Home. What I miss, what I don't

I'm really missing home at the moment. Every now and then I stumble across a picture of the valley and feel my heart tug right out of my chest. So to remind myself:

Things I miss about home

The cicadas

Elephants walking silently past my window

Hippo sounds floating up from the river. Hippos chomping outside my window at night

Distant lion call

The smell of the potato bush in the early evening

The pockets of cold air in the long grass in winter

Reading animal tracks 

Campfires

Smokey tea

Hot dry October heat

Sausage tree flowers

The small town camaraderie

Sundowners in the park

The carmine bee-eater colonies; crimson whipping out of holes in the riverbank like a flamenco dancer with a carmine scarf

The clear clear sky at night, all crunchy with stars

At this time of year, the ankle deep mud

My landrover

The August winds

Winterthorn trees

My mama, my uncle

The subtle change of season within the two obvious seasons (wet and dry!)

Having to drive six hours round trip to buy supplies 

Things I don't miss

Malaria

The cicadas

The baboons. Jumping on my roof at dawn. The smell of baboon poo with the first rain. Breaking into my house and causing havoc

The politics with the chief

Malaria

The streams of people at my door ever needing help

Taking twice as long to drive anywhere (outside the park) because you need to stop and give so many lifts 

Funerals. So much HIV

Scorpions

Hot dry October heat

The small town gossip

At this time of year the ankle deep mud. The mould, the mosquito bites that turn septic

The sideways rain that comes right in

Malaria

Having to drive six hours round trip to buy supplies

Crocodiles

Time for some old pictures while, rarer than Tanzanite, I have a spare moment with both babies asleep. I have so much to say and I really really don't like neglecting this ol blog of mine but right now the reserves don't stretch that far. A two and a half year old and an eight week old - I'm sure you could market them to army training camps or something, to test people's stamina and ability to cope under duress.  Didn't someone do an experiment once with olympic athletes and two year olds - and the athletes couldn't keep up?

Aaaanyway. Crocodiles. I scroll through my album of old pictures looking for something that may be of interest and find these two.

The old foundations in the middle of our camp never got built on. They had dreams of being a house I guess but in the end but were only ever a sandpit for us kids, a training ring for Widdle the warthog, the origin of the name 'the ruins' for our camp (which confused many a baffled tourist) and, at one point, a home for my uncle's croc eggs. I'd spend hours watching those damn eggs, waiting for that squark-squeak of baby croc breaking through. Oh the excitement! And then I'd ever so gently help them out of the leathery egg and try to keep away from their pin-sharp teeth. I'd made one bite me once just to see. And never did that again!  

These baby crocs are fine, pretty cute, even. But when I was littler my small friend Salimu was washing clothes in ankle deep water in the river with his family and got taken from right under their noses. I can still hear the wailing of the women reverberating around camp. They shot the croc and found him inside, in three neat pieces. The croc was massive, laid out on the concrete slab behind the Chibembe kitchen with a big stick propping open its jaws.

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Picture window


we've been having these major dust storms of late. hard to see from our window but normally you can see HILLS far and wide. rain's have started tho - so that should put and end to that for the next few months -  yay!