14 April (Tues)

Spent the day unpacking and sorting through mountains of stuff as usual. I keep forgetting what is where so end up bringing everything anyway, and then get here to find there are enough clothes for 10 children, even without what I have carried all the way from SA. Vow to give away at least two-thirds of what is here by end of June.

Had a major infestation of ants last night. I was in Rio’s bed at about midnight when Keita called me to her bed. As I lay down my skin tingled all over as what felt like a million things crawling over me. I turned on a torch and found her bed to be black with ants, hundreds of which were crawling all over her. I wondered how she managed to stay asleep for so long with this going on. It took me about 20 minutes to extricate them from her hair. I woke Brad who (only then) discovered that they were all over him in our bed as well. We established that Rio’s was the only bed unaffected by them, but we had to vacate the tent anyway. Brad dutifully set up bedrolls in the main area while I was pinned under Keita, who was massively traumatized by the whole thing, trying to calm her down. The kiddies and I crowded together on the lamu bed (under a much needed mozzie net, but rather short on space) and brad slept on the floor. By now it was all wildly exciting to be ‘sleeping out’ and it took us all about an hour to settle and go back to sleep.  

This morning Brad went off filming muttering about buying a new tent. Ours was inherited from Joyce and was far from intact. I took everything out of the tent and lifted the carpet to patch the numerous holes in the floor with duct tape. Thank goodness Pricka came to my rescue and helped. It took him about 2 hours to painstakingly tape each miniscule hole closed. Eventually he ran out of tape with only half the tent done. I gave him the ok to Doom it (against my better judgement) and replaced everything.

Keita continues to be high maintenance and wants her mother every 3 minutes. This could be a reaction to her recent illness, from which she is only now recovering. She does these dramatic slow motion runs with her head flung back and her arms out at her sides (like a soldier being shot in a war movie) calling ‘momeeeeee’ with a pained expression on her face. She then flings herself at me. If it wasn’t so distracting it would be hilarious.

I am making a concerted effort to teach the kids Setswana. I told them a baboon is a tsweni. Rio calls it a sweni and Keita calls it a tweni. We are getting there. 

We went on an evening game drive to find sites for the camera mounts so we can start doing the time lapse shots for the feature film. Spent a happy sunset time at the pan, watching the hippos watch us and picnicking on the bonnet of the vehicle.