Day 17

I have began to be accepted by the natives, after so long of silence and curious but scared looks. Trust is being built slowly. This quite shy demeanor of mine has been useful in protecting myself from any reputation I could gain with in the pack. Their pet monkey, Emanuel, has decided to, for want of a better phrase, 'piss' me off as much as physically possible. He is my colleague in all this though so I must learn to love him. It is not all bad, I feel like I am making friends in a few of them. This evening I sat in their nest watching rugby until I was dragged out, at first to what I thought might be a sacrifice, where I was the lamb. It turned out they wanted me to be social, so it may have well been, had the same effect.

My duties sent me many a place today. I was even shown through the woods by a native guide in a L200, I'm sure though this was only his attempt to make my lunch reappear. Luckily, I was alone for a lot of the day getting on silently with everything that needed doing. Heavy lifting seems to be a theme of this career path as well as walking... too much walking.

Intervals between the work sent me into the realm of the shop. Accidentally today I trapped one of the natives in there, something to laugh about though. I like it here, surrounded by sweets and ice-lollies but I have, as yet, to buy one for myself. It is a shame seeing as the weather was unusually sticking around 28 degrees C, sending many a native into what I like to refer as 'heat induced periods'. I felt myself falling into one at one point, I must be careful.

I await tomorrow with anticipation and excitement. It is going to be busy, but, if Mani's stomach bug has gone, I at least won't be alone. In fact I am spending much of the day with one of them named James whom I have not had the chance to spend much time with. A thunderstorm is apparently on the horizon which may break the weather a bit but will leave many canvas tents in our care. Perhaps leading to the great hanging tented gardens of Blacklands. This will make my already incredibly busy week worse, especially since the other two monkeys will have left for holidays by Monday.


This was inspired by my new job at a activity camp in south england. The monkeys as I refer to them are the 2 other ''Campies'' on the site, this is also my job title. The natives are the instructors, most of them stay on site, this year none of the campies do. Mani is one of the other campies along with a guy called Tom AKA ''brucie''.  I figured this would be a interesting way to present what it feels like in a new job at first, like venturing into a unexplored place where everyone knows everyone else and you are the outsider.

PRx