Week 2 & 3

Week two went pretty smoothly, and the routine of things started to set in. I slept in late on my first day off, then spent some time organizing the workshop where the pipe tunnels are built. I also really started to get into the garden during the second week, aggressively pruning the monstrous tomato plants.

I had many firsts in the lab during the second week. I entered my first litter of pups which involves weighing and dying the little wriggly pink mole rats. I also learned how to take blood samples, which is quite an interesting process. I have spent a good amount of time assisting in blood draws from cats and dogs, but mole rats are done very differently. We poke a vein in a back foot, and use a small capillary tube to draw the blood into a container. In order to actually have decent blood flow in the foot, the mole rat gets a nice foot and massage in warm water.

All of this is done while the animal is under anesthesia of course. They are put under with isoflurane gas and generally wake up pretty quickly and easily. Over the entire course of the mole rat project there have been no issues related to the anesthesia, which is very impressive.

Some of the other highlights during the week include finding a large black widow next to the toilet in the middle of the night, and a party on Saturday hosted by the head of the meerkat project.

During the third week I started to get a feel for how busy it can get in the lab, and also all the things you think of doing while doing the most unexciting 12 Hour scan. Sometimes scans are just boring. When all the animals are asleep, it is very tempting to dry and fit in other tasks at the same time. I one room I managed to find all the miscellaneous old sticky tack that had been used to hold up labels, and made a considerably large ball of the stuff. I also started doing more of the specific experiments by myself, and most of my training list was crossed off at this point.

This was also the week where I experienced rain in the Kalahari desert for the first time! We had a couple good storms over a few days, and the thunder and lightning was extraordinary. The lightning lit up the sky from kilometers away, and you could watch the storm move along. This was also likely the last rain of the season, and I probably won’t see any for several months. On Saturday we had barbecue for dinner and around a fire outside. In South Africa barbecues are called “bri’s” which took some getting used to.

On Sunday I had a brief introduction to SQL coding so that I can find things and make tables in the massive database where all the mole rat data is collected. This is my first experience ever with actually learning a coding language, and I’m excited to have this opportunity. The project manager is very knowledgeable in several languages and he manages the databases as well, and he is a great teacher. I’m hoping that by the end of my stay here I will have a decent level of skill in SQL and maybe some other programs or languages.

The last really exciting new thing was that I went on my first night drive. On nice nights once or twice a month, the manager drives his pick-up around at night with whoever wants to go standing in the back. We use flashlights and headlamps to look for wildlife that prefer to roam when it’s dark, and stop for any neat sightings. On my first night drive we mainly saw some of the antelope species around, but we also saw a couple porcupines, some hares, some night jars (birds), and a bat-eared fox. I’m definitely looking forward to the next one! Although now that it’s getting pretty cold at night who knows when the next one will be.

Food, Paper, and Sand

 Feeding ~600 mole rats is quite a feat. In the wild they mainly eat underground tubers and bulbs. In the lab, they are fed a diet of sweet potatoes and english cucumbers, that we buy in bulk. When the colonies began, several types of food were tested, and these two were the winners in popularity and nutrition.

Deliveries are about every two weeks, and in a month we can go through about 560kg (1234lb) of sweet potatoes and 400 English cucumbers (The long ones). The food is stored in fridges, although recent mechanical have led to large amounts of food loss because the food freezes, thaws, and goes rotten. We are trying out different ways to store the food, but even potatoes left out of the fridge and in the dark got moldy.

The two other basic necessities for mole rat life in a tunnel system include paper and sand. We get massive rolls of thin paper (like really cheap paper towels) which we provide to the mole rats to use for nest building. They have plastic shoe boxes attached to certain points in the tunnel systems, which are used as food stores, latrines, or nests. The nest boxes are quickly obvious because they are often full of paper and you cannot see inside.

The sand is probably the most labor intensive part and needed in the largest amount. The sand is brought to the lab from various dunes on the reserve, and must be completely dry. Each day the feeder tubes (upright tubes on the systems) are filled with sand to resemble collapses and encourage working behaviors and food searching behaviors. The feeders are filled once in the morning and once in the evening for most colonies.

However, during twelve hour scans we fill the tubes every two hours, so that there is plenty for the mole rats to do during the scan. We also try to fill them before doing focal observations, if there is not enough sand already in the tunnels.

You may be thinking, where does all this sand go? What do the mole rats do with it?

At one end of each tunnel system, there is a large box we call the wastebox. It is where the mole rats put things they don’t want in the colony. This includes excess sand, old nesting paper, and food that they don’t want. But, since these systems aren’t completely accurate at resembling real life, sometimes the wastebox becomes a food store, or even a nest.

When the wastebox gets full, the sand is removed. Also sand is removed when the rooms and colonies are deep cleaned. All this sand is full of paper and old pieces of food, which must be removed before it can be put out in the reserve. The workers use large metal sifters to remove the large pieces of debris, so we aren’t adding paper to the environment or feeding the wildlife. The sand needs to be taken out often not only because of the amount, but it also helps keep the colonies clean.

At the end of each day all the volunteers/researchers in the lab (currently 6 of us) do room checks. This involves checking to make sure each colony has food, and filling the feeders. The feeders definitely take the most time.

Focals and Scans

A Very Handsome Mole Rat

There are two main types of observations we do on the mole rats to collect behavioral data. The more common type is focal scans. For a focal, we follow the activity period of a single animal, ideally from the time they leave the nest to when they go back in. Luckily with mole rats, they are generally only active for an hour or so at a time on average. There are of course some outliers, like super pregnant females or young pups that only come out for maybe ten minutes, and the really hard workers that will be going for over two hours.

Starting the focal can sometimes take the most time. Right now we have to wait and watch a colony for the animal to come out, which can take a couple hours. There is however a device that is in the early stages of implementation, that will allow us to have an alarm go off when a particular animal leaves the nest. The device reads the implanted chips inside the mole rats which have individual numbers, basically the same thing that dogs and cats get.

Sometimes the animal is already active when we enter a room, and they we do an ‘incomplete’ focal, which just means that it does not cover an entire activity period since we don’t know how long they’ve been active. The best type for data though is the complete focal.

The other type of observation we do is a scanning observation. We do twelve hours scans of specific colonies a couple times a week. The twelve hours is split into four shifts, and generally two people split up the shifts. We try to start the scan right at seven in the morning, so we aren’t working too late.

For this type of observation, we are collecting data on all the individuals in the colony. We have a special program on tablets that we carry when doing the scans and focals. The program lets us record the behaviors of each animal. For the twelve hour scan, we record what each individual is doing every four minutes. In total, it is 180 scans done during the observation period. Amazingly, four minutes is generally more than enough time to find each one, and the rest of each period is used for continuous sampling.

What this means is that once we have recorded a behavior for each animal in the colony (including rest if it is not visible), then we watch and record any social behaviors in the remaining time. Some examples of social behaviors we record include sniffing, biting, pull-tail, and pup carry. We also include certain vocalizations and mating behaviors.

When the colony is active, the time passes by very quickly. Each four minute scan is filled with observations and there is plenty to watch. The worst part is when there’s only one or two animals awake. It can be difficult to find something to occupy the mind when trapped in a room surrounded by mole rats, watching time tick slowly by on the tablet. The four minute period can suddenly feel like forever, when you have one animal that’s eating, the rest are sleeping, and no social behaviors are happening.

The twelve hour scan days do lead to a great feeling of accomplishment though, especially when working the last shift. Also, it really helps you get acquainted with a colony, and certain individuals start to stand out. If you ask me right now, I would much prefer to focal Curie or G10 over G4 or Mandela. It feels wrong, but I can’t help but have some preferences for certain colonies.

Anyway, our weeks involve many focals and some scans, as well as other specific experiments, sample collection, and data entry. There’s also always stuff to clean, and things to prepare for the next day. I’m definitely not bored here, that’s for sure!

Miscellaneous Pictures, Part 1

Here's a random assortment of pictures that I haven't put into a blog yet, but I want to share anyway. Enjoy! 

Neat Cricket (have not yet identified) 

Giant Millipede!  Holy crap! Apparently the meerkats like to eat these. 

Close up of the millipede (I touched it and it curled up) 

Horses that belong to someone on the reserve.  

Wildebeasts! Seen on my first walk. 

Really neat beetle I found in the sand for the mole rats

Snakes! (Linda Don't Read This!)

          There are two potentially very dangerous snakes in the area where I am. One is the puff adder, a snake with cytotoxic venom that attacks the surrounding cells causing severe swelling, hemorrhage, and even necrosis. The other, more dangerous snake is the cape cobra. This snake has a neurotoxic venom that affects the nervous system and respiratory system.

         Both snakes have occasionally been sighted around the reserve where I am staying, and it is important to know how to treat both types of bites and what to do, just in case. The puff adder in particular likes to lay in the middle of paths at night, waiting for prey to walk by. They generally don’t make much noise as you approach, and I’ve heard several stories of people walking right next to them, nearly stepping on them, without noticing.

         The good thing is, the puff adder doesn’t automatically send you to the hospital, and the cape cobra can be choosey with its venom and not every bite injects the potentially deadly substance.

          Anyway, the reason I’m writing about snakes is because I saw my first puff adder just the other day. It was crossing a path near the farmhouse when one of the volunteers heading to the laundry room nearly stepped on it. I saw a small crowd of people looking at something and went to see what all the fuss was about. It was quite a large one too, about as thick as my forearm.

         Tim, the general manager, was alerted of the existence of the snake so that it could be quickly dealt with. He has had much experience with removing the two types of dangerous snakes on the reserve, and has snake hooks and tongs to pick them up with. He got the snake out of the grass and plopped it into a plastic tub, so that it could be driven a few kilometers away and released. Apparently he actually prefers dealing with cape cobras, because they are longer and easier to pick up. The puff adders are short and thick, and can be difficult to pick up.

So, I can now saw I’ve been just a few feet away from one of the deadliest snakes in Africa! How cool is that! (The main reason it’s the deadliest is due to improper care and their frequency near human habitation, they’re really not that super deadly). I hope the pictures do it justice.

Mole-Rat Pregnancy Checks

The first chance I got to really hold and touch a mole rat was when learning how to perform pregnancy checks. Mole rats breed throughout the year, and because we need to know when the pups are born, it is best to be able to make predictions for how far along each mother is. This is done in two ways. The first way is to look at the changes in weight. Based on a few years of monitoring, we know now sort of how to tell when a pregnant female will be due and if she even is pregnant based on big changes in weight.

The other way is more….tactile. For this, each queen is removed and the abdomen is carefully manipulated to feel for shapes that might be pups. The tricky part is doing this and not getting bit. The queen is held by the tail, and generally they stay facing forward for most of it. However, some will immediately reach around to try and bite, and it can be difficult to get a good feel.

Their gestation period is around three months, and usually the pups can be felt when there is a little over a month left. At first you feel small round shapes a little bigger than a pea. When there is closer to a month left, the shapes feel more like lima beans. With 2-3 weeks left, you can start to feel the skulls with little bodies attached. The best way to tell how many individuals there are is by skulls, although it can start to feel quite confusing the closer they are to birth. The size isn’t always the best factor to determine how far along either, since a queen with only one pup will have a much larger pup at birth than one with three or four.

The maximum number of pups is probably about six, although some females have seven nipples (yep, 7). Based on the pregnancy checks, both weight and physical manipulation, we try to predict birth dates. The closer it gets, the more frequently we check the nest, up to once a day. Once the pups are born, we take them out and give them their individual ID numbers and first dye marks.

We also take pictures of their head patches, which are visible on the skin before they even grow hair. The head patches are mostly pretty unique and easy to tell apart. We try to do this quickly, then return the pups to the nest. The newborn pups are quite squirmy and surprisingly mobile, and the hair starts to come in very quickly. It is very fun to compare litters at different stages and watch them become more and more independent.

This is G1F010, or Panda Queen as I call her. She is a pregnant female with the unique panda head patch. Only a few of the mole rats in the lab have this type of headpatch, and it is definitely the coolest. 

The Garden, Part 1

I’m just about three weeks into to my stay in South Africa, and I must say the garden looks significantly better, but there is still a long road ahead. So far, I have been pruning the two tomato plants and the mint, and mixing up the soil regularly to prepare it for planting. Perhaps my biggest accomplishment so far has been ridding the tomato plants of the giant armoured crickets. A quick google search helped me learn more about their lifestyle and it became clear that they would not pose that much of a problem.

Because these crickets are so massive, they cannot jump, and they do not have wings to fly. This meant that all I had to do was remove all the ones currently on the plant, and either move them to a new location or give them to the chickens for food, and that took care of most of my problem. The day after I performed an extensive cricket hunt, I found only one on the tomatoes. Over the next couple days that has dropped to zero.

I will keep checking daily for the intruders, but I think that by keeping up on their movement I can stay ahead of the game. Also, by donating the bugs to the chickens, I was rewarded with some eggs in compensation! These crickets are a common pest in the area, and one of the best ways to deal with them according to wikipedia is to just dig a 50cm trench around the crop/garden, and they can’t cross it. So that’s my backup plan if necessary.

Basil Top L, Tomato Top R, Parsley 

In other garden news, a little over a week ago I planted my first experimental seeds into some pvc tube end pieces to see what would happen. Everyday I nurtured those tiny seeds. I brought them in the lab at night, and put them in a slightly sunny spot during the day. They were given plenty of water and love. And all that work paid off, first in the form of tiny tomato sprouts! The other two plants were basil and parsley, and basil followed shortly after the tomatoes in sprouting.

After about a week and nearly giving up on the parsley, I saw the first tiny sprout this morning, and quickly showed it off to everyone in the lab. While waiting on these planted seeds, I also put some seeds for lettuce and cucumber in moistened paper towels inside of plastic bags and taped them to the window. It’s been four days and I can already see tiny shoots sprouting from the seeds. I honestly know nothing about what is best for the different seeds I have, and if I should sprout more in the bags or just in soil. But I’m willing to try multiple ways and learn through trial and error.

In the garden itself, I planted a short row of carrot seeds as well. The patch they are in generally stays pretty moist, but not too wet. All of the garden is watered from the drain pipe of the sinks in the lab. Right now the water distribution is very uneven, and the pipes need some clearing out and better connections. But with the current location of the plants everything is getting sufficiently watered. I’ve been told that carrots have worked out in the past, so I have been optimistically checking for sprouts each morning (a bit prematurely perhaps).

Yesterday was a big day in the garden especially. I was able to take some small aloe vera shoots from an a person’s personal plants and transplant them into the communal garden. I took three relatively well established plants, and put two in mostly sand and one in the garden soil. I also plucked two tiny shoots with only two branches each, and put those in tiny pots (toilet brush holders).

Re-homed Aloe Vera

At this point I’ll go ahead and mention that the lab has a surplus of toilet brush holders, since we use the brushes for cleaning the mole rat colonies. The kind here are like small plant pots, and they have no other use in the lab so they’ve just been set aside. I have been able to put some of them to use in the garden, and they should do the job nicely!

  

Sunday Pup-day

One of everyone’s (every mole-ratter’s) favorite days of the week is Sunday. This is because every Sunday morning in the mole rat lab is pup check day. This involves taking out all the pups (animals less than 3 months), to check their weights and redo their dye marks. Much like any other baby animal, baby mole rats are simply adorable. They also aren’t big enough to really bite yet, which is a huge plus.

WILL INSERT CUTE PUP PICTURES SOON

Colony by colony, the pups are removed and kept under a heat lamp during the procedures. Their weight helps tell us that they are growing properly and helps us predict which pups may not make it to adulthood. If necessary, we can provide saline solution to dehydrated pups and provide extra care. It is also important morphometric data to help understand more about how mole rats grow and what may affect growth rate.

To keep track of individuals, almost all the mole rats receive dye on their white head patches. The dyes are a random mix of hair dyes from different countries, including some manic panic. However, since the pups are groomed frequently, we use food coloring for the first few months of their life. This dye does not last as long, but we also have pictures of each individual’s head patch so we can identify them by the shape if necessary.

The pups are by far the easiest to dye, since they hardly move and they aren’t trying to bite the paint brush. We also only use one color per pup since their easily identified, compared to adults whom we occasionally have to do dye combinations on if there are more than five or so in a colony.

There is also an experiment designed by one of the researchers that is often carried out on the pups during pup check day. All the pups are taken from the nest, then put in one of the dead ends closest to the nest. A short focal observation is done to follow how long it takes for the adults to move the pups back into the nest, and which adults take part in the care. Sometimes the adults move them around but not back to the nest, and some even ignore the pups completely.

Usually the queen plays the biggest role in correctly moving the pups to the right location. The other challenge for them is that the pups are quite mobile from a very early age, and they will sometimes make it back out of the nest. The focal observation doesn’t end until all the pups are back in the nest for at least five minutes. This information is useful for identifying what roles the different adults play in pup care and how involved they are with the pups. It’s also quite fun to watch, and never takes longer than thirty minutes.

A queen being checked post-birth. 

Week One

The first week went by very quickly. Almost immediately I fell into the routine of living on the reserve. I would wake up at about 6:15, shower, and eat some breakfast (usually oatmeal). While eating at the farmhouse, most of the other mole-ratters would filter in and we would slowly make it to the lab by seven to start the day. My days in the lab involved a lot of time spent with the others one-on-one to learn new skills.

I learned how to do the different types of observations (Scans and focals), pregnancy checks, how to enter things into the database, how to get urine samples, and helped with a few blood samples.I was given a checklist with skills to learn and by the first week I made a healthy dent into the list. By the end of the week I was doing scan observations almost independently, but with someone else in the room just in case.

10 Block, the group of rooms where I'm staying

During the breaks, I slowly figured out how to feed myself, alternating between eating dinner leftovers from the night before and making simply dishes with the few ingredients I had purchased and the communal food supplies. I didn’t really start experimenting until the next week, but I did help finish off a lot of leftovers.

Holding a 3 month old pup! 

I also spent more time with non mole-rat volunteers and getting to know the other people on the reserve. There are currently a little over 30 people, from all over the world. Most of us are all around the same age, between 20’s and 30’s. Most of the volunteers have bachelor's degrees and are in between that and further education. There are also some masters and Ph.D students, and a couple post-docs (post Ph.D).

I did go on a walk with a few people one day, but other than that I didn’t not spend much time exploring the reserve. Figuring out where everything is in the farmhouse and mole rat lab was enough to do.

I also had my first ventures into the garden behind the lab building. I had heard about its existence before coming here, and had been warned about its neglected state. My first goal was to figure out what was still growing there, and try to make a dent in some of the weeds that had accumulated. I found a couple massively overgrown tomato plants, to the point where I couldn’t actually tell how many plants there were. There was also some mint, and a relatively healthy looking rosemary bush of moderate size. I read up a bit on how to prune tomato plants and started the procedure, only doing a little at a time.

Armoured Cricket (Acanthoplus discoidalis)

The other big discovery in the garden was the infestation of armoured crickets. They are absolutely MASSIVE, but really neat looking. They are sort of blue-ish green, with small orange eyes and very large, squishy abdomens. Apparently they can bite, but of the hundred or so I’ve picked up I have yet to be bitten. The problem was that they were feasting on the tomatoes. In the middle of the large tomato plant, there were at least 50 or so crickets. Luckily, during the second week, I learned how to deal with them!

The Mole Rat Lab

After what was possibly the most refreshing night of sleep I have ever had, including a long sleep in, I got up and prepared to face the day. I was expected to show up to the lab around 2:30 or 3:00 pm, and although I planned on being up sooner I was actually almost late. I was given a brief tour and explanation of the layout, which involves a main work room with seven offset rooms filled to the ceiling with colonies of mole rats. An office and front room made up the rest of the lab building. The rest of this post is to provide more details of what the lab looks like, and how the mole rats are housed.

Each of the mole rat rooms has large, sturdy shelves at three heights. The highest one requires a ladder to reach. The colonies are built out of pvc tubing with windows cut out and covered with clear acrylic plastic. Zipties and duct tape are mainstays in the construction. The largest colonies take up an entire shelf, which is probably around 2' x 10' (this is a horrible guesstimation). The other colonies are half the size or less, depending on the number of individuals.

  Although a couple of the rooms still have shelf space available, of the colonies in existence currently there are almost 600 individual mole rats. The largest colony currently has twenty-three residents. Wild mole rats live in underground tunnel systems in colonies of similar sizes, with a dominant male and female pair. The king and queen reproduce, while the rest of the individuals help out and remain reproductively stunted. Some eventually disperse to create new colonies or join existing ones. They are one of the few mammal species that displays this eusocial behavior, which is similar to bees and other insects. A theory as to why the helpers would give up their reproductive efforts is that since they are all related, they are still benefiting evolutionarily from the exchange. Also, the difficulties of life in a desert likely necessitate this type of cooperation. The research on the motivations and physical restraints of this behavior are being actively studied.

The lab colonies also consist of dominant male and female pairs that are given the chance to reproduce. Some of the first colonies caught from the wild are still in the lab four or more years later, with multiple generations born from the same dominant pair. Other, newer colonies are created from lab-born animals that are artificially paired together to reproduce. The maintenance required for so many animals is quite impressive. There are three locals that work in the lab almost everyday trying to keep everything clean and provide appropriate habitation for the mole rats.

Their primary tasks involve feeding all the colonies, cleaning the tunnel systems to help the researches observe the mole rats, and transporting fresh sand from the desert to boxes near the colonies so we can provide digging opportunities using upright tunnels. In the evenings, all the lab assistants and volunteers (right now there's six of us) split up the rooms and check each colony for food, and we fill the sand feeders in the colonies so that the mole rats have to dig and remove the sand to find food. We also check for new born pups, but I'll write more about that later.

All in all, the mole rat lab is quite an impressive, complex system of tunnels, mole rats, sweet potatoes, and binders full of data. The work to be done is scheduled one week at a time, and each day is full of tasks to be completed. The types of tasks range from observations of the animals to specific behavioral tests, bodily fluid collection, and x-rays. There is also plenty of data to be entered and imported to the database each day.

The Journey, part 2

We left the airport and piled into a white SUV. The next step was to go into Upington to do some shopping. The primary goal was to get groceries, along with some other bits and pieces needed at the reserve. I stocked up on fruits, some dried grains, tea, and some cough medicine for the lingering sinus infection that appeared partially through the flight to Dubai. The grocery store had a wide selection of mostly familiar things. Squash, or cordial, is pretty popular here and you buy it in large bottles as a drink concentrate. I took the suggestion of one of my traveling companions and purchased some passionfruit cordial, which was definitely worth trying. While waiting for the project manager to finish his shopping, I had a drink with the other two of my companions at a cafe near the grocery store. We had a delightful discussion about American politics and Brexit.

After a few more quick stops to pick up items, we filled up on gas and bought some snacks for the three hour drive to the reserve. I picked out a bacon and cheese sandwich on french toast and an orange powerade. One of my favorite things when traveling is finding things that are familiar but slightly different, and this sandwich and drink definitely fit the bill.

The drive passed by in a bizarre blur of short portions of consciousness and social interactions followed by long bouts of restless sleep hunched over on my backpack. My first impressions of the scenery were that is was quite flat, dry, and sandy. Most of the trees I saw were short and weathered, and tall grass made up most of rest of the fauna visible. By the time we reached the reserve, the sun had set and I didn't get a good view of my new home.

After unloading our vehicle, I finally met one of two of the Ph.D students (now Ph.D graduate) that I will be assisting in the lab. Philippe greeted my with a big hug and plenty of enthusiasm, which fit well with the impression I had of him from our short discussions. I was led to my room to drop my things, and met a swarm of thirty or so people who currently lived at the reserve. There is always a frenzy of people on town trip days because that's when the monthly stock of personal groceries arrives. Somehow I managed to stay up a couple more hours, and even got a chance to step into the lab and see the mole rats before heading off to bed.

The Journey, part 1

      I left Houston on March 18th at little after 7:00pm. The first part of my journey consisted of a fifteen hour flight to Dubai, which went surprisingly quickly. I flew with Emirates on a massive plane that easily fit over 300 people.  Shortly after being seated everyone received a small bag with an eye mask, ear plugs, socks, and a toothbrush. I was also lucky enough to have two empty seats between me and the next person. The entertainment system was quite expansive and I watched several movies I've been meaning to see. Although I did not manage to fall asleep in any of the twelve or so positions I tried, I remained optimistic that the next flight would be more refreshing. I spend just about four hours total in the Dubai airport, which was enough time to find some food, shower, and peruse the enormous shops. I felt I couldn't leave without something to remember my short stay in the middle east so I bought a small camel keychain.

      The next segment involved an eight hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. Immediately upon finding my seat I realized I was not going to be lucky enough to sleep, considering I was in a two-person row sat next to a somewhat grumpy older man. I think my politeness and our unspoken agreement to not talk appeased him enough, and we spent the flight in peace. I was right about being unable to sleep, but I sure did try. I occupied most of my time with more movies and television.
      I arrived somewhat delirious in Johannesburg, with a list of things to do before my next and final flight in five hours. I had to get through passport control, pick up my bags, get through customs, recheck my bags, buy a sim card for my phone, and exchange some money. Somehow, even after not sleeping a wink in over thirty or more hours, I got everything done. Passport control and customs were a breeze, and I even had a nice breakfast of avocado on toast with a freshly squeezed apple and mint juice. I had plenty of time to spare and made a futile attempt to sleep at the gate for my next departure. Ultimately I gave up on and bought a caramel latte instead.
     I expected to see or meet the adviser of the Ph.D student I'm working with on the plane from Johannesburg to Upington. I was only looking for one person though, and out of a group of just under thirty people I still couldn't figure out who it was. We all boarded one of the smallest planes I've ever been on, with three seats across and barely any room for baggage. I was more than prepared to get this flight over with, but fate would not have it. Due to a mechanical issue, the plane was delayed an hour. During this point I did manage to briefly fall asleep in my seat, not that it helped much. This last trip was about an hour and a half, and we landed at a very small airport with one gate, in Upington, South Africa.
       At this point I was a bit worried. I knew I was supposed to be picked up by the airport, but I had never met the person and still hadn't figured out who the adviser was. I was standing near the door with my luggage and trying to figure out if my phone was even going to work when I finally saw a man walk in with a meerkat shirt on. I figured that he must be the right one, and sure enough I was right. The adviser I expected to meet came with his daughter, which explains why I didn't pick them out sooner. We all piled into a car for the next part of the journey.