Life in the tropics is getting strange sometimes. Feel very disconnected from my old life in Kommetjie and yet not a part of this one here in many ways. I love working for Kayak Africa and seeing things change and move forward and being a part of it all - it is a great business and the staff are a pleasure and the islands are magnificent and the guest are always happy. We have just won an award from the Department of Tourism here as the most environmentally friendly camp in the country, so that was nice. I was interviewed on the radio when the journos came (as Bush and Jurie were away watching rugby!) - never heard it though, nor did anyone who knows me (probably a good thing) - perhaps it wasn't ever aired! We are also on the Times (of London)'s list of the top 24 green places in the world to visit in their Green Spaces Awards. The judge is coming to see us on Nov 10. So we are really doing well these days. Working life is good - it is just the lack of personal life - friends and family and like-minded people - that is a problem.
I have very little else to occupy my thoughts apart from my motherly concerns - copious guilt as ever about not being the mother of the margarine ads - in fact, not even bearing the faintest resemblance to that paragon who laughs and tosses her immaculate hair and rushes about playing lovely outdoor games with her gorgeous clean offspring whilst cheerfully holding hands with her admiring hubby - all this in sparkling white jeans...could throttle the woman!
Instead I sit sweatily in my kitchen office, in increasingly bizarre chitenje ensembles, grey locks all out of style and unkempt (no haircutters in this village!), trying to keep up with emails and little odd jobs and staff requests for cash and 3 million requests from four demanding children to draw boats and pour juice and hand out junk food and then to separate them when they have their hair-raising brawls with much screeching and yelling (them not me!). It all get wearying.
And then, much as I love my dear husband, he is not the chattiest of personas and is usually as exhausted as I am by the end of the day and then we need to do the suicide hour of bathing four children, after which we collapse in our respective hammocks and exchange a few ideas (usually about work) and then I skulk off to bed to read or watch a dodgy DVD (old sex in the city mini-series at the moment - a girl takes what she can get out here - and I find I am actually enjoying them!) Thank heavens for Pam on the island and Lucy in the office here who are gals after my own heart - if they weren't about I think I'd never be able to vent.
Tonight is the opening of a new bar - oh whoopee doopee. Have to go otherwise it will be considered a slight. So will trawl along after kids are asleep and do what is known in these parts as a "French exit" - a quiet, un-noticed slope off home... even Bush is already planning it as he and Jurie are setting off to watch the rugby - a double header - and he knows that that will be about all the beer he'll be able to take!
Looking forward to coming home now, but can't allow myself to think like that, must live every day properly here and come home triumphant!
Must go now - think I have been garbled.
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