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Going back to Africa by Josha van der Beek
Currently, I just finished my first year at Wageningen University where I am doing a MSc in Forest and Nature Conservation. Before Wageningen I went to Larenstein University for Professional Education in Velp, which is a HBO (sorry for those who are not familiar with the Dutch schooling system). There I studied Forest and Nature Management with a specialisation in Nature and Landscape Engineering, which actually is specifically meant for the Netherlands. (Just go abroad and try to explain to people that in the Netherlands we actually create and engineer nature.) This study did not really satisfy me. Besides the fact that my main interest always went out to ‘wild’ and pristine nature and specifically to Africa, it was not really clear to me why. But then, during this study I got the opportunity to study abroad for one year instead of my internships in the third and fourth year. That would be a one-year B-Tech (comparable with BSc) in Nature Conservation in South Africa. This just seemed the perfect chance for me and I did not need to think about it for long.
We were with two and went to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in George at the south coast of South Africa. In the beginning it was very tough. We would be the first Dutchies to go there, like Ginny pigs, and were prepared by our contact person at Larenstein that it would be very easy and that we would have a lot of spare time during this year. Well, he could not have been more wrong than that. There was a lot of miscommunication; therefore we never really knew beforehand what we were getting ourselves into. We even missed our first day of lectures as we expected to still have a one-week-holiday ahead of us. A
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nyway, immediately we found out that it was going to be hard work, very hard work. I have never worked harder in my life for school. For starters, it was all on scientific level and according to a tough schooling system, which I had never experienced before. The fact that we had to catch up on a lot of English professional vocabulary as well did not help either. However, it turned out perfect for me, for the first time I really had the feeling that I was properly challenged and knew what I had missed at Larenstein. Besides, we had to do all sorts of interesting assignments. For example research on ostrich and Gibbaeums (mini-succulents) in lion territory on a wildlife reserve of 55,000 ha and to write a management plan on how many lions could be kept on another wildlife reserve of 36,000 ha.
On top of this, we were advised by our director to travel through the country during the holiday in July to see all the country’s biomes. This resulted in a journey of approximately 5,000 km across the country in two weeks, going from national park to national park (including Kruger and Kgalagadi), all for ‘educational’ purposes. We had the opportunity to visit all these parks and not be treated as tourists, but as nature conservation students. Looking back, I have to say that 2004 has been one of the best years and certainly the most interesting year of my life so far. It also made clear for me that I was not finished studying after graduating for my bachelors at Larenstein. That is how I ended up at Wageningen University and chose to do my thesis at the Resource Ecology group. Coincidently I came across another opportunity to visit South Africa. I am going to do research in Kruger with a fellow student on the effect of large isolated trees in savannas on foraging behaviour of herbivorous ungulates for our master thesis. Although we are still in the middle of preparing our research proposal, we already booked our flights for mid-September. I can hardly wait to go back again. |