Three Beautiful Things

1. As we were leaving Lake Kariba, Lucky the dog walked on to the truck and looked as if he were considering coming with us. 2. Baobabs because they look like trees the way I draw them. 3. At first we thought it must be smoke from a fire a long way off, but it wasn’t. ‘That’s the spray from Victoria Falls, explained Bob, who had been this way before. 4. Frogs that sound like bells. Livingstone, Zambia

1. Other Claire, Rosey and I have our own little cabin with cupboards to put things in and our own shower in which we can leave our washing kit. 2. I have seen the Pleiades -- all seven of them. They are the blurry group that you can only see if you don’t look straight at them. Then I remembered my binoculars -- so I lay on the sundeck, and there they were, clear as anything, even Electra who is supposed to have hidden her face at the fall of Troy. At this point I realised that my binoculars make a lot of things appear in the spaces between the stars. Wow. If you’ve never had a good look at the night sky through binoculars, do it now -- don’t wait until you’re 28. 3. We moored on an island that afternoon. When the sun was less fierce, Rosey and I went for a stroll -- we found bare footprints on the beach and followed them to the edge of the bush, where we found a pair of flip-flops. We took the path towards the interior, and discovered a spider the size of a soup plate and a shack with...

1. Swallows landing on the boat as it goes along. These little fellows have brownish caps. (Picture by Rosey Grant) 2. The delicious shuddering induced by the horrible sights at Lake Kariba Crocodile farm. They are farmed for Malaysian handbags and meat. Some of the carcasses are fed to the breeding crocs. We rode in a mini-bus behind the feeding truck and ohh’d and eugh’d as the farmers chucked lumps of meat at 20ft reptiles that reared up out of the stinking water, snapping and thrashing. (Picture by Rosey Grant) 3. Stars reflected in the lake. For the past few days I’ve had some lines from Byron’s The Destruction of Sennacherib in my head: And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. I always thought that simile was a bit odd -- when do you ever see starshine reflected in a lake? But tonight, there they were. And the way the reflection gets smudged into a line -- it does look a bit like a spear. The other stars reflected...

1. The crowd that gathered to watch us having our windscreen replaced -- a seller of tools, a lady collecting for a charity and various windscreen mending groupies. 2. Finding a bookshop that sold cheap Penguin classics -- I got Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Moonfleet . I’ve also seen Wind in the Willows knocking about and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim . By the end of the trip many of us had read Wind in the Willows , encouraged by Rob’s enthusiastic quotings of Mr Toad’s boastful song and perhaps also by Arusha Alex ; Rob and I were groaning ‘The horror, the horror’ to signal our fellowship in Heart of Darkness ; and Iris and I were disagreeing about the merits of Moonfleet . Wayne had also read some of Andersen while he was having malaria. It’s probably not the most reassuring fever reading, as a recurring theme is talking kitchen utensils. 3. The windscreen mending meant we really had to cane it down the dirt road to the houseboat on Lake Kariba . Stine spotted a s...

1. Selfless sacrifice. We ran out of bread during the morning lunchmaking session. This wasn't due to bad planning on the cook's part -- it was lovely fresh bread with a crust from the bakers, which means it gets cut very thick. Julie says: 'Wayne giving up his sandwiches to the three of us who had none was a beautiful thing.' and Wayne says: 'Rosey giving me her sandwich was beautiful too.' 2. African jobs. We met a witch doctor selling 'SEX POWDER -- Doctor physician approved' with a metal sign. The sign showed a lady who had been pregnant too long -- the powder had helped her give birth to a big baby wearing trousers and a jumper. Wayne said he would have tried it 'but then I saw the spoon.' We asked how long it would take to work: 'Depends on how good your blood is,' was the mysterious reply. Later we were stopped by the tetse fly man. His job is to make sure vehicles don't bring tetse flies on to his patch. Tetse flies are little...

1. Francis’ French toast. French toast is what you get when there aren’t enough eggs for scrambled -- and scrambled comes when there aren’t enough for fried. Anyway, it’s brilliant French toast, and goes very well with some two per cent maple syrup. 2. Drinking instead of having a shower. First of all it was too rainy to get from the bar to the shower and then when I managed to get to the truck to pick up my stuff, I got involved in a conversation about life with Rob and Wayne and then it was supper time and after that it hardly seemed worth it. 3. Darren: Danish for Hubba Bubba is ‘Hoobaboobagum’ said really fast. 4. Iris: Finding easy-peel oranges. South Luanga National Park, to Mama Rula Camp, Chipata, Zambia

1. The stripes and spots on the flanks of bush bucks. 2. So far we’ve only seen Thornycroft’s giraffe from a distance. But our driver spots some and takes us down a side road so we can get a closer look at them. They are different to Rothchild’s giraffes because their markings are smoother and they have long pale socks. 3. The ground is soft so it holds tracks well. A hippo has walked along the road, leaving a dinosaur-like trail and the occasional rosette of Nile cabbage. Wildlife Camp, South Luanga National Park, Zambia