On
the banks of the grey, green, greasy, Limpopo River, beloved, that self same
river where the elephant child got his trunk, Kipling could have written a
sequel about How Joe and Jane of the Jungle became 2 large human Frisbees after
being flattened by a large hippopotamus. These were my thoughts at 4 in the
morning where we were in our small, flimsy dome tent listening to a hippo
chorus which appeared to be getting closer. Discretion being the better part of
valour we hightailed it out of the tent and spent the rest of the night in the
car. Our only neighbours in the campsite had commented that our tent would not
ward off hyenas and that building up the campfire was of no use as hippos are
attracted by fires and come and stamp them out. Flea ,Joes friend in Gaberone
who had lent us the tent among many
other generosities, had also taken great glee in telling us a life time of
Africa stories which that particular night made me wish I had stayed at the
Hilton.
The
evening had been just beautiful, one of those magic evenings when you feel you
are close to heaven. Full moon, sitting by a campfire by the banks of the
Limpopo with all those night sounds that are Africa, distant hippo grunts and
cicadas, thinking how great it would have been to share it with you. We had had
our first sighting of elephants along with zebras, impala and kudu. The
neighbours had been chased by a grumpy one tusker just to add spice and
comeuppance for being rude about our tent.
Now
back in Francistown and the end of a perfect weekend truanting from the
orphanage to watch the soccer , texting
Binky after every goal, what a match!!!!!
Life
at SOS is all good. Everything cruises along. Today the clinic was quiet so I
spent the morning with the kindies who are very funny and a lot of fun. Then I
taught the adolescent girls about safe sex and later joined the mothers choir.
They are preparing for SOS day when we will have singing and traditional
dancing and a wire car making comp for he boys. The younger adolescent girls
are very funny and ask things like why would grandmothers want to have sex.
When they see me they have an embarrassed giggle. I was teaching them about
abstinence and saying NO using a clapping song to control the giggles. Afterwards
I heard them walking off down the village singing no,no,no, no no, but realised
they are little different from our own kids when they started singing YES, YES,
YES, YES ,YES!!!!!!
