Ice, ice, isolation baby...: Coronavirus blog, safari edition v2

Apr 3

So I promised one of our past guests that the next blog post would be from Ed on his Land Rovers. Well, SHOCKINGLY, the project hasn’t been finished in only a matter of hours as I was led to believe it would be but instead several days. I am not complaining as it means Ed is kept busy (but not quiet) hitting things with hammers and getting black paint over everything, including himself. The end result will be excellent I am assured. I have my own plans for the Series I that is being worked on, but again I am going to wait until it’s all finished to share them.

Not a lot has changed since my first post, but instead we are well on our way to Week 1 being over in full isolation. When speaking to friends in the UK they say Week 1 is the hardest and then by Week 2 or 3 you can’t even remember what life was like before (going to be honest - this did seem a bit overdramatic, but now I am starting to believe them!). Ed and I have been keeping to a sort-of-schedule of computer work in the morning (emails, newsletters, website, social media - I want to hit 5,000 followers on our Instagram page) and then an activity outside of the camp in the afternoon. Yesterday we did some yoga and I made a banana cake. Today we are going to try and climb a big rock face that looks really cool. Can’t decide whether to take Romilly or not - is it good or bad parenting to climb rocks with a baby tied to your back?! We have this amazing rucksack-type baby carrier for Romilly (which I bought for Ed before she was even born as a look-how-fun-this-is-going-to-be present) and I can’t wait to use it but she has to be able to hold her head up completely which she can’t quite do yet. So close though!

An Ashy Brown owl which was spotted on a walking safari by guests recently and posted to our Instagram page

Our biggest issue in the camp right now is that both of our fridges have broken. Thank goodness there is no guests here (I don’t mean that, please come back)! We have a really serious solar fridge which is brand new to the market and hasn’t even hit the market yet. Ed has tried to fix it by deleting all the parameters from it and ‘wiping it’ of the data, and then emailed to fridge’s manufacturers to get the new data to reinstall it. However, it turns out the manufacturers are in China and are a little busy fighting off this silly thing called Coronavirus and aren’t likely to reply for several weeks. Humph. So that is one fridge down. The other one we have is a gas fridge. These are really old-school and hardly anyone has or uses them anymore. They run off propane gas (as in a gas bottle) and a little flame heats ammonia which sucks heat out and cools the fridge. Of course, ammonia isn’t used a lot anymore so getting it fixed has been a real challenge. But nothing in Kenya is wasted and there is an expert in everything so we found a ‘fundi’ (expert/builder/fixer) who knows how to fix them in the local town and it has been dispatched to him to be sorted. Until both of them come back working, we are using coolboxes and a whole lot of ice. It does mean that the three whole chickens we bought to sustain ourselves over the next three weeks aren’t looking very happy and we might have to have a massive roast dinner one night soon. Not complaining of course as I am feeling lucky and blessed to have any food at all and we have donated money to a great team in Nairobi who are packaging and donating food parcels to those in need during the lockdown.

My Nature Walk project is going well and I have been painting stones to put around the route that the walkers will do. The route is only about 500m long but in total I hope to create 12 stops to discuss all sorts of things from footprints, to the birdsong to even the weather. Here is a picture of me getting covered in white paint the other day…

OK - the sun is lowering and it’s just cool enough to head out for our rock climb. See if we take Romilly by having a look on our Instagram page (still haven’t decided - I will ask the almighty Wanjiku if she thinks it is a good idea). Let me know what you are up to and what you think of my Nature Walk stones in the comments below. Keep in touch and #StayHomeStaySafe. Moon x