Throwing stones

At Sirikoi camp they have a young cheetah, found abandoned as a baby. We took the children over to see her, and she seemed to instantly recognise them as other young playmates. She leapt at Uma, who managed to jump out of the way, understandably terrified. Evie let her gnaw at her ankle, laughing at how ticklish it felt.

There is also a zebra, known as Zoe, who has decided she prefers to hang around the camp than to be with the other zebras in their herds. Ossian and I were sitting in the mess tent this morning when we saw Zoe sticking her head through the tent flap where Lila and Uma were sleeping. Zoe can be quite aggressive, particularly with children, so Adharanand chased her away by throwing stones at her, as we'd seen other people doing whenever Zoe came near. He eventually managed to chase her out of the camp, though she took some persuading.

Ossian, true to Steiner's belief that children learn thorough imitation, has now taken to throwing stones at the chickens and the dogs in the camp, with an accuracy that's surprising in a one and a half year old.

Lewa

We're staying with Jophie and Al at their home, a tented camp on the Lewa wildlife conservancy. As you turn off the main track you are greeted by a pirate flag, flying high over the corrugated metal walls of the kitchen. Beyond this are three large canvas safari tents, from left to right the guest tent, the mess tent, and their sleeping tent. On the far right of the line of tents is the rickety bathroom, with it's thatched sides and corrugated roof.

There is no fence around the camp, and all around lies the bush, teaming with wildlife. We have been acclimatising gradually to life in the camp, learning to use our torches at night to scan the bush for eyes before crossing from one tent to another. Once darkness falls it feels like a long walk from the bathroom tent to the guest tent, and we usually make the journey together, scurrying through the darkness, hoping we don't tread on a snake.

Yesterday Al drove us out into the bush, following the animal trails through the grass. He was just saying that the lions would be resting at that time of day, sleeping under the cover of a bush or tree, when Lila spotted a lioness asleep under the bush we'd just passed. The noise of a Land Cruiser filled with five young children disturbed her, and she got up with some annoyance to look for a more peaceful spot for her afternoon doze. She walked within a few feet of us, much to Ossian's delight. He made little lion roars all the way back to camp, and Lila was renamed Lila the Lion Spotter.

That night our walk back to our tent was more nerve wracking than usual, as we could hear the sound of lions marking their territories close by the camp even before we'd finished brushing our teeth. The noise is more like a deep, rhythmical grunting than a roar, and by the time we got to our tent we were running, throwing ourselves inside and zipping up behind us. Al had assured us that a lion cannot distinguish between a tent and a rock, and will not try and get in, but Lila was not so sure, and insisted Adharanand sleep with her. The noise of the lions vibrated in the air around us as we lay in bed, like listening to thunder cracking right overhead, terrifying and awesome at the same time.

Christmas

Jophie had arranged for a taxi to collect us on the morning of the 23rd December, and to take us up past Nanyuki to the home of Alastairs' sister and brother-in-law. The driver arrived in large Land Cruiser which the children were delighted about, especially as there were no children's car seats to sit in.

They spent most of the three-hour journey climbing in and out of the front seat, using their binoculars to examine the bicycles and donkeys we passed on the road, and waving madly at the overcrowded matatus (minibuses) that heaved their way over the pot holes and debris on the road. The last half an hour of the journey was on a dirt track so eroded by the rains that large sections of it had fallen away, leaving small craters and ravines. Without a 4-wheel-drive the house is inaccessible.

We spent Christmas with 20 of us in all, with many others coming and going over the the days we were there, and a small village of staff working to accommodate us all. The house had been built by Alastair with a large open veranda and a hammock overlooking two watering holes. The sitting room was cleared of furniture to make room for Scottish reels on the first night, Lila joining in right till the end.

We woke on Christmas morning to the sound of Masai children singing outside the house, quickly silenced by the gift of sweets. They divided their spoils between them and ran off down the dusty track. After breakfast we drove out into the bush, stopping to walk up to Pride Rock, where we sat with some other families to sing Christmas carols, the words getting lost in the vastness of the bush that lay beneath us. We feasted at every meal, all prepared, served and cleared away by the staff. This luxurious existence left me feeling slightly uncomfortable, like having hotel service in your own home.

Landing

As we stepped off the plane in Nairobi were we greeted by two tidy young men with smiles big enough to sleep in. Jophie had booked a 'meet and greet' service for us, to whisk us through passport control and sort out our visas, collect our luggage and hand us over to the driver from the Muthaiga Club. They were a welcome sight after our epic 24-hour journey from Devon to Nairobi.

I was so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open on the drive to the club, only catching glimpses of the chaos outside the window - buses driving off the road into a ditch full of boulders and craters, just to overtake the bus in front, barefoot children playing on rubbish dumps outside shacks painted with Coca-Cola adverts, people heaving pushcarts through the tangle of cars and buses, which swerve manically around them.

Friends of my parents have very kindly agreed to have us to stay for our first two nights in Kenya. Their home is in the garden of the club, in a leafy suburb so unlike the Nairobi we glimpsed on the drive from the airport, that after a morning at their house Uma commented on how it was just like England. In the confines of the club grounds, the mayhem of the city becomes a faint background noise.

It is a comfortable place to recover from our journey, with meals, ordered from the club's menu, bought over to the house on silver trays, triumphant lawns and poolside sun loungers. The 'house boy', Joseph, a dignified looking man in his late 50's, cleans our rooms and washes our clothes in a big bucket in the back yard, while the children play with the three big dogs in the garden.

Taking Off

I am writing this post retrospectively, as I was too busy to write it at the time. During our last two weeks in England we celebrated Lila's 7th birthday, had Adharanand's brothers and sister-in-law to stay, celebrated a pretend Christmas Day, packed our entire house and moved the contents into my parents' attic, handed back the keys to our landlady, the children had their last day at school for nine months, we moved into my parents' house, celebrated my brother's 40th birthday, packed for six months in Kenya, finished our Christmas shopping, said farewell to friends and family, and watched as the heaviest snowfall in years and arctic conditions closed most of the roads in Devon and grounded most of the flights in Heathrow.

Despite news reports of all flights being cancelled, we thought we should try and make it to the airport just in case ours was one of the handful of flights that got airborne. Our contingency plan was to stay up in London, going back to the airport each day until we finally got on a flight. We set off in convoy, Adharanand and my Mum in one car with Lila and Uma, and Ossian and I in the other with Adharanand's mum and dad. Just getting out of the driveway took 20 minutes. The motorway had snowdrifts across the two outside lanes. The whole way up to Heathrow the news on the radio was warning people not to go to Heathrow, that no planes were taking off and that there were so many people stranded there already that at some terminals there were queues just to get into the building.

We eventually made it up there, walked into the terminal, somehow found an empty check-in desk and asked about our flight to Nairobi. "You can check-in here" was the reply. So within an hour of arriving we had checked-in, said goodbye to our parents and were waiting in the duty-free lounge. We'd arrived at about two o'clock, about five hours before our flight was due to leave, so we had a long wait ahead of us.

Ossian was loving having so much space to run around in, and Lila and Uma spent a long time browsing the Cath Kidson shop. We found some seats near a vast window and watched the night draw in as the snow started to fall again, and our departure time kept being put back. Uma came down with a fever and fell asleep. It was hard to relax, as we watched one cancellation after another, but eventually, at nine thirty in the evening, we were seated on the plane with our seatbelts on, watching the safety video. Other passengers in the airport had told us that even at this point, as they waited on the runway, their flights had been cancelled, just yesterday or the day before. So it was with a mixture of relief and disbelief that we finally took off, bound for Africa.