Zambia Diary
Written mostly by Grant, April 10, 2007.
We're now at Flatdogs camp again. There are huge piles of sand everywhere. The sand is very fine and was deposited here when the water in the river slowed down behind the buildings and vegetation. It is all-pervading and the landscape here is really a bit lunar and not very pleasant. They have re-painted our house inside and it is basically fine except where the water has rusted the screens in the windows along the bottom edge and now all manner of insects come in. Thank goodness there aren't as many mosquitoes and bugs as there were a month ago.
The rains have gone and its now dry again. The river has gone down by about 20 ft, and everything is back to normal on the rains front. The weather has changed though as we now go into the Southern Hemisphere winter. Its now much cooler, especially at night. A blanket is now necessary over the sheet whereas even just a single sheet was too much. The grass is starting to go brown as are the leaves - except for the stunning winterthorn that grows just beside our little house at Flatdogs. It has burst into leaf and is flowering with a kind of winterthorn catkin. The winterthorn is such a magnificent tree!
Its now 4 months since we left Scotland.
Homesickness has started to set in and sometimes I long to see the Highlands
again and do a nice walk. It is so dangerous to go even a few hundred yards
away from camp here. This evening we had two huge elephants just 10 yards from
our house tearing up the grass and some small trees. They are incredibly huge,
incredibly powerful, incredibly short-sighted, and incredibly dangerous when
annoyed. Yesterday evening there was a hippo across the road from the
restaurant to the Doc's House that reached from one side of the track to the
other. Also not to be tangled with. So the idea of having a nice long walk
through the rolling countryside in Scotland (its also VERY flat here) is very
appealing. I'm sure we'll both be desperate by the time we get back on June 19.
Work at the Clinic is
going well if a bit slowly. I'm desperate to finish it before we go. I don't
know how I can speed it up. We were half-way through the number of days
available on Easter weekend but we're certainly not half way through. Worry,
worry. We've both been working 12 hour days and its starting to catch up. We
thought that Easter would be a nice break. But on Good Friday we had someone
with a big weight dropped across her toe (probably not broken but a few days
will tell - no X-ray here) and then as I was coming back from the Clinic a young
hunk of a man waved me down at Flatdogs reception saying he had malaria. In
fact he had a temperature of 39.4 C and was quite delirious. So he's been
sleeping on a mattress in our tiny sitting room. He rants and raves and talks
all night, and goes walkabout outside in the bush barefoot. Johnny has to get
up every four hours to give him injections. Easter Sunday there was another
emergency at the Clinic and Johnny had to go in, and then one of the other camps
came in with someone who'd chopped the end of their finger off! How's that for
a rest???
Johnny has just put on his boots and the bootlaces are wet and he suspects that
the delerious malaria patient who's been our self-inflicted 'guest' has peed in
the corner of the bedroom - otherwise how could his bootlaces be wet??
Oh, don't we have fun?
Anyway its not everyone who has an elephant walking past their house as the
African sun sets below the horizon. Its not TOO bad here!
Return to the main section of Grant and Johnny's second sojourn at Mfuwe
Return to Grant's Personal files