Happy Birthday To Me!

This weekend I celebrated my first African birthday, and managed to do so with plenty of African style!

On Friday we went to “The Boabab”, Katima’s one and only restaurant, where we enjoyed their Friday night buffet dinner. We were joined by the other VSO volunteers, who gave me some lovely African gifts, homemade cards, and even a homemade chocolate cake.

On Saturday Fearghal and I headed off to Ngepi Camp at the other end of the Caprivi Strip. En route we got stuck in a bit of an African traffic jam when two massive elephants wandered across the road in front of us. We also discovered that diesel can be pumped by hand as there was no electricity at the garage. The attendant simply pulled apart the pump, got out a winch and started turning!

We were booked in to stay in a tree house at Ngepi for Saturday and Sunday night, which sounded pretty cool. However, we could not have imagined just how charming it turned out to be.

Ngepi is a really friendly place, with a lively bar, grassy lawns, wooden deck out over the Kavango river, and even a swimming cage in the river (something for a sunnier time of year) They just finished building their 4 tree houses in January, and had kindly put us into their best one.

The “house” was right down by the river on a raised wooden deck. The walls were built of reeds, with 2 walls able to be rolled up completely to open the room right out onto the outside deck, which had palm trees growing through it. Inside was a great big comfy bed with a large mosquito net hung from the thatched roof.

From our little retreat we could see nothing but the gently flowing river, and the lush green trees and we could hear nothing but the birds, frogs, fish and occasionally hippos.

The only down side was the weather – I have really had enough of the rainy season now! But it did mean I spent my birthday in enforced relaxation, lazing in bed reading books and, when the sun did come out in the afternoon, lazing in the hammock while we cooked massive steaks on the braai.