In my second year of undergraduate, I had chosen a conservation module because I did not want to do exams. Besides, I had never been to Africa before, so I thought this was the best opportunity for me to visit there.
When we landed in South Africa, Africa was…. as I expected really. Some cool animals to see, such as elephants and rhinos. However, the people gave me a weird look because I was the only Asian in the group, and I felt uneasy all the time. They do not understand that Asia consists of many countries, not just bloody “China, Japan or South Korea”. It is one thing not to know Malaysia’s existence, but it is ignorance to disregard my explanations. I was ready to tell them more about my country and SEA in general, but they didn’t care. No one in the group was trying to help out except a few close friends.
The first few days was more of a tour than fieldwork. We went to this safari park to check out rhinos and elephants. I was not aware that the exhibits were fielded with electric fences, and when I touched them, I got shocked pretty severely. Thankfully, nothing happened, and no one knew except a close friend of mine. During lunch, we saw a huge python feasting on something. After that, we got onto those safari jeeps to check out the elephants. The tyres went bust, and I could not believe we had to get out and waited. Elephants were surrounding us, which was a bit scary.
After spending a few days in South Africa, we headed off to Swaziland to start our fieldwork. I could never forget taking a shower with some sort of tarantula around me. I f**king hate spiders, and creepy crawling’s in general. And a black mamba crawling around my friends’ bag. And no one picked us for a long time in the middle of nowhere. So many people got fever except me (hah!). One person got stung by a scorpion—lots of interesting mini-events during the fieldwork.
Will I come back here? Erm … no, not really. The people here are not welcoming to me at least. If I were ever returning to the Africa continent, I would choose Eygpt to scuba dive at the Red Sea. Furthermore, I have an Egyptian friend, so it would make things a lot easier.
