Last night we had clear skies for the second time in 2 weeks. Tiff was hosting dinner and jackson was asleep. It was getting dark, but not just dark, that pitch black of Africa dark. I had my fire going and was sitting on the deck. Lions had been in the area for a few days and the previous night had killed something below the house. In other words I was a bit weary of having to walk from the deck to my braai in the dark to cook my fillet.
Anyway, as time moved on I got a bit more comfortable, I also managed to charge my torch, which helped a lot...haha! Also, some serious lightning on the horizon moving rapidly closer helped to light up the surrounding bush. To cut a long story short I enjoyed my fillet with braai roasted onion and sundried tomotoes just as the rain hit the house, with such a force that the door almost blew off its hinges.
Tiff arrived home drenched from driving from the lodge back home in an open vehicle. I was watching a movie and she went straight to bed. She said that the guests had seen the lions (22 of them) killing a wildebeest on the eastern side of the Selio River, about 1km from our house. About 30 minutes later after the rain subsided I went to bed and I heard the lions killing a buffalo in about the same direction - hungry little bastards!! Then I heard elephants giving the lions hell. What an amazing sequence of sounds to fall asleep to.
As for the rain, well we had 40mm in an hour, our lodge kitchen was flooded, some of our staff accommmodation was flooded and our patrol team managed to roll the pick-up at 10pm coming back from the village - luckily no injuries. We are also having flooding problems on our roads and especially our airstrip - big problem. Anyway why should life be easy - what would there be to complain about?
I have seriously had enough of this rain. It has rained everyday bar one since 28 December. We have had a total of 231mm in 15 days, which is some regions annual rainfall, I am sure.
Today I am filling out an incident report, order forms, sourcing all sorts of stuff needed and generally trying to do nothing instead - I am not in a great mood. I should be out on the tractor now grading roads, but that is needed at the airstrip. But I will go and check up on our new deck being built at the house and see how that is coming along.
So long - may tommorrow be a better day.
