My children are turning out into helpful, good humans.
Got last minute booking for self-catering cottage, Malu, Naivasha and took it in a heartbeat.
• Packed car, in the pouring rain, both kids pitching in.
• Start going down Escarpment and it (rain) stops ... dead.
• Stop at Escarpment view point as I so love the Great Rift Valley view - Mt Suswa on the left, Mt Longonot ahead, the Aberdare mountain range to the right ... aaah.
Arno and his sense of humour - sees a cloud and names it with great import in his voice ' I name that big spot (long pause) ahem ….. big spot. Ilana wants to be overly clever so does not come up with a name for the other spot, which I named, guess . go on ….yup; the other spot.
Forgot to pack tapes – TEHPS as Russel Peters says - you know, those things that have a reel inside that lay music on a TAPE deck. Had only two tapes in car - Sting, ‘mercury falling’ and times tables. Guess which one Ilana insisted we play ... yup. We can all sing every song on ‘mercury falling’ now (Arno’s repetition of ‘Let your soul be your pilot ‘and ‘I hung my head’ are particularly grating after hearing the same line for a whole minute each time)
We get to Mallu and cottage is being cleaned. (So glad is Ilana that it is raining. We cannot camp – what weird children, not wanting to camp indeed, and not wanting to camp, in the rain)Agreement arrived at that if they both walk for 2 hours without any complaints, they can have a fire lit in the grate and we can play kamili or scrabble that afternoon. So up towards the top of the ridge to get a view of Lake Naivasha. Two hours of walking to the ridge and back, with me taking a few side paths just to scare Ilana into walking more, with no effect, we were back with … no complaints. We had a good time, says Ilana in surprise. (I got surprised too - that those words came out of her mouth, voluntarily) She got almost scared to death by a grasshopper the size of a mini horse,(no exaggeration on our part at all) jumping at her (not away as in reality but at her as in the dream world she inhabits) and got irritated by Arno’s constant zig zagging like a mad wildebeest ( and his constant talking … no worries about us surprising any buffalo in any thickets with him along eh) but she saved him from a huge jumping spider intent on killing him ( the intent of these poor dudus is suspect). Nice to see them sharing, getting along, and helping their old ma along. It was really good. Got in just before rain and had a nice afternoon of playing scrabble and eating crisps and chocolate indoors while it pelted outside. Next morning was grey but no rain so went out to raft leaves and twigs and see which ones went over ‘waterfalls’ or got caught in ‘dams’. Arno’s leaves made it, through guiding assistance from a large pole that ‘forced’ the poor leaf through eddy’s without any 45 degree lines … just brute force and ignorance as is the way in Africa. Ilana’s ‘not fair’ finally got to me so we set off for a ‘kleine’ spatzieren, just an hour. Arno made us take a ‘short cut’ to the hippo pool where the hippos had, without informing us, moved some 3 weeks ago and are up the river somewhere. He entertained us with Arno rap – really atrocious and repetitive with lots of shuffle moves that look like a chicken-with-malaria and raise a lot of dust. He claims to be singing in Hindustani. The hand signals are most perplexing. He says you must wave the hand ludicrously with the middle fingers bent as if broken; no explanation given as to why. He got us a tad lost. Assume it was all that head bopping, rap meandering and foreignness. Ilana got really worked up, and why did we not just stick to the trodden path? He says, it would not have been adventury. ( a real word now for my family)
Why is Ilana so very scared to get lost? We are 3 people, we have water .. and we will find a hill and re orient ourselves so?! Even driving – are you sure you know the way mummy is always her first question and should I stop – I hope you are not lost mummy. Hmmm. Anywho. Found a hill – backtracked, recognized least-adventury path and … yup, it started to rain, well, gently drizzle. The one thing Ilana feared; happened. She got rained on in Mallu in 2012 – badly rained on. She was 5 and she remembers it and said she would do anything BUT get wet on that ridge. So, we got wet, but not on that ridge, thankfully. Only Arno had his raincoat. You could see she was so mad at him. If we had not got lost, we would be home, dry now! But she said it in conversation, no accusation. So very proud of her. We saw a warthog tunnel in the ground. Told them how their dad had been chased by a warthog across the savannah while trying to find us a potholing cave in the Chyulu hills and who knew he could run so fast … all good. Arno even admitted he got us lost … just a bit lost but that he admitted that he could make a mistake … well well. Progress is being made.
We HAD to stop at Delamere Farms to get hot bajias with some glow-in-the-dark-tomato-sauce-that-would-not-recognise-a-tomato-if-it-saw-one. Treat indeed.
And to end on a funny note – thank you Norwin for introducing me to Wise Guys – they crack me up even if I only catch a quarter of what they say. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlQI0mfJbCc
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