sky blackened, thunder rumbled, lightening flashed and the wind blew - had our first 12 inch rain of the season - that smell of the first rain of spring in the kalahari, if you’ve never smelt it you’re missing something, difficult to describe but fresh, new rebirth might give you an idea.

Our rhinos are up to something, ben’s resident harem stompie and friend have left him and gone walkabout we’re hoping this a prelude to stompie calving which willem says is imminent, we are looking for them every day but with the windy days its been quite difficult to see their spoor. we’re trying to give them some lucerne a bit of green in their endless diet of dry dry grass - help with the milk we hope.

Went to lake ngami on sunday with britt toby tj and vicks, the water has been piling down from the okavango through tonota for weeks now and is a sight to behold, a rushing river of blue crystal clear water gurgling and swishing under the road in a sea of yellow dry waving stalks of grass - the resident donkeys, goats and cows must think they’re living a dream. getting to the lake is interesting to say the least - travelling east take any turn to the right after sehitwa and follow your nose, vehicles raise plumes of fine dust which gets everwhere - i mean everywhere ! the ground is tinder dry, not a blade of grass or a leaf on a tree, then suddenly the change a few wisps of green and then the lake opens up in front - it’s a huge lake must be 30 kms long by 5 kms wide but not a sea of blue rather a sea of green it’s so shallow, the grass and reeds are all you can see but careful the mud waits to suck even the best 4 x 4 down. birds birds birds for africa waders, storks, eagles and more what a sight. the ubiquitous cattle donkeys and goats wading around and are they fat. the amazing thing is that this is in the middle of a desert at the height of the dry season, one of the wonders of africa.

Just got a quad for kanana, a necessary step to save fuel - big notices all over it NO PASSENGERS, UNLEADED FUEL ONLY - what happened? first thing our merry men fill up with leaded fuel then with groovy driving and kgara as passenger they are off oblivious to mr yamaha’s admonishments they had fun and japanese technology seems to take the punishment in it’s stride must be designed for africa.
(editors note: 12 inch rain refers to drops being 12 inches apart)

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 11:20 am and is filed under The Big Man’s Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.