I’ve decided to take the bad with the good and stay here in Karumbe. Some of the volunteers will be leaving at the end of the week which will, hopefully, mean I can unpack my hump and even chose another bed.

Today my duties include gathering all the information on the new patients that arrived late yesterday, washing the dishes after lunch and painting the new fence.

It began in the clinic. Many of the turtles that are found are dehydrated and need to be given fluids. The only way a turtle can get moisture is through their diet and if they don’t eat, they don’t consume water.

Quite a few of the poor souls are in a right sorry state, not only lacking in water but also vitamins so hopefully with a lot of TLC and the correct medication they should begin to improve but unfortunately sometimes the problem is more severe than just dehydration, a lot of them are admitted after ingesting plastic that blocks their bowel.

I did what I could, I cleaned his eyes, nose and mouth. Gave him some I/v fluids and returned him to the holding tub and kept my fingers crossed 🤞. This treatment was repeated for quite a few other patients.

I loved it, I loved using my nursing experience. It made me feel useful and I could demonstrate my professional skills.

The rest of the morning was taken up by cleaning holding tubs and transferring some of the stronger turtles into bigger tanks.

There wasn’t just turtles at the centre, there was a variety of terrapins and a few tortoises that had been confiscated from the animal traffickers.

Lunch, cooked by Alejandro, was a wide variety of mish mash. Lots of textures and flavours. Not sure what I was eating but I could recognise potato, rice, omelet, sausage meat, with added spices and herbs. Food is always placed on the table in the pots they were cooked in and we all tucked in.

My second duty of the day, to wash the dishes after lunch. Nobody seems to use hot water here, there’s washing up liquid but no hot water. Well I changed that, the kettle was on, I found a big red bowl and filed it three quarter to the top with hot frothy water – feels like proper cleaning. I also cleaned the cooker, worktops and brushed the floor.

Sometimes I worry for the future generation, they have no idea how to clean, how are they ever going to teach their children the importance of cleanliness. I really do think it’s a basic requirement to healthy living.

After lunch I took a stroll down to the deserted beach and walked left instead of my usual right scouting the area for any sign of large round objects. Thankfully there were none or at least none that I could see but I did come across a few random objects

I stood and watched the small hawks and vultures as they struggled then mastered their flight skills as they caught the up drafts coming up over the dunes. I ran about excitedly like a maniac camera in hand trying my best to gets decent shot as they flew a few feet above my head but I wasn’t only shooting against the sky, I was also shooting into the sun which produced the most dreadful images………delete, delete, delete.

3pm, Back to base to resume my duties of the day

Painting the newly built walls of the social area with white emulsion paint. It started off looking like this

And now 3 hours later of listening to a random selection or music genres on my iPhone through Spotify, it now looks like this

Not bad at all. I restocked the bookshelf, replaced the ‘was once’ a leather suite and brushed all the crap from the concrete floor out into the grassy area – perfect timing for dinner!

Well dinner was much the same as lunch, making use of all the veggies in the larder but it was lovely ….well ok edible but the cooks did their best with what was available and i don’t think I could done any better.

The sun was setting (19:46) and the temperature was beginning to dip so I curled up in the now appealing comfy sofa to write up my blog but the R&R period lasted only a nano second, Fluer and Alejandro had been away collecting two more stranded turtles and had returned. OMG, what dreadful conditions they were in, one was completely limp, dangerously dehydrated and almost comatosed. The other was slightly stronger but still requiring immediate rehab.

Straight to the clinic, I/v glucose drips and fingers tightly crossed, I’ll be amazed if they are both alive in the morning. It was now just after 10:30, I accepted a large glass of wine off Alejandro and tottered off to my bed to wrestle with the mozzie net, blankets, sheet and sleeping bag heaped in a mound on top of my bed.

I tried to finish my blog but I couldn’t stop my eyes from closing. So putting my phone under my pillow, I took off my 3 times superglued specs and I gave in to the demands of my body to sleep.

Nte 😘