Childhood Days Part 6

We used to go to Safari Parks now and again. Most of the time we’d just go on a day trip – it wasn’t too far (by African standards!) to visit the one closest to us – Lengwe National Park. It is extremely hot there, and because of this the water holes are few and far between, which makes it great for seeing plenty of wildlife. Not so great for the animals I suppose, but they seemed to thrive. Lengwe was full of wildlife - Nyala (apparently the furthest north that they can be found), warthogs, Impala etc. Once we went up to Kasungu, which is a big safari park. We stayed in Rondavels (little round chalets). There was one night I was fast asleep when I was woken by the most enormous racket. I thought it was my mum or dad snoring, but it turned out that the elephants liked to scratch their backs on the thatched roofs of the rondavels, and it was this I heard! There was one particular elephant – I think he was called Charlie – who was practically tame.
Our accommodation was self catering, which meant that we had to go to a kitchen in the camp site to cook our food. The kitchen was basic – in the extreme! One morning when we were in there cooking breakfast, when this long, grey trunk poked through the window to say hello – and presumably to see if we had any interesting leftovers! We had a pile of very soft tomatoes, so we hand fed them to the elephant, Charlie. He quickly finished all of them, so we gave him a couple of left over grapefruit. These too were deemed acceptable. Having cleaned us out of our leftovers he was less than impressed when we had nothing left to feed him. We managed to bundle his trunk out of the window, shutting it quickly. He put his trunk right up to the window, in the manner of a naughty child making faces against glass, and proceeded to blow his nose loudly against it! The window was now dripping in elephant snot! Lovely!

While we were still at Kasungu I befriended a little duiker. I don’t remember much about it except that it was very tame and I fed it Mexican flavoured crisps! No idea why I can remember the flavour, but he seemed to like them!

Whenever we travelled north through the country we had to go through a town called Liwonde, on the Shire River - the main river that runs through Malawi. We had to cross an old barrage bridge, and from there we could watch the hippos frolicking in the water, without a care in the world. Hippos are about the most dangerous creatures in Africa, bar the mosquito (in my opinion), but it was lovely to see them playing lazily in the water.

I never once considered how privileged I was to be able to grow up in such an amazing country, nor how lucky. It's only since I started this blog, and writing these memories of my childhood, that I've realised that really, I didn't have an ordinary childhood, and my life is much richer because of that.

NB. Photographs Not My Own Work