I promised to write from South Africa and I didn’t. I was gripped by a deep indifference towards all things digital and barely even checked my email which resulted in coming home to 493 messages including offers of penis enlargement (which I forwarded to unnamed ex-boyfriends) and offers of free money from Nigeria (which I passed up with some regret.)
We had an amazing time. The flights were curiously uneventful. One slept most of the time, thank you Benadryl, and Four watched Wall-E and Mamma Mia back to back several times over and played her Leapfrog with earphones on, mumbling words in Spanish courtesy Dora the Explorer. They paused to eat some food, drink some milk, and One took a tour of the aisles a few times and endeared himself to the cabin crew and other passengers but they were actually angelic and I don’t know what I was worried about.
Once there my mother, as predicted, did not listen to any of my words and drove me bananas, but we muddled through this and the children and I spent a happy month driving to various parts of the country with our lovely Zulu nanny, going on Safari, seeing animals, playing in the dirt, eating odd food, feeling wonderfully free and wild ourselves. Four particularly loved the game reserves where she and One were allowed out of their carseats and roamed like little beasts around the car, dropping biscuit crumbs while we ambled along trying to spot wild animals. One learned a few words, including Kitty which means animal (all).
“Look, there is an Impala!”
One: “Kitty!”
” Look, there is an elephant and her baby!”
One: “Kitty!”
He also learned to say “Cheese” whenever a camera is near and shouts this while doing his best Hollywood smile, running in front of the lens, even when it is not our family taking the picture. He is going to appear in many people’s snapshots this month, mostly uninvited.
There is so much to tell that I’m not going to even try in this preliminary post, but I wanted to let you know that I’m here again and will be posting regularly from now on once my brain and the very bizarre jet lag has settled.
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