Continuing this trip down memory lane...

December was really a family month...(aren't they all?)... Tracy and Zavion were with us, and Jack and Anne visited. Big events like Christmas and the trip to Imire were covered in other blogs. To ensure we are being as comprehensive as possible to interested grandmothers (etc)... here are some other highlights from December 2011.

There were the end of school year performances. As hard as he worked on it, Miles's concert was less photogenic than Eliza and Zavion's adorable performance on their "Living Things" unit.

Eliza and Zavion's precious EC2 performance on living things

Eliza was a bee. Zavion was a frog.

Sometimes one is lucky enough to be included in another family's traditions. My theory is that we expats all make an extra effort when abroad to bring holiday cheer to a not-like-home environment. My first xmas away from home in the Peace Corps - so pitiful yet so powerful. Well, now we're all grown up, and Sheryl has introduced cookie decorating! Who knew that 40-something-year-olds (and kids) could have so much fun with edible writing and glitter.

And what's a long Christmas holiday in Africa without lying in the sun and playing in the pool?

Fun at the pool - David throwing all the kids. 

If you can't see the slide show below, click here for the full album.

Boxing Day Safari

OK, so we went back to Imire. We've been 5 times now. The reasons why we end up taking so many guests there:

• proximity to Harare - it's around a 1.5 hour drive from home

• variety of animals: lions and hyena (in safe enclosures), both black and white rhino, elephants, giraffe, kudu, zebra, ostrich, bushbuck, eland, hartebeest, antelope, tsessebe, sable, cape buffalo, wart hog, monitor lizard, crocodile, baoons, vervet monkeys and a hippo. 

• proximity to animals - because this is a private game park and rhino sanctuary, the animals there are semi-wild. The elephants and rhinos come close to us. We can touch them, feed them - it's cool. 

Because of the rains, we came back to the main lodge to fee the elephant - thus, the fence.

• information about animals - the guides know a lot about the animals who have lived on the sanctuary for years

• picturesque - the area is hilly and lovely with the typical Zimbabwean kopje rock formations. They have a couple of great picnic spots, and the farm house and thatch-roof cabins are a nice camp base.  

• family/service - the owners of the ranch/sanctuary are such interesting people who love what they do and host college kids to work on the land and with the animals throughout the year

• affordability - safari's can be expensive, as you can imagine. Imire is so close we have the option of going up for the day for less than $70 per person or overnight for not much more. In fact, the house we stayed in this time easily accommodated 7 adults and 6 children, came with housekeeping, a cook and a guide for afternoon and morning walks, canoes and lake access, swimming pool, etc, and cost $150 total.

All to ourselves.

• activities - ride on the largest elephants I have ever seen, horseback riding, fishing, and of course, game drives and walks.

Stables where the big animals are kept at night to keep them (and others) safe.

• safety - because we're not in the wild parks, there is a degree of predictability and control - staff monitor and know the animals well, and I feel safer and more comfortable with our little kids there.

BTW, if you're interested in volunteering, check out the work schedule we saw! My favorite: dip the lions at 2 on Thursday.

That Special Christmas Magic

Christmas in Zimbabwe is good for us. It's a funny combination of home and traditions past and Southern Hemisphere Africa.

The kids and I were eager to get a tree up, but the evergreens were looking dreary the week I was ready, so we went with a tropical plant. Don't even know what it's called, but it grows straight out of the center of a green and yellow plant that looks like a giant alien, cactus octopus. We felt vaguely that it was more environmentally friendly.

The hoopla around Christmas in Zim is significant compared to other places we've lived, but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to what we'd experience back home. We were invited to an ugly xmas sweater party, and people were literally having to make something to wear: ornament jewelry, reindeer antlers out of tinfoil (David went as a kind of cross between Santa and Jesus with his Sudanese jalabiya and a red hat) because not only were we without unwanted items but it was hard to even find tacky Christmas things to buy. Imagine.

Sheryl and Vaughn invited us over to make Christmas cookies.

we sent the majority of the goodies to school with the kids

the adults had even more fun than the kids

We were playing Christmas music around the house, teaching the kids the songs and watching the old movies. But of course, it's all about cold, awful weather and snowmen, whereas in Zimbabwe the weather was great! We donated toys to the AIDS orphans and participated in other charitable events. We made Christmas cards for friends and family, and got together with people to enjoy great food and drink and happy times.

After seeing the movie Elf and knowing about the fakes, the kids were excited to see the REAL Santa at the grocery store. He came to hear from a few children whose emails he hadn't received since the internet's been down.

Most special was having family here: Tracy, Zavion, Jack and Anne. We were so lucky that Jack and Anne came here for two weeks and everything went so well! Their luggage (including Santa's sack) all made it. Their flights to Vic Falls weren't cancelled. No one got sick. There was plenty to do and plenty time to relax, as well. We were able to celebrate Jack's birthday, and we got to know Anne better, and she's a doll! (as my Grandmom Helen would say).

For his birthday, we framed photos of him with baby David ('73) and baby Miles ('05).

The children were VERY EXCITED Christmas morning. Whether it was a new pencil, a piece of candy, legos, a doll or a sketchpad - all were happy to tear off the paper and look at the new things. For the first time, the kids were old enough for there to be a semblance of order. The kids read the names on the gifts and handed them out, and we took turns opening them. (Just writing about it makes me want a cup of coffee.)

David's big gift from all of us: Zavion and Eliza's art framed for the office.

More photos from Christmas:

Grammy and Grandpa's Visit, Part 2: Spurwing Island

Next on the agenda: Spurwing Island. It was luckily a great trip, though the start was a bit rough. Eliza got carsick and vomited several times in David's car. By the time I saw her in Kariba, she was wearing only one pair of boy's underwear but was still in good spirits. The car...well, you can imagine.

After a long and stressful 5-hour drive, we had another hour and a half of being separated, unable to communicate, and worried about missing our boat to the island. I had wanted to drive more slowly in my mini-van than David in his big Toyota double-cab Hilux, so I went on ahead while he had to keep stopping to clean up Eliza. There was basically one turn to get to the marina, and I passed it and drove all the way to the border - a mistake that cost about 30 minutes. It was very much a lesson in the differences between road travel in Zimbabwe and the US. The whole way from Harare to Kariba, we were on a 2-lane highway with no lines, shoulders, or on/off ramps, and only occasional long flat stretches - so lots of gut-stirring passing or waiting to pass...and hoping some crazed BMW won't top the next hill going 130 km/hr or some cow won't wander across the road at the wrong moment. Nor is there dependable signage or a reliable phone network. And that is why Gayle and Mike and I were standing at that one turn off to the marina - to wave down David since the network was down and we couldn't call him. However, incredibly, neither Tracy nor David saw us, and they whizzed by us, off to the border as we had done. We had to wait for them to find their way back to us... Luckily, the ferry to take us to Spurwing Island was still waiting. Sigh.

After that, it was a breeze. Spurwing is really nice. They have nice boats and vehicles for game drives in the Matusadonha National Park which is the biggest, wildest park we've been to here. It was just the right time to get up to that area - at the end of the dry season, all the animals flock to the lake to find the only fresh water around. A pride of lions, a rare sight, had been spotted that morning. There was only room for two more on the game drive that afternoon, so Gayle and Mike went and were able to see the lions that were following a herd of buffalo. The rest of us just chilled out - the kids played in the pool and enjoyed setting up their tent-huts and throwing things into the lake. Kariba is the largest man-made lake in the world (by volume and fourth in size by surface area), and we were along the southeastern shore.

These are the four tent-huts we stayed in - complete with en suite bathrooms, hot water showers and a view of the sunrise on the water.

At end of the dry season, the water was very low. Miles, Eliza and Vaughn looking for hippos.

Hippos would pop-up in these waters, near and far. Also, we spotted a huge monitor lizard crawling up the retainer wall just in front of our tents. It's like a colorful green-yellow-brown, yard-long snake with with 4 big legs.

Much deserved chill out time by the pool.

Silliness ensued.

The boys wanted their own tent for the night, but I ended up joining them at some point. The wind off the lake really picked up, and the sounds of nature were deafening...at least to my half-awake, half-anxious-to-be-on-the-edge-of-the-wild mom. Miles was a little anxious, too. The next night David joined the boys tent, and Eliza and I were on our own. Luckily, the guests staying in the tent-hut next to ours didn't show us the photo they'd taken of the snake on their roof until the morning we were leaving, or I'm certain I wouldn't have slept well on the second night...or felt very comfortable with the kids running around free and barefoot the whole time!

Ah, sunrise.

Drawing: what he must do at some point every day. I love it!

Gula (our nickname for E) watching for hippos in the morning sunlight.

Ah, retirement. This was Mike's first time to Africa and first time to visit us abroad. We were so pleased in had a good experience.

Zavion and Tracy at their tent-hut.

Day 2: David and I took the boys fishing while Grammy, Mike, Tracy and the 4-year-olds went on a boat safari. Although the little ones did get a little tired of being on the boat, they did get to see a lot of wildlife. The fishing was hot as hell, but it was a total success. Just drop in a line and within a minute, you had a bite. Miles caught the first fish of the day and the first in his life. Vaughn caught the first keeper. They were small bream, so most were thrown back, but we still ended up taking home around a dozen which we ate for dinner the following night back in Harare.

While fishing, we saw hippos, crocodiles, antelope, and elephants on the beach. Awesome.

Vaughn getting a bite. (I was happy to see that Miles never got upset when Vaughn was having a streak of good luck.)

Vaughn's picture.

David tiger fishing...we were just a little early for the season, so no catches this time. Best to go late Oct - late Nov.

We got back for lunch, a dip in the pool and nap before the game drive. Since Gayle and Mike had done the game drive the day before, they went on a cruise to a river gorge (not as great as the game drive but still nice). The rest of us took a boat to the national park where our guide picked up a vehicle and a park ranger. It was the best vehicle for safari that I've been in, but with the kids, more than once I was feeling a little too exposed. So I wasn't too disappointed that we didn't see the hungry lions.

Touching the big teeth and tusks of rhino remains.

We saw more wild elephants than I'd ever seen at once, at least 50. Often we'd come around a corner and be face to face with a bull or three. They were using their big feet to dig up this clover-like grass, that they'd scoop into a pile with their trunk to eat it. Young males came at us a few times - not charging but flapping their ears and blowing their trunks. An elephant can run very fast...and these are wild ones, not those we usually see that have been raised in private game parks and are used to humans. So it was pretty exciting to be just sitting on top of the truck so close by.

Bulls flapping their ears and showing their stuff.

Eliza placing her hand in a lion tracks.

Sundowners at a large termite mound. Eles all around.

Tired Gula ready to go home.

Thanks for coming Grammy and Grandpa!