An Exciting Welcome - What next?

Tuesday 26^th July

An amazing day and it is still only 4pm as I sit on our balcony overlooking the waterhole and waiting for the wildlife to arrive. We have been watching lots of different birds – Rob may turn into a twitcher.

Behind me is a channel of the Zambezi river and where this channel drops as part of the falls.

Our day started with early breakfast and on the road by 8am. We had 190km to travel but it was not going to be 2hrs; more like 5hrs. Our tour group is active in supporting the locals so first stop was to the local markets to buy supplies as gifts to a local village we would visit on our travels today. Each of us was given a task of what to buy – Rob and I had to buy soap and salt. A bit of a challenge for the soap as it was in huge green bars – nothing I have seen in our markets.

We called at a small homestead which is a family community as part of a larger community headed by a chief. In the family we visited there were 5 adults and 8 children. Only 4 of the children were home as the rest were at school. Very interesting to see and hear how they live. One of the mothers there was 24 with 2 children and the other ‘girl’ there was 16, already married and definitely pregnant. Apparently in the small villages marriage is the next step when they finish school (about 4^th form) and where the family cannot afford to educate them further. They explained to us about the woman’s role in the home though we didn’t hear a lot about the men. We gave them the supplies we had bought at the market and they were very grateful. Our guide said they had not visited this community before so this was something entirely new to them – the youngest child cried when we all got off the bus; either too many strangers, or plus the fact we were white.

This is the kitchen - it is only a traditional slab hut with thatched roof, but the inside was so clean and tidy.

Grinding millet - at the rate we were doing it, dinner was never going to happen.

The children had such lovely faces and beautiful eyes.

We continued on to our camp arriving about 1pm and as we drove in the last kilometre we saw our first ‘oh wow’ animals. Three giraffes were wandering in the bush very close to the road and we were able to get some great photos. The camp is called Elephant Eye Lodge and is a private concession next to Hwange National park. We are the only guests here (11 of us) and we have permanent tents on stilts that all look out over the waterhole. We have been sitting on the balcony (cooler out there) watching across the clearing and seeing all the birdlife near the water. The giraffes made another appearance but it is the elephants we are waiting for. There is a huge pile of elephant dung under the tree less than 50 metres from our balcony so let’s hope they come tonight (or any of the next 3 nights).