Lock(down) & loaded: Coronavirus blog, safari edition v1
We are on lockdown. This statement might sound quite exciting if it wasn’t that the rest of the world was too. Coronavirus has hit Kenya and the government, playing it safe (and thank goodness they are too) has locked down the country in order to stop the virus from spreading. Kenya has only a very few ventilators in the whole country and the virus would (will?) cause incredible devastation and tragedy if (when?) it hits hard.
Ed, myself & Romilly are here at the camp alone, having closed the tents and refunded or postponed all the upcoming guests. Lolldaiga Hills have also closed their gates with every member of staff given the option of going home until the lockdown is over or staying and not leaving. We have done the same with all our staff, even though most of them can see the Lolldaiga Main Gate from their houses. Staying open is a risk that both the camp and the conservancy cannot take.
So we sit here… and wait. Someone (thanks Dad) suggested I write down what it is like - my response to him mainly focused around ‘I am not doing anything, what is there to write about!’… Yet he seems to think that our isolation might be more interesting than his isolation. (in Hampshire, UK).
We are taking the time to strategise for the future, when we can start up promoting again. How do we reach more potential guests? What makes our camp stand out from so many other lovely lodges in the area? What can we use this time to do that will make us (and the camp) better for it?
We are also doing some refurbishments on the camp. We are building our bathrooms to make them a little more enclosed, while also keeping the outdoor feel to them. Our bathrooms are often our guests favourite part of their room but we also wanted to make them feel more secure so we are adding a small wall around them made of our special mix of mud and concrete. Another change is painting and adding numbers and signs around the camp for ease of movement. Myself and Ed want to make the camp as family-friendly as possible so we have made a child friendly nature walk around the camp. I want to make the walk sensory-focused as there is so many sights (beautiful weaver birds building their hanging houses), smells (the wild minty smelling plant that acts as a natural vapour rub for the local Maasai communities), sounds (is that an elephant knocking over a tree over there?), tastes (you can eat that yummy looking berry there - what does it taste like to you?) and things to touch (why does this tree feel rough to touch and this one feel smooth?) around the area that I think it will appeal as much to adults as children! I will make sure to take photos of my progress and add it to our Instagram for you to keep up to date with how it goes…
A silver lining to having to close the camp right now is that the seasonal rains have arrived, with daily downpours filing up the dam at the bottom of the camp. Ed has been carefully measuring the lake as it dropped lower and lower in the intense sunshine we have had. It got to a point where he even viewed the warthogs, giraffe and even elephants that come for a drink there as an enemy of his plan to keep the dam full until the rains finally arrive. The rains do make camp life a little harder, with mud getting EVERYWHERE! But the beautiful long grass turning green again makes it worth it. This month (March/April) make for fabulous game viewing with lots of little babies to be seen everywhere.
Now it is back to camp life for us - Ed is working on another project (I will save information on how that goes for the next blog post), Romilly is sitting pretty (she is going to grow up so vain - all we ever do is take photos of her to send to family across the world) in her bouncy chair watching the world go by, Wanjiku, who is Romilly’s ayah (nanny) and as much part of camp life as the rest of us, is making some lunch for us all (African rice - delicious rice, veggies - and in my case - doused with soy sauce) and myself off to do another job or two before the afternoon runs away with me and its time for our evening movie night against the side of the tent on the projector again. Last night we watched ‘1917’ and tonight I think ‘Ford vs. Ferrari’.
Let me know if the comments what your isolation looks like, and where you would like to be in the world right now. I hope that some of you reading would like to be here, with us, in the camp with 50,000 acres and much, much less people than that.
Addition: as I sign off, Wanjiku has come over with Romilly in her pram to tell me that she is changing her pram-pushing route because an elephant is munching a tree where she normally walks. Such is safari life. Romilly is growing up to be such a lucky girl!
Stay safe, over and out. Love Moon xxx
