about it, it was the best thing that could happen to me. Having no previous experience in tourism I simply had to rely on my salesman experience that I have to communicate with guest. Nobody has shown me how to do the animal feeding neither bushmen walk and dance and to make it worse they leave me alone in the "be wild camp" with 6 people and I had to set table for them and entertain them at the same time. I had to saddle up that horse and just ride it, and in the end it was a major success. So as the the two months and a few weeks went by I had a few walks, two dances, a few game drives and at least every evening an animal feeding. I can confidently say that I am busy staying on top.

Today is the last the day the hunting guest, Russian, will sleep here and leave tomorrow morning after breakfast. I also had two guides, ladies, who are busy passing their route for a tour that they are planning and a lovely couple, retired, that camp here. This afternoon I took the two guides for a bushmen walk and as the devil wants it, near to the end of the walk, the rain started, but HEY! you are in the bush not in town so lets enjoy this. We decide to stop the walk and start heading back to the car before the rain falls down hard. We arrived at the"Be Wild" camp, that is the starting point of the walk and also the ending, I showed them the rooms and they tipped the bushmen something for their effort. What I found interesting about these two is that with all my other guests, you as the guide, first have to eat whatever the bushmen tells them to eat, before they would even think about putting it into their mouths, but these two simply ate it before I can even properly translate what the bushmen told them. They even ate the raw "bushmen salad" that I never give to the guest to sample as it is not that good in taste but rather used in a soup or with other fruits and nuts they use.

Earlier the day me and my workers, with the boss sitting in the car, had to round up the cattle, bring them to the stall at home, and do general work on them like; treating them for ticks, sawing of the horns, castrate the calves and all the other "nitty gritty" things. We then separated the larger calves from the mothers and had to chase them to a certain camp on the farm, take the car back home and chase the cows with their bull back to another camp where the grazing is better. It took us the whole morning, walking behind cattle in the sun and plowing through the Kalahari sand to get them at their planned points. Tonight my nose is pink burnt and my arms are coco brown. It has been a long day but yet another successfully pleasing one and tonight as I hear the the night animals calling and the wind brushing the leaves in the trees, I will close my eyes and start to dream another dream as I am living the African dream job.