it shouldn't happen to a bushcamp manager...

today i started packing up our little bush home, gathering together all the knick knacks and bits and pieces we have accumulated over our time in the Valley- pictures i have drawn that we had wooden frames made for, pretty feathers and shells and mahogany pods, cards from friends and guests. all the things that have made our tent a home. we leave the camp in just under a week, and the valley itself in just over. and in doing so, i have been remembering our time here, the people we have met and worked with, and all the things we’ve seen and done.

now i could turn this blog into a deeply reflective monologue, but i fear i may have written one too many of those recently. i wrote a massive diatribe along those lines a couple of weeks back, but after an incident with an epilator, and some throwing (too complicated to go into now, but let us just say it concluded Epilator 1, Computer Nil) that appears to be lost into the ether. i will try and recover it and upload it post-datedly at some point, but i don’t really have the energy to go into it all again (40 degrees and massive humidity totally saps the energy, surprisingly!), and i’m thinking perhaps i should take it as a sign. this blog needs a little more light-heartedness.

so in that spirit, i thought it might be nice to remember some of the funnier, occasionally ridiculous moments and things that i’ve heard over my time as a bushcamp manager. i hope they translate into this blog- they have certainly had me creased up. and, they have mostly not been the times that guests have made ‘funnies’- lewd jokes about the size of African sausages (a tree that grows massive, heavy sausage shaped pods), or the recurring ‘What are we eating tonight?’,’Pork chops’, ‘Not warthog??!’, ‘Ha ha ha, I’ve not heard that before! But no…as I said its pork chops.’.

the funniest moments have almost entirely been unintentional, which of course makes them all the funnier. here are a selection of the things that have made me smile since June:

* a fellow bushcamp manager was having issues with his water supply, so called a meeting with all his staff, and asked them politely to refrain from showering for the morning to conserve water, until he had managed to work out what the problem was. after spending a frustrating few hours holding the pipes together in the Luangwa river trying to fix the problem and make the water pump again, he returned to his camp to find his assistant chef in the shower cubicle, water flowing freely.

upon asking him, no doubt entirely politely and with absolutely no expletives, why he was showering when he had expressly asked him not to, the reply was: ‘But Bwana, I am most certainly not showering! I am washing my shoes!’. not entirely the best use of limited water resources….

*there has been an airstrip built in between the bushcamps in the south of the national park, to allow particularly wealthy clients to fly straight in to the camps and avoid the long and bumpy 2 and a half hour transfer drive from the main gates. earlier in the season the first chartered plane was due to arrive, and we were chuffed that the guests who were arriving were coming to our camp. posh, eh?

so all of our staff begged and pleaded to go along with the husband who was meeting the guests, so they could get to see a plane land close up- a first for them. we thought it would present quite a spectacle on this tiny airstrip if we lined up the whole team, and as the guests stepped off their plane they were greeted by iced drinks and cool towels and a smart line of staff to meet them in the middle of the bush, so we agreed they could all go, leaving me to hold the fort back at camp. the staff were all over the moon, got dressed up in their smartest uniform, and headed out with the husband.

they returned an hour or so later, slightly shame faced, and all hurried back to their tasks. when i asked the husband how it had gone he said that it had initially been fine, and everyone had lined up neatly at the end of the runway, all very excited as the plane circled overhead, and he had been super proud of his super team. it was only as the plane came in to land, wheels touching down gently that he looked to his left and right to admire this super team and the super sight that they must present to the super rich guests on the tiny caravan plane. and instead of his receiving line he saw half a dozen backs sprinting in to the undergrowth. every single one of them had panicked in unison, and like a herd of impala scattered for the nearest cover, to cower behind various bushes until the plane had come to a standstill. not quite the super professional welcome we had in mind….

* mind you, i can’t really criticise. having spent the entire season boldly walking guests around the camp at night, armed just with a sturdy Maglite and an aura of confidence, a couple of weeks ago i broke the golden safari rule (never, ever run) and i too ran for cover.

we had an evening where a family of elephants had decided to take a particular liking to the trees around our camp, and were happily munching away in between our tents until late into the night. this posed a problem with escorting the guests back to bed after dinner, but we took our guide and he managed to persuade all but one of the elephants to move away with a clever combination of flashlights and mind games. after a frustrating and tense half hour, standing in the dark making small talk with our two last flagging guests, the guide (also tiring) assured us that the massive beast was calm, but not going anywhere, and we had to move around him, off the path to get the guests to their rooms. we did this stealthily and slowly, and crept up to their porch and bade the guests a whispered goodnight. but in getting to the tent we had been forced to rejoin the path and were now only metres away from the bull elephant. as we backed away the animal lifted his head, and shook his ears in a classic threat posture. we froze, and as it took a step towards us we heard the guide shout ‘run’. after the previous 30 minutes being strung tight as a bow, the one command was all we needed, and i had dropped the lanterns i had been surreptitiously collecting, which instantly guttered and went out, and we were leaping like lithe little impalas through the undergrowth in pitch darkness. i lost both flip flops, which unsurprisingly allowed me to run a little faster (its hard to sprint in flip flops) and amazingly i didn’t impale myself, and we all reached the car park intact, nervously laughing and whispering under our breath. the elephant had not turned a full-on charge on us, he had merely mock charged for a few steps, and the guide later said he had not told us to run, but instead uttered the words ‘he has come’… which doesn’t make much sense, and the guide was pretty hot on our heels, but we’d best give him the benefit of the doubt.

the experience was funny of its own accord (just picture it; us crashing through the undergrowth in the dark, havaianas and lanterns flying, not actually being chased by anything, just leaving a pretty calm and bemused elephant staring at our retreating backs, and you know it’s funny!), but what really cracked me up was when we were talking about the incident and our desperate ‘dash to safety’ the following day to our waiter. he nodded sagely, and totally deadpan said “Yes madam…. Well it’s always good to get a little exercise in camp.”.

* we had a very sweet guest passing through for lunch one day who hailed from Singapore. i had been quietly admiring her handbag as she loaded on to the vehicle on her way out, a beautiful tan Mulberry, when it dawned on me that she had walked in to camp…. So she had been carrying a massive leather Mulberry handbag through the bush, in the heat of the morning, for 4 hours. hardly the most practical carrying device- it didn’t even have a shoulder strap- but at least it contained useful things like her binoculars, and camera and a hat or a bird book right? no, she opened it up as she got into the vehicle to reveal a set of travel size Molton Brown shampoos, and a bulging make up bag… not entirely necessary equipment on a bush walk you must admit.

the best bit was the guests who had arrived with her said she had been talking about the bag for the duration of her stay- this wasn’t an old battered thing that she didn’t mind if it got knackered out in the bush, this was a brand new purchase at LHR, bought for the express purpose of the safari. she thought it would be ‘just perfect’ for bush walks….because it was tan….. hmmm…. yeah…. £800 well spent i think….

* we have been in camp over the tenth anniversary of 9/11. we have had a lot of American guests. we have heard quite a lot of quite bigoted opinions blurted out over the dinner table- it seems as a rule the Americans are not quite so fond of political correctness as us Brits, and when talking about 9/11 it seems anything goes. (for the record, i’m not saying that 9/11 wasn’t an atrocity against mankind, but i am saying that all muslims are not to blame for it.). as ‘hosts’ we are obliged to keep our mouths shut, and attempt to veer guests on to less dangerous topics of conversation, but on one occasion there was absolutely nothing we could do:

American Guest (concluding a long anti-muslim rant): So in short, their women shouldn’t be allowed to wear their silly burka thingies, they shouldn’t be allowed to have all their ramadans, not in our country, no siree, and if we aren’t careful they are going to overpopulate us, because they just keep having babies, and then they will want to bring in their shariah laws, and frankly its dangerous, and I just think they should all go back home.

American Wife: Well, let’s talk about something a bit more cheery shall we? (Turning to her neighbour, a charming French lady who had remained silent for a while) Do you have children?

French Guest: Yes, one grown up son.

American Wife: Ah yes, I remember you said… He’s married to a Muslim lady... Aaaahh….

* another lunch time conversation between guests from different backgrounds cracked me up recently. we had some rather well heeled Brits in camp, and some more down-to-earth aussies. they were discussing hunting, and talking about shooting in the UK. after a long conversation about the relative merits of pheasant and grouse shoots, and the way that dogs were used to flush the birds from the undergrowth the Aussie girl was looking a little confused and piped up;

Aussie guest: “So let me get this straight, you go out and scare the birds out of the bushes and then you shoot them, send dogs after them, and then eat them?”

British guest: “Yep that’s pretty much it.”

Aussie guest: “OK, sorry I just wanted to get it straight. You see I’m from Queensland. We pretty much just shoot kangaroos there.”

* i overheard another conversation between guests at tea time, one enquiring about the call of a Grey Lowrie, whose common name is ‘The Go-Away Bird’ after its distinctive ‘Ka- waaay’ call:

Guest 1: “What bird is that?”

Guest 2: “Go-away”

Guest 1: “What bird is that?”

Guest 2: “Go-away”

Guest 1: “Ok, that’s not very nice and I’m leaving tomorrow, but I just wanted to know what bird is that?”

* a great conversation between guide and guest took place on a walk- i was not there, but had the incident described to me afterwards by the guest who couldn’t stop giggling:

Guest: “What is that baboon doing? Why is it scratching at the ground?”

Guide: “Ah, that one, he is digging for nuts and seeds.”

Guest: “And what is that baboon doing? Why is it up a tree?”

Guide: “That one is acting as a lookout for the group.”

Guest: “And what is that baboon doing? Why is it sitting in such a funny position?”

Guide: “Ah… that one he is warming his testicles in the sun.”

* we had a rather odious wannabe travel journo in camp for a few days, who was with us on a freebie and taking full advantage of our bar. after a particularly heavy afternoon, where he had polished off an entire litre bottle of smirnoff at sundown, he bought the conversation round to Bear Grylls, and said his brother had given him a Bear Grylls knife for his African adventures. he was upset at his brother’s lack of sensitivity;

“Why on earth would I want a Bear Grylls hunting knife? He’s my competition man! He’s the reason I can’t get on TV!!”.

it was another bite your tongue moment, and to my shame I nodded sympathetically and failed to correct his wildly optimistic statement. actually Bear Grylls is young, charming, ex- army, and he makes programmes about surviving in the wilderness. he is not late forties, and staying in luxury safari lodges. i suspect Bear is not really his competition at all, and perhaps the reason this man is failing to get on tv may have something to do with the fact that he was far more interested in depleting our bar stocks than actually getting out and filming anything. and even when he did venture out of camp he seemed to spend the entire time trying to figure out how his camera worked, where he had put the tapes and worrying about his microphone giving him a third nipple under his skin-tight t-shirt. Bear Grylls- never fear, i think your career is safe for the time being.

* i was suffering from an upset stomach a few weeks back, and had spent the morning laying low. on emerging from our tent in the early afternoon i saw a new scout that was in camp. i greeted him, and asked of his wellbeing, as is customary, and he did the same to me. when he asked how i was i replied honestly;

Me: I’m OK. Feeling much better than this morning thank you.

Scout: You were unwell madam? What was wrong?

Me: Just a bit of a bad tummy.

Scout (nodding sagely): Ahh…. Was it the diahorrea?

Me: No, more the other way actually.

Scout (again nodding sagely, but now grabbing my hand in a vice-like grip): Ahh… hold….. HOLD….

I can only assume that he was referring to my sphincter muscles, and the grip was to ram home the message… it was a little unclear, and to be honest the conversation had taken a turn for the personal which left me feeling a little uncomfortable, given that I had just met this guy, but I suppressed my giggles and nodded sagely back at him.

Me: Yes, thank you, I most definitely will be sure to hold.

* the Zambian radio that the guys listen to is most entertaining, despite (or perhaps because) of the preponderance to play 80’s and 90’s electro pop. it seems not an hour goes by without the Venga Boys or Right Said Fred being churned out, and just last week i heard the old classic ‘You Drive Me Crazy’ which was according to the DJ performed by the “Fine Young Can- Eballs”.

one of my favourite shows is called ‘The News from the News’, and involves a lot of shuffling of papers and the DJ very haltingly reading out random sections from the newspaper, typos and all.

but the funniest thing i ever heard was a preacher- type, shouting and exclaiming his message to the masses. and the lesson for the day was indeed a worthy one- it was ‘Why you should not beat your wife’.

the two main reasons he gave though, were somewhat shakier;
“You should not beat your wife, because what if you beat her into a coma? Then who, who will wake up in the morning and make your breakfast?

You should not beat your wife because what if she wakes up in the morning and decides to beat you back with a crowbar? She could beat you into a coma!

For these reasons it is very bad, and you should not beat your wife.

Amen”

* i had another few smiles over cultural differences, when our staff had to fill out their personal information forms. they had to list their children, and give their ages. our head chef (a lovely caring man I hasten to add) was totally stumped by this, and after a great deal of pencil chewing he told us that he could remember the names of his 6 children, but as for ages he could not possibly hazard a guess.

no such problem for our laundry man, who proudly filled out all of his five children’s names and ages. the first four were the usual biblical names- Noah, Peter, etc. but i think his wife had given him free reign on the naming of his youngest. his 4 month old baby is called Astronut.

* on other occasions it is enough for mere mispronunciation to be the cause of hilarity.

i’m sure you can imagine we had a lot of giggles in September, in the run up to the national elections, given the Zambian tendency to replace ‘l’s with ‘r’s and vice-versa…. dinner table conversations were often punctuated with statements from one of our guides along the lines of “We are all very excited about the big erections”, “We think this will be the most momentous erection for our country”, and “The results of this erection could be life changing”. our guests to their credit kept very serious faces; i am immature, and sometimes had to hide mine behind a napkin.

but my favourite mispronunciation was when we had a panicked radio call one day from the office down at the lodge- it appeared that one of our members of staff had failed to turn up to court, and the police had arrived at the lodge and demanded that we send him out so he could attend his case. we protested that we were grossly understaffed and needed some notice to get in a replacement, but the response from the office was that if we didn’t send him out immediately the police would come down to the camp and get him. and the final word from the office was “And they have HAND-I-CUFFS!”. however menacing our friend on the radio was trying to be, it’s difficult to project an air of seriousness when the threat is ‘hand-i-cuffs’.

* and finally, despite being a generally good humoured person, there is not much that makes me laugh when I am up pre-dawn to prepare breakfast for guests- i can appreciate the beauty and the peace and all that guff, but i’m usually running round like a blue-arsed fly, trying to make sure all the sugar bowls match, the porridge is hot, and the guests are all awake, so having a good old guffaw is bottom of my list of priorities. but one morning, not that long ago, i had the funniest conversation with our room attendant at 5.35 in the morning, and it left us both in total fits:

Me: Have you done all the wake up calls for the guests Dan?

Room attendant Dan: Erm…. Yes madam, I’ve done 4 and 3 and 2…

Me: What about tent 1? Have you woken up the guests in tent 1?

PAUSE

Dan: Erm….. no madam, I have not done 1.

Me: OK… but why not Dan?

PAUSE

Dan: Well madam, I was scared.

Me: Why were you scared Dan?

Dan: Well…. Erm… there were loud noises coming from the tent madam.

Me: Were they people noises?

Dan: Yes madam.

Me: Were they arguing noises?

Dan: No madam.

Me: Sooooo…. What kind of noises Dan?

BIG PAUSE

Dan: Mating noises madam.

ANOTHER BIG PAUSE

Me: Well….. I guess they are already awake then…

all in all, it has been an amazing and generally very happy period of our lives, and we have laughed many times over the past 5 months.

despite the inevitable frustrations, the odd difficult guest, and the occasional struggle with our circumstances, i know when i look back on our time as bushcamp managers i will only be able to smile.

what a difference a day makes...

i had always assumed when October was referred to as ’The Suicide Season’ by bushcamp managers it was due to the oppressive heat and humidity. we are halfway into the month, and i now have a different theory.

i think people start to feel a little strange, perhaps a little mad, come October because by that time they have been out in the wilderness for so long. it has certainly worked with me that way. and indeed, i’ve held back from blogging for a week or so, because i’ve been feeling so sorry for myself, and in such a negative state of mind, and i didn’t want to write something i would seriously regret.

i’ve had little rants in my head about how utterly tedious it is to still be washing every bra and pair of pants in a little green plastic bowl lodged into the sink; i’ve had fits about the fact that it is impossible to keep the sand and foliage out of our tent, so every morning as i lever myself out of bed i trudge over several dried crackling leaves before i can turn on the light; and i’ve actually wept real, angry tears about the impossibility of keeping the sheets clean, because our feet are always so filthy from walking around in flip flops day after day that you can’t help but leave dirty paw prints on the end of the bed.

i’ve had thoughts revolving in my head, just waiting to be typed out, about how my beautiful isolated Eden has transformed in my head, and now feels more like a prison.

about how hard it is to keep a smiling face with the guests day after day, to nod and agree how fantastic it is that there is no internet, and no tv, and what a relief to be away from the pressures of the modern world, when all you really want to do is get out of this backwards outpost and back into civilisation.

and about how sad that a place i initially adored and was so excited to be living in has transmuted into a place i just can’t wait to get away from.

and all of this negativity is genuinely, i believe, bought about by a kind of cabin fever. i’ve always been susceptible to it- i would drive the husband crazy when we were living in London because we’d plan for a quiet weekend in, and by Sunday at 3pm i’d be climbing the walls, having a hissy fit and demanding we go somewhere, anywhere, do something, anything, just as he was settling down to watch hours of pre-recorded football. and that was how i reacted after a day and a half in our 3 bed house, with internet, sky tv, all of my belongings to entertain me, and a plethora of activities at my fingertips.

the only thing that is surprising to me now, when i consider it, is that it has taken 4 and a half months for the cabin fever to kick in here in the bush, where in many ways we are so much more restricted in what we can do, and so much more contained in a relatively small area.

i suppose there have been breaks, the odd day here or there where we have escaped up to the lodge, and at the start of the season when we were quieter we would often ‘get out’ when transferring guests to other camps, or even get to go on evening game drives if there were few enough guests that the presence of two extra bodies in the back wouldn’t force anyone to squeeze up. these little journeys out of our camp base were enough to break the monotony, and just give a brief change of scene; enough to keep me sane and halt the encroaching cabin fever.

but for the past month, since we got back from the 3 days off over my birthday in September, we have been almost constantly full to capacity. this has kept us within the confines of the camp, and within a schedule, so even though the faces that we see every day are changing as the guests move through, the programme is always the same and the monotony starts to hammer home.

we had a really fantastic Australian couple come and stay at the start of the month for two nights. they were living and working in a remote mining town in Zambia, and travelling with their mum and showing her the sights of the country they currently call home. they were our age, and we bonded instantly. i felt that i could talk honestly with them and share the pressures of being away from home, being thrown into a community that is alien, and how much you start to miss modern conveniences that you took for granted. better than that even, it was amazing to chat to people who were totally on our wavelength; who used swear words as adjectives not expletives; who not only knew what we were talking about when we mentioned the likes of ‘Summer Heights High’ and ‘Family Guy’, but agreed on their genius rather than thinking them crude, infantile and in bad taste. it was absolutely amazing to spend time with guests who felt like friends and equals, and though we have had some really fantastic people stay with us and i have adored many, almost everyone who passes through is closer to our parent’s age than ours, and these were the first in a long while who were just like our friends back in England. i didn’t want them to leave after their two very short days, and when they did the void their parting left just rammed home to me how trapped and bored and frustrated i was feeling. the cabin fever was well and truly upon me.

and thus, i did about the only thing i felt i could do.

i sulked .

because of course there is no stomping off in the bush, there is no slamming the door and going for a long walk, there is no ringing up a friend and going to hang out at theirs for a change of scene. there is nowhere to go, so i stayed where i was and was miserable.

i’m not a totally irresponsible bitch, and iI recognised that the guests who were coming to stay with us had paid an awful lot of money to be here and inflicting my sulky face on them was not really fair, so i pulled it (and myself) together for the times that i was front of house. but behind the scenes i spent most of my hours angrily swinging in our hammock, or face down on the bed, finding it difficult to raise enthusiasm for anything, snapping at the local staff or the husband, and generally being very bad company. if i wasn’t exactly suicidal i was pretty damn depressed, and i suspect my behaviour and moods were pushing others towards homicide.

so this was what the famed ‘Suicide Season’ was all about.

eventually the husband realised that something had to be done, for my own welfare and sanity, and also (probably mainly) his. he insisted i go up to the lodge, just for a few hours- there was a transfer leaving at 5 in the morning, and another returning at 12 the same day.

this would give me about 4 and a half hours in a different place, with different faces, with access to internet, and the option to go to the spa and get a rush job done on my feet, which by this time had suffered the worst of my agitation and frustration and were pretty much picked to shreds.

i was sullen, couldn’t really think it would make me feel better, and at times almost couldn’t be bothered to go. and then the night before, when it looked like there wouldn’t be room on the vehicle to fit me in i amazed myself by the lump that materialised in my throat and the hot tears that streamed down my face. i rushed to the sanctuary of the hammock, and decided i was most definitely mad.

but at 5am the following morning, just as the morning dawn was cresting the hills, i plonked myself into the front passenger seat of the transfer vehicle, with 6 passengers behind all wrapped up, and waved goodbye to the camp for a few hours. as we drove away i realised that i hadn’t left the 100 metres stretch of land that the camp is situated in for almost a month.

and i felt the weight on my shoulders lifting almost immediately.

by the time we reached the lodge a couple of hours later i was smiling and garrulous, and it was all one hundred percent genuine. no forced smiles, no fake laughs- i was just pretty happy to be somewhere different for a short while.

and of course the time passed way too quickly, and i didn’t get half the things done that i needed to do, but it didn’t really matter- i felt refreshed and revitalised by my change of scenery, and ready to face my guests and my staff with a healthy attitude, and a spring in my step. no longer a victim of ‘Suicide Season’, just a smiley bushcamp manager ready to enjoy being out in the middle of nowhere for the last few weeks of the season, keen to make the best of the situation we’ve found ourselves in, and to suck every last little bit of enjoyment out of our last days here.
after all, it really is a little slice of Eden.

and if anyone tries to tell you different they are probably just sulking.