bring me a day full of honest work...

This morning we went on a game drive. I've had a stomach bug for three days(in hindsight, this is probably the least-nasty of the three or four times i got ill).

We set off after group A left for the school, and saw a Warthog five minutes from the gate(hindsight is on my shoulder throughout this blog - we would be sick of Warthogs). apart from the Warthog, We saw some interesting birds.

The truck stopped at the Mwalaganje traveller's lodge. walking through onto the bar, we sat down and watched the watering hole in silence. A while later(twenty minutes), A Warthog appeared with three hoglets. She slowly and cautiously approached the small pit of water. Before she got there, something in the water moved and the ladyhog was made to leap backwards five foot backwards. Strange little animals, weirdly shaped and adorably ugly, much like my dog.

A short while after, a group of Elephant approached. at first they kept their distance, but every few minutes they would move closer. The main reason was probably most of our group had jumped from their seats up and were taking photos and talking and the like. before we went the elephants had come really close to where we were sitting. Waterbuck appeared from the bush, and my camera, all of a sudden, committed battery hari-kari. Not. Cool.

On the return journey in the huge Camps International truck, i asked Bernard if there were any big cats in Mwaluganje. His response was "Only Leopard. but he is very difficult to find" i know this to be true wherever there are Leopard. I asked when he was last seen, and Bernard told me he saw him last year.

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As i write this, i am using some heavy-duty binoculars to watch thirteen or fourteen Elephants from our elevated camp. entrancing, amazing creatures, moving with an unexplainable clumsy grace.

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We set off again for the school this evening. Half the group built bricks, while we went and put up a chain-linked fence. after the first group coming back to camp and whining about it, we thought this would be some sort of horrible chore, but we were enjoying ourselves. We did more and better than the first group.

A joke possibly wasted on the locals.

The kids helped a lot. They are always fun to talk to. One had a orange shirt with "girls love me" printed on it. When asked "so, do the girls love you?" he confidently replied "yes!" I followed up the question with "do you love girls?" to which he said "no,no,no!" Other kids hacked at the trees in our way with machetes longer than their arms, making cuts in the trees centimeters away from their limbs. Terrifying to watch.

you would think this is the least dangerous type of fencing...

Back at base camp we did a fairly un-pubby pub quiz around the campfire. "before we start, i want you to think about a couple of things..." "like why we aren't in a pub?"

Funniest picture ever taken.