"THIS IS AN EDITED VERSION OF AN ORIGINAL EMAIL SENT HOME ON JUNE 3, 2005"

''"A DAY IN THE LIFE"    

It's 5:45am and I awake to the pounding of an African drum signaling us to tea.  Being the first one at the campfire, I stoke the flames and start making coffee.  We use a European press system, very easy.  Tea and cookies! Yes cookies (known as “biscuits”), are ready to go as the guests stumble sleepily from their chalets.  Eventually they come alive and discuss the day’s activity schedule.  Normally, a walking safari is the preferred morning ritual but some guests can't walk that much so they do a combination drive and walk, or just a morning drive.  I go back to bed.

By 8:30am I am dressed and in the kitchen for my first consultation with the chefs, we go over the menu plans or any other important information.  There are usually 2 chefs on duty at the same time.  They make our bread daily. Cookies and desserts are also made from scratch. In fact, all prepared food is made from scratch; we even make our own yogurt!

At 9:30 a.m., or thereabouts, the drums roll again to call everyone to breakfast.  It begins with a partial cereal bar / buffet with fruit, porridge, etc.  The waiters take the guest's egg orders and eventually we are served a hot breakfast, well we at least attempt to serve a hot breakfast. Eggs get cold fast and the waiters have a long walk to the dining chitenge. 

After breakfast it’s quiet time until noon when everyone likes to go visit the hippo or elephant hides.  These are special locations where you can be hidden from the animals but have a close up view of them.  Great photo opps abound.

I usually spend this quiet time inspecting the guest rooms or cooking in the kitchen.  The chefs like it when I show them new recipes so we use this time for learning.  I often participate in lunch preparations if there is time.

At 1:30pm the drums go off again!  This time it is for our lunch buffet, usually vegetarian and light. Our guests eat a lot and often then complain that their clothes won’t fit!

Another break in the day but it is short lived. The drums roll promptly at 4:00 p.m for; yes you guessed it, “Tea Time”. That time honored Britt tradition which signaled our start for the evening’s game drive and dinner. We served fresh brewed Orange Pekoe, had coffee available and all accompanied by a yummy cake or sweet treat.

One day I was playing around in the kitchen when I took some melting chocolate, melted it and mixed it with “ground nuts” (roasted peanuts). The chocolate mixture was dropped by the spoonful onto waxed paper sheets then set to dry. What I created was a chocolate nut covered candy that we promptly named “Giraffe Drops”!

On an important note....As I sit here writing this email, I am having a close encounter with several elephants! Yikes!  Our office is a screened hut with a grass roof.  As I sat at the computer, in the corner of the hut, all alone and no guides in the camp, along comes a mother elephant, a teenage elephant and a wee baby elephant.  They start by eating leaves about 30 feet from me, behind one of our vehicles so I am not worried.  In fact, I am taking some photos, through the screened windows, and all is well.  Wait, am I wrong!!!!  The mother elephant has come within a few feet of me while eating leaves from the tree just above the hut.  I can actually see down her throat!  The baby is right next to her so I don’t move a muscle.  It is said that the mother elephants are very protective and can be easily aggravated when the baby is close by.  So, unfortunately, I can’t get a close up photo because I am trying to be as quiet as a mouse and don’t want to attract attention, this is freaking me out!  Finally I get off the chair and sit on the floor of the hut just as they walk by me on their way through the camp. 

They eventually eat their way through the camp and had some of our guests trapped in their room briefly.  I think that is about as close as I want to get to an elephant as they are enormous creatures and powerful as well.  So that is my excitement for the day.

Ok, getting back to life in the bush.

Once Tea Time is officially over, the guest pile into the vehicles and embark on another safari, this time in the dark. I help clean up and head into the kitchen for a briefing with our chef, Phil.

Sometimes I help but often I sneak off for another break (shame on me). Hey, I haven’t been getting any days off lately!

The dinner drums usually are done around 8:00 p.m but often later if the guests are having a particularly splendid wild life viewing. Three courses are served and formally as possible in this outdoor environment. It was hard to keep the food hot while we passed through the camp from the kitchen to the chitenge, a real peeve of mine. But the food is always good and everyone sits around the table listening to Ian and Alec’s fascinating stories.

Bed time is usually around 10:00 p.m then we get up and do it all over again. This routine will go on day after day for the next 5 months.

This is a copy of the original e-mail, sent back to friends and family, October 2005

There are many things about Africa that I will miss more than words can describe.  However, there are some things that I will not be sorry to leave behind......yes, you guessed it, the bugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even as I sit here, writing at the keyboard, I am being attacked by tse flies.  But not just tse flies, other crawly things as well and just a few minutes ago a bug flew up my nose, UGH!  My body is covered in bug bites from those nasty tse flies.  They are everywhere, purched on the walls just waiting for fresh meat.  They sting something awful as well but occasionally, you don't' even feel them, that is when they are the worst.

When people come to Africa it is the mosquito they most often fear.  But I tell you this, I can count on one hand the number of mosquitoes I have seen here in camp, it is all the other insects that get to me.

For instance, in my room I have wall spiders, in fact, everyone does.  And I am told they are good to have around because they eat mosquitoes.  But I ask you this, what good do they do when there are no mosquitoes around?????  These spiders are the size of a mayonnaise jar lid, they are huge and I just cannot handle having them lurking around.  One actually was cheeky enough to get inside my mosquito net, I can tell you that was the last straw, upon being saturated with bug spray, it had the audacity to scamper under my bed, oh the nerve.  I didn't even know if it was dead as the spray I have been using doesn't seem to want to kill the large spiders.  A few days later another one, or could it have been the same one, appeared inside my net again!!!  I really need to come home.

But it gets better than that.   A few weeks ago I was just finishing taking a shower when I noticed something wiggling in front of my toilet.  Now please remember, I don't have lights in my bathroom, just a candle so it isn't easy to see.  So here I am thinking it is a gecko (I will get to them in a minute), but much to my horror, it was a centipede!!!!!!!!!  Centipedes are lethal, well not really, but they have a big stinger on one end which can inflict a mean wound.  So here is this cigar shaped thing with a hundred legs slithering on my bathroom floor.  It was pretty big so I didn't know what action to take and besides, as I said, I was in the shower.  Fortunately for me, Ian and Alec were just outside my room and I had to call to them to rescue me.  I quickly put on a nightgown and ushered them in, frantic that I would be attacked by this gross and gruesome creature.  Naturally, it never surfaced even with their high powered flashlights, we never found it and I had to go to bed with the realization it could still be lurking somewhere in my bathroom.  Please do not confuse the centipede in my bathroom with the millipede that was crawling on my wall a while back.  Millipedes, as gross as they are, do not have stingers and can't hurt you.

Ok, now about the geckos.  Everyone seems to love them, thinking they are adorable and quite useful because they eat other insects.  Well, if you ask me, how come I still have so many insects in my room if there are also so many geckos crawling around my house???  Geckos come in many shapes and sizes but no matter how you size them up, I can do without lizards scurrying up and down my walls and ceilings.  It took me months not to be startled by their presence.

Now for my arch nemesis, the ANTS!  I put this in capital letters because this species is everywhere, and I mean, everywhere, in all different shapes and sizes.  I don't know how many ants I have actually ingested considering there isn't any space in our kitchen that isn't covered with tiny sugar ants.  They get into everything, all over the food and kitchen equipment.  I have had it with them.  Then there are the larger black ants that crawl up and down my bathroom wall all day long.  I guess I should be glad they stay in the bathroom but I can't help but wonder how come the geckos don't eat them up.  It rained the other day and a few days afterwards I was sitting on the steps to my house watching the dirt in front of me.  There wasn't an inch of soil not crawling with ants, they were everywhere my eyes could see.

The frogs are everywhere as well and now that we had rain, they were hopping all over the dining area.  I actually flushed one down the toilet several months ago.  Fortunately for it, the frog climbed out and jumped away.  Oh did I mention the time I opened my toilet seat lid and out crawled a gecko?  I am still baffled as to how it got into the toilet when the lid was closed, I shudder to think about it.

But no tale of creepy crawly things would be complete without a snake report.  A few nights ago Ian was walking some guests to their room after dinner and I spotted him, with a big stick in his hands, whacking away at something.  That something turned out to be a cobra, yes a spitting cobra.  We have many of them lurking around here.  In fact, several weeks ago I heard a commotion outside the kitchen and when I went to look outside, there were a few of our guys beating something with a stick.  It turned out to be, you guessed it, a cobra, yes a spitting cobra!!!  They always kill the cobras because we can't risk them getting into a guest rooms, the spitting cobra sprays venom into their victims eyes, blinding them.  Not a good thing.  But cobras aren't the only snakes around and I see snakes on a regular basis.  Most are harmless but I don't' think I ever want to encounter a black mamba, they are deadly and no one survives their bites.  I have also seen puff adders which are poisonous and I saw a python once.

I could keep going about this subject all night long but I am getting bothered by flying insects and can't take it much longer.  Of course the heat doesn't really help as the temperatures soar to well over 105 degrees.  Not a bad temperature when you can cool off in air conditioning but we don't even have fans since there is no electricity.  Tempers are flairing and the flies are intolerable, perhaps this is why October is called the "the suicide month"!!!