27 Feb (Fri)

Today is Keita’s birthday. We had prepped her for a few days before hand and she had practiced singing happy birthday to herself. When she was having her morning bottle I reminded her that it was her birthday and she was full of smiles. We presented her with a stuffed lion and a stuffed giraffe, which she seemed to like. The rest of the day was spent preparing for the party. Frannette baked a brilliant chocolate cake in a pot on coals and Rio helped decorate with smarties and finger biscuits dipped in chocolate.

We had a birthday picnic party. Friends are here from Durban for the occasion so we can have a real party. We decided to go back to the beautiful, remote island where we had reconstructed the hippo, despite the fact that there is a vehicle-destroying water crossing to get there. So we packed a picnic and headed off, stopping for a swim in the water crossing on the way.

Brad had picked out a spot where there was shade and flat ground so we set up the camera (becoming tedious in the extreme) and set up the picnic. Keita opened her presents on the car, then blew out her candles. This behind the scenes filming is really becoming a pain. All spontaneity is lost and the kids are constantly being constrained by us, being told to wait, do it again, do it differently etc.

After the food and the filming we had a fabulous game of frisby and an insane game where Rio and Anthony were on the roof of the car and the adults were throwing the ball to them to catch. It is a wonder nobody fell off. Negligent parents 101. But is was great fun and we left the picnic in very good spirits with all 3 kids perched on the windscreen of our pink-balloon-adorned car, singing happy birthday over and over again. There were 3 storms on the horizon and it was a brilliant balmy evening and was wonderful with my Rio snuggled on my lap, driving slowly watching the stars and the sky.

That night, back in camp with all safely tucked in, Brad and I were visiting the long drop. It is always better to do this in teams considering there are no fences and it is a 60 metre walk from the camp. While there we heard Amanda shouting that there was a hyena heading down the path towards us. The hyenas in this part are not to be trifled with so Brad grabbed some clods of earth and headed at a pace down the path, his logic being that one should confront it with aggression. This seemed to work because it detoured off the path as soon as it saw us coming. When relating this incident to Caryn, a friend of mine on skype the following day, she said “at least you were in the right place to shit yourself”. She is very funny. 

26 Feb (Thurs)

Have been filming a lot if the Behind The Scenes stuff for the programme. I have a clear idea of what I want to produce but am not managing to achieve it. This feeds my major insecurity about the fact that I am trying to do constructive work while simultaneously keeping the family sane and intact (in the unusual circumstances we are in) and actually not managing to do either very well. I am a generally diligent, A-type, irritating person and creating sub-standard anything sparks off a low-grade panic in my system. I have come to realize that this is why I manage to stay thin despite consuming alarming amounts of food. Since I have had kids I have been in a permanent state of latent hysteria that I am not doing it well enough. This burns up lots of calories.

The toss up is which ‘job’ to focus on. I could abdicate all parenting responsibilities to She-Who-Is-Calm-And-Happy-At-All-Times and reclaim the kids when they are well-nourished, polite, relaxed 10 year olds. I could then focus all my energy on doing fabulous work, which I know I am capable of, instead of churning out the mindless drivel I am currently producing. Sometimes I think this is a really good idea. The major upside is that the kids will probably at least respect me, even if they don’t know me very well.

The alternative is to dedicate my entire self to raising kids. This is such a nice idea in theory. There are some drawbacks however. First and foremost, Keita would never actually eat. She will only eat when Frannette removes her from all external stimulation and puts her in an empty tent and does whatever she does to make the food go down. I don’t believe in this. My theory is that she must learn to eat socially as everyone must do and I think she will eventually get hungry enough to do this. This is why she lost one third of her body weight when Frannette was on leave for 3 weeks.

The second major drawback is my sanity. My children are high maintenance and will only spend fractions of time entertaining themselves or playing together. In our innocence we created this monster but now we have a situation where they always want to play with mommy or daddy. Daddy films a lot so I spend my afternoons playing armies, or baby mongoose, or Lion King. I am not Frannette so for me, after an hour this gets tedious. Summer is great because we swim a lot and even I can do this with enthusiasm. Not sure what I will do in winter.

So I am in this weird space. When I am working in the mornings my mind is on the kids, and when I am playing with the kids in the afternoon my mind is on all the work I that is piling up. Not very satisfying at all. I have heard that other people manage to have children and still function in a work capacity. Maybe they are less neurotic.  

My mission now is to be where I am at, absolutely at that time, and not half way in between.

So, back to Behind-The-Scenes … Rio has now rebelled and will not be on camera at all. There were the most wonderful, spontaneous moments that I would hear from my office tent, rush out and make them redo – spontaneously. I now have to bribe him, but he is getting wise to this. He took the chocolate I promised him and hid behind the tent until it was all eaten, then still refused to recatch the toad. Every time Keita sees me with a camera she rushes to me, attaches herself like a limpet to my legs and demands a hug. It is a fiasco. All the time I have the office producer sending me helpful e-mails about what sort of content they would like to see coming out of Moremi. I sent a few whining sort of mails in response about how difficult it is because the kids have now developed a pathological hatred for, and jealousy of, the camera, but it does seem like an excuse. Back to the point I made above …

Gotta just do it. 

24 Feb (Tues)

In the afternoon we go to the hippo skeleton. Brad and Graham had found it when exploring a previously inaccessible island far north of our camp. Once the water receded somewhat we were able to access the area, barely. Strangely most of the bones are there and have not been disturbed by predators or scavengers. Judging by the size it was an old bull, and we assume he died from wounds sustained in a fight. We plan to reconstruct the skeleton because it makes a nice behind the scenes insert for the show.

We have to cross a huge river crossing to get there. The car literally swims across, which astounds the kids. In this environment we have to go through lots of deep water, but this is the deepest yet (over 4 foot of water). As we are half way through a large croc pops its head up, watching us. All of us silently hope that the car actually makes it across (being a petrol vehicle, albeit a modified one, it is not as equipped for such deep water) and we don’t have to fend off the croc while extricating ourselves.

We make it to the other side, find the hippo bones, reconstruct it to the best of our ability and film the process. It is a little frustrating for the kids because Brad and Graham are filming it and we need to be serious about it and they can’t simply run wild and play with all the bones as they want to do. Also we are a little concerned about the hygiene of it all, considering they all put their hands in their mouths and can probably pick up something horrible from the bones. They all lose interest very rapidly and head off to play in the sand elsewhere while Brad and Graham build it and I take (crap) photos.

Afterwards we go to a beautiful drying pan with black mud, white fallen trees and impeccable reflections for sundowners. Being us we launch into an immediate photo shoot. As we are walking into position Rio freaks out about the mud on his feet and has an epic tantrum. He is clearly deeply unhappy and tired and I suspect he is getting ill.  He has one of those totally terrifying, thoroughly irrational meltdowns where there is nothing one can do to pacify him and it simply must run it’s course. He calms down eventually and tries to be civil for a while but can’t really sustain it and the smallest things sets him off. We all tiptoe around him, have a stressful 2 hours in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

We leave at last light and it is soon dark. On the drive home Rio, in his usual spot on the dashboard, staring out into the darkness, asks, “are octurnals big or small?” then falls asleep sitting up.

 

23 Feb (Mon)

We heard lions roaring very close to camp all night. This was the loudest we have heard it since we have been here. They were the huge, guttural, blood curdling roars of two male lions, not the significantly less intense roars of the lionesses that we had been hearing most frequently. At 4 am Keita was awake (as usual) and I was lying with her while she was having her bottle when the lions started roaring again. They sounded like they were in Graham’s tent. Keita stopped sucking immediately and listened, very wide-eyed, to the noise. Once it had stopped she turned to me and said “It’s a rhino”. It occurred to me that she had never consciously heard a lion roar before. I told her it was a lion and she went back to sleep easily, but half an hour later woke up screaming “the lions are coming to get me”.  She spent the remainder of the evening in our bed.

Early in the morning we heard the vervet monkeys alarm calling in the trees fringing the camp. Brad radioed to say that they had been with the lions just behind the camp but were now leaving the sighting to go and find the buffalo herd further north. He casually mentioned that the male lion was lying on the anthill watching the camp and focused on the sights and sounds here, and that we should keep our eyes open and turn on the electric fence (which happened to be not working on that day).

Soon afterwards the vervet monkeys started leaping around and alarm calling and the impalas were running and snorting so we knew the lions were on the move. This was all too much excitement for Amanda (a friend who was visiting us) who didn’t dare venture to the longdrop the entire day. Eventually she made a public announcement that she was going for a wee in the potty in her tent and instructed us all to keep a close eye on the tent at while she did so, just in case something snuck up on her.

In the afternoon we took the opportunity to drive to the herd of buffalo which were camped out at Gnu Poo Pan, even thought they were just lying around in great brown heaps. Keita still has difficulty distinguishing buffalos from cows and is puzzled by the enthusiasm we show for these ‘brown cows’ when we drive past the other ones all the time in Maun without a second glance. She loves cows and goats more than anything though, so was very happy to see them.

Rio calls impala speedbuck for some reason, an apt name I think, and Keita calls them Mepalas. 

Mouse is doing well, apart from a bit of diarrhea. He is scoffing his Pro-Nutro and Mouse-Mother Frannette diligently rubs his tummy and bum after every feed. Rio and Keita love and adore him above all else, even me. 

22 Feb (Sun)

Brad is very anxious to get back to camp after a few days in Maun. As we are walking out our door a baby squirrel plummets out of the roof and lands at Brad’s feet. He debates putting it back in the roof where it came from but we know that Ma Joyce is about to launch a squirrel extermination so we would be sending it to it’s death. Clearly there is nothing to do but keep it, so we try and give him (we have now established that he is a him – not a difficult task with a squirrel) a drop of water and put him in a comfy box for the trip.

The trip is uneventful apart from the fact that Brad is driving, so a bit hair-raising. Find a couple from Orapa stuck in the mud. They have 2 young kids (3 and 2) and have been bogged down for two hours. They are very pleased to see us and Rio has a happy interlude with two new friends for all of 20 minutes.

Keita is convinced the squirrel is a mouse. No amount of explaining will convince her that it is anything but. The little guy is managing small amounts of soya formula (which is all we have) and seems ok so far.  

Emergency skype chats in the evening with Justine (expert raiser of baby things) inform us that she has chatted to everyone she knows who has raised a squirrel and what we need is Pro-Nutro for the baby. She has arranged to put some on a flight which is leaving to go to a nearby lodge the next morning, and we will go and collect it from there.   

19 Feb (Thurs)

I am getting into a routine of work for 2 hours in the morning and the kids are getting into their ‘school’ routine. Rio loves heading off to the classroom with Frannette to “pretend that she is the teacher and they are the kids”.

The pool has been a great hit, despite the fact that we pump water directly from the fringes of the lagoon behind the camp so it is 80% hippo pooh. This afternoon Rio was playing in the pool. He asked Pricka if he would come and swim with him. Pricka said he couldn’t cos he didn’t have a swimming costume. Rio said “that’s ok, I’m swimming in my nude, you can swim in your nude”. Cute.

Off to Maun today. The trip is definitely getting easier.

 

18 Feb (Wed)

I decided that I needed to experience life outside of the camp more. I am expected to post a daily blog about life behind the scenes in Moremi and I was even beginning to bore myself, nevermind the audience. So I was up and ready at 3 am. Did some pilates until it was time to wake Brad and we tried to sneak out without waking Rio. Unsuccessfully. So Rio came with. My attempt to launch into the real work world kid-free was not entirely to be. I was at least getting out though.

Putting aside my guilt at Keita waking up to find Frannette instead of me in the tent with her (which really is ridiculous because she loves the novelty of waking up to her Net instead of her already-grumpy-at-6am-cos-hasn’t-slept-all-night mum), we drove off into a spectacular sunrise.

We drove around for about 3 hours trying to find the lions, which were tantalizingly close, judging by the amount of tracks around. Unfortunately with no luck, so we returned home by 11.

In the afternoon we planned to go to the hippo carcass that the crew had found a few days earlier. It is apparently a very large bull and the carcass is intact in that most of the bones are there. We stopped off for a swim en route and as soon as we had finished a heavy rain started. We covered up the car and huddled inside, having great fun with the novelty of it all. Brad took the opportunity to film some shots of the rain on the pan, which is always a bit of a logistical nightmare as the CAMERA MUST STAY DRY AT ALL COSTS. It doesn’t matter so much about the people!

Afterwards Brad spent a solid 15 minutes terrifying the pants off the kids pretending to be the Zoogor from Tarzan.