KD

First written blog to show you KD.

KD is really something special, it is the title of the house I lived in at the reserve of Marataba Safari Lodge. A little house I shared with Charlotte (also from Hotelschool the Hague), Danell (ranger student), Rob (ranger student), and Andreas (also a ranger student).

If you go to 'video's', and click on the video called 'KD' you will be able to take a look through my eyes in the actual KD, where I show you around a little bit. For future students the house could be a shock, which it was for me and Charlotte at first as well. However, we have gotten used to it very fast! We enjoyed our time in KD a lot, even though it was a little bit gross inside.

You're probably wondering now what I all mean since I have not explained anything about the actual house yet.

Walking into KD, you see our little combined living room and kitchen. Mold is present on the ceiling, which I didn't show in the video. We have a little little oven/stove which we could cook on (worked fine). Also our big friend 'fat rat' loved our living room, he always used to crawl into the hole in the ceiling when we entered the house in the evening. Sometimes he even woke us up by walking through the ceiling of the entire house.
In addition to that we had 3 bigh chairs, they were awesome! A fridge, sink, freezer, some cupboards and a table were the other things you could find in the living room.

Walking a little bit furhter than that, there is a little hallway with all the doors to the other rooms our little KD has. 3 doors on your right hand, and 3 doors on the left. On the right side you find 3 bedrooms, Danell's, Andreas's and Charlotte and I shared the last one for the biggest part of our internship. This room I also show to you in the video. We had two beds, a closet and a socket for our chargers. Funny fact; just after we moved to Rob's old room (which I will explain later), the baboons broke into our room and stole some of my souvernirs... You live in the bush, you live with the baboons...

Then on the left side, the two bathrooms, and Rob's (old) room.
What actually happened there is that Rob had the biggest room which he shared with Wayne, a ranger student who left in our first 2 weeks. Rob finished about 4 weeks before we did, so we got to move into Rob's old room, which was a big improvement. Unfortunately this room is not on the video, but if you go to 'foto's' I will show you a little short video of the day we were packing up to leave, which is in Rob's old room. In that room we had a lot more space!

The bathrooms were divided by the boys and the girls (So the guys basically had a private bathroom since Andreas only came into KD when Rob was already almost leaving). Charlotte, Danell and I shared the cleaner bathroom with the three of us, since Wilmie, who also left in our first 2 weeks, cleaned the entire bathroom which made it a lot better. The only negevative there was that the shower and the sink shocks whenever you touch it, so showering was not the perfect experience if you ask me..

Don't get me wrong though, I loved my whole experience. I did not mind KD a bit. Charlotte and I did not spend a lot of time there since we were at work most of the time, but whenever I was at KD i enjoyed my time there. It was actually a nice way to get used to another way of living. I noticed that you do not need a big great house to be happy at a place. You need good people around you, which I really had.

See you soon, at the lodge!

Maartje