Hot.
Yesterday Keita was ill and very grumpy. Rio spent the entire day making a high-pitched noise and gazing at a single page of a “Where’s Wally?” book. At 9 pm he was still at it and I had to fight with him to turn off the torch and go to sleep. I find this alarming and depressing. My guilt is endless that I have turned my vibrant social butterfly into a weird thing. For all I know this is normal behaviour for a 5-year-old though. I have never consciously taken notice of a 5-year-old before. Kids to me were always like a very foreign species (Rio was very possibly the first baby that I had ever held) and I have no knowledge of what they do or don’t do. I am going to have to Skype my mom-friends and find out if their kids are doing the same thing. God parenting is difficult. It is so easy for some, like The Stepford Person for example, who doesn’t even have children and is only 23 years old. It is beyond me how she does it. And she even enjoys it.
The day looked promising when Graham radioed in that they had found a herd of buffalos at what we call Gnu Poo Pan, which is only about a km from camp. We decide to take a pre-breakfast jaunt out there before it gets to hot so that at least we can see something other than the confines of the tents.
We tootle along and soon find the buffalo, and at the same time get a radio call from Brad telling us we are interrupting their filming of their link and can we please go away. At this point the day goes downhill. We wait until they have completed and join up with them on the periphery of the herd. For some reason Keita loves cows and goats more than anything and to her a herd of buffalos is just like a herd of cows so she is in her element, ooing and aahing over them.
The day hit a low point later on when Frannette nearly fell into the long drop. Was horrific. Uncannily, I happened to be there as I was doing some photos of Keita on the loo, with ladybug wings and pink high heels. Keita dropped her shoes behind the loo and as Frannette went to pick them up her foot crashed through the surface and her entire leg disappeared into the chasm. Had Keita moved 30 cm to the side she would have been the one to break the surface and her little body would have fallen right through. I shudder to think. I have a rule that anyone who goes to the long-drop with the kiddies takes a bare-banger. At this rate we will have to tie a rope around them as well! Frannette as usual coped admirable with this horribility.
At least our attempt at moving away from the consumerist city influences is working. Rio had cooked up an imaginary dish for himself on Keita’s tea set and was tucking in with gusto. When I asked him what he was eating he said a chicken ferrari (meaning chicken sosatie). This pleases me immensely that he doesn’t know the difference between a car and a food.
No comments:
Post a Comment