09-02-2008 A day full of surprises….

Peter collects me form the airport on the 6th , all present at Mfuwe airport can hear clearly that my dog Mosi is happy to see me, I receive a warmer welcome from him then the former president who happens to be arriving with the same plane. We get into our car and like every year I get that special feeling of coming home, the palm trees at the horizon on your left, the villages along the road….instead of taking the turn off to the lodge, Peter continues going straight to the main gate of the South Luangwa National Park. Surprise, he says, it seems that the lodge can only be reached by boat, our road is flooded. Alternative would be parking the car at the main gate and walking along the riverbank. A little later we are walking up till our knees through water, Pierson our watchman with my 30kg suitcase on his head. Now and then I stand still and look around, the trees, everything lush green, as one of our guests once mentioned: ‘here you feel at home’.

Once we reach the restaurant I notice the state of the river as it came up all the way to the bank, if this wouldn t give us problems – erosion of our bank- it should always be like this, it is stunning!

Another surprise by the name of Zoe is waiting inside my house. Peter collected her that morning from a friends place that moved to Mozambique and I promised to take care of Zoe, a black cat with a fluffy tail, hopefully the leopards leave her alone.

Then, when I wake up at night around 1am, I hear a hippo next to my house splashing the water. The following days I find the water coming up at night and dropping a little during the day. Walking from my house to the office leaves me with wet feet, from the oxbow – the lagoon on the eastern side- the water is flowing onto our property. Also from the riverside –south west- the water is coming in slowly though luckily for now only a twenty and some meters. Several messages come across, the latest and reasonably reliable ‘the river is going to rise’ and we decide to take extra precautions. Partly storing our goods high up and have some staff sleeping over, in case of emergency they can help moving all to dry land. We are basically on an island but furthermore all continues as usual. Luckily the water is not giving us too many power problems, it seems that the trucks are bringing our supplies from Lusaka, a 12hour drive, without to many problems either. That means we can collect our supplies for the coming 2 weeks by boat tomorrow.

We are making plans for the season and I can t wait to start designing. I will be busy working on ideas for the coming days that is, if the water won t come up. Next will be calculating and ordering materials…..and while I look outside….it starts raining again.