Family Affairs and other matters

SINGING WELLS PROJECT

Several of my friends are off to Uganda today to record the music of the Batwa tribes on behalf of the Singing Wells Project – as you do….it really is an extraordinary thing they are doing. I’m hoping they will send me some updates/photographs whilst they are there. The Batwa are a forest people, almost completely dispossessed of their ancestoral territories, in part due to efforts to protect the Mountain Gorillas in the forest of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. They now live at the fringes of society with inadequate medical and social care, but no access to their traditional herbal treatments. They are often called “Conservation Refugees”. My friends are aiming to record their history and current situation through their music, dance and oral histories.

Here is a video of their global remix of one of their songs. The gorgeous girl in the video is the daughter of some friends of mine and I suggest you watch till the end to see them incorporate a verse in Swahili and introduce some of the village music. It’s brilliant and explains very simply exactly what the Singing Wells project is all about:-

DRAMATIC ELEPHANT RESCUE

My friends at Norman Carr Safaris in Zambia have sent me some amazing photos of a dramatic elephant rescue. The elephants that feature on my blog are very possibly from the same herd! Generally speaking most conservationists believe that man should not meddle with the natural order of nature. However, every rule has an exception and the dreadful plight of a baby elephant trapped in the mud of the Kapani Lagoon and her mother, who had also got stuck trying to save her yesterday had them all in a frenzy of activity. They simply could not stand by and watch them struggle and slowly die. South Luangwa Conservation Society together with their neighbours – ZAWA – the wildlife authority – agreed and they all joined forces to try and save the mum and baby.

Thanks to Abraham Banda who got these great photos of the unfolding drama……

The family herd desperately trying to help the screaming Mum and baby escape, but they were completely stuck in the deep, rapidly drying mud with no chance of getting out:-

The brave and skilled SLCS team manages to slip a rope under the baby, narrowly avoiding mums thrashing trunk – and starts to haul her out …..
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Nearly there – the whole team is hauling as hard as they can…..But the baby is terribly frightened and won’t leave mum’s side

Again – she’s out and we think we’re almost there…..But despite frantic waving and shouting – she won’t leave her mum

One more try – the team pull her further away from mum this time…..They unwrap the ropes and help her to her feet

This time – thanks to a young herd cousin calling her to safety…..she makes a dash for it as the rest of the herd scream for her to come to them

Now back to mum who is dehydrated and exhausted – they’ve been pouring water over her to try to protect her from the scorching midday sun. SLCS staff carefully slip a rope under her…

and the tractor starts to pull and pull – inching her out of what would have been a muddy grave – she seems to sense that there’s a chance of escape and begins to struggle for her life.

With us all shouting encouragment and just willing her to keep going “come on Mama, come on Mama”……. to the delight of us all – she makes it! Weak and wobbly she drags herself out

she runs to find her baby and the rest of her waiting herd! The happiest possible ending!

The SLCS team all share a celebratory drink on the Kapani deck with their relieved guests!

This is all in a day’s work for the amazing Rachel McRobb and her outstanding team at The South Luangwa Conservation Society. Go to www.slcszambia.org - it’s a fantastic site and well worth a visit. You will be amazed at what this relatively small group can achieve – their dedication and commitment to wildlife is inspiring.

Together with their local wildlife authority – the South Luangwa Area Management Unit of the Zambia Wildlife Authority, they are extremely effective at anti-poaching activities including anti-snaring and patrolling in vulnerable areas of the National Park. Rachel and her team are also skilled at darting snared animals, removing the snares and treating the horrific wounds they cause. Their awareness raising activities and work with other local conservation groups are incredibly effective. Of course – this all takes money so they are always looking for people to consider becoming regular supporters.

My friend Christina wrote “It was extremely heartening for us all to see how many local people joined in the efforts to free these two elephants – the cheers of joy, first when the baby ran to his cousin and then when Mum was finally released from the jaws of the sticky, cloying mud were wonderful! Everyone seemed to identify with the mum’s plight – we all saw the incredible emotional bond between the worried herd members and mum and baby.

Thank you SLCS and ZAWA and also all the NCS staff who bravely fought to make this a happy ending!”

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DRAMATIC ELEPHANT RESCUE

My friends at Norman Carr Safari in Zambia have sent me some amazing photos of a dramatic elephant rescue. The elephants that feature on my blog are very possibly from the same herd! Generally speaking most conservationists believe that man should not meddle with the natural order of nature. However, every rule has an exception [...]

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GIRLY WEEKEND TO MARBELLA

I haven’t had a chance yet to write about our mellow girly weekend to Marbella. My friend has bought a holiday home out there, so six of us went out from Friday to Monday last week. It was just lovely to go at this time of year – the weather was still gloriously hot and we booked it months ago so it really didn’t cost any money for flights. We are all old friends back in the dim and distant past when our children were all still at nursery and between the six of us we were abandoning 19 children – all of whom are still living at home so you can imagine the organisation required to leave the country. You can also imagine the delight of escaping (once of course we were on the plane and over our trauma of only being allowed to take hand luggage – although have you seen the size of the bags that are now allowed on as hand luggage? HUGE! and I’m going to have to invest in one immediately).

We didn’t get to the villa until sundowner time and then spent the first evening at a very lovely Beach Bar, called the “Beach House” – not sure of the address. Very upmarket and delicious food and right on the beach:-

Yummy Creme Brulee with a display that says it all:-

Saturday we went to Puerto Banus – first to the market:-

and then down to the port for lunch on the beach and to look at the big cruise liners in the marina. What a lot of money there is there – the shops are majorly top end and clearly mainly Russian Oligarchs own all the boats – interesting to see that the estate agents only had details in Russian in it’s window:-

The beach:-

The Buddha Bar:-

Lunch at a beach bar:-

Then later that evening we went into Marbella old town for dinner. It is beautiful. Lots of little narrow lanes leading on to yet more restaurants and bars and churches and gorgeous old buildings. First stop was a bar where my poor friend nearly died after eating “the wrong pepper”. A whole plate of roasted sweet green peppers interspersed with two or three peppers SO hot she had no feeling in her lips, tongue or entire head for about an hour:-

We were here – be warned:-

It was a buzzy little square, complete with resident Flamenco dancer who I thought was amazing – all the more so for being almost an octogenarian:-

Then we wandered about a bit deciding where to eat:-

Here are the girls:-

THEN because we’d had a few drinks we decided to wander down to the port area which is a little more lively in a different sort of way – lots of bars. We found one that looked suitable for our age (ie that had available seating) and promptly settled in for the evening. The bar was called “Lemmon” and was offering two for one drinks. WOOHOO. So we got stuck in and then decided that we would take to the dancefloor at the back of the bar. Nobody there so we were fine. Settled in at the back and “got on down” in only the way that mother’s out on the town who no longer give a shit about what they look like can. Several of us broke into the VIP area and danced wildly in front of horrified cool people knowing full well that we would be removed immediately BUT WE DIDN”T EVEN CARE – such is the joy of being old (er).

In our enthusiasm we failed to notice the club filling up and before we knew it we were surrounded by 12 year olds. “OH WELL WFT”, we shouted loudly to each other increasing the size of our ridiculous dance moves exponentially. “You really shouldn’t wave your arms in the air like that” one friend commented to me “much better waving them side to side” and I was thinking “don’t be ridiculous – I AM Beyonce – I have to wave my arms in the air I don’t care what I look like” and so we all agreed to just not care that we looked like Grannies – “we’ll show them what we’ve got” we all thought to ourselves – you should have seen us dancing to Maroon 5′s “Move Like Jagger” – I mean these young things probably hadn’t even heard of Jagger, let alone knew how he properly moved – WE DID – HE’S OUR AGE (nearly). Anyway, for some reason the gorgeous young things didn’t find us as cool and amusing as we found ourselves and at one point my friend nearly got into a girl fight. I actually had to get involved and offer to dance in between the two of them whilst quietly mumbling to my friend that I’d appreciate it if she could stop telling her to “f*ck off” because if we ended up getting glassed in the face and taken off to a Spanish prison how was I ever going to live it down with my son who I had just got over doing the same thing in Krakov.

We had a great evening and danced the entire night away – well until 4am which was pretty good for us.

Sunday was spent recuperating quietly on the beach:-

Here we are back at the Beach house again for lunch which had everybody dancing thanks to their live music:-

All in all an excellent weekend and highly recommended. Any questions, I’ll get my friend who speaks Spanish to answer them x

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LOCA PEOPLE – AYIA NAPA 2011

This is the video taken from my son’s holiday this summer. Everyday at around 4pm the music started and didn’t stop all night long – “all day, all night”.

Glad I wasn’t staying at this hotel. Imagine if you were trying to do a few lengths in the pool!

Anyway, you can see why they all had such a good holiday and he loved this song so much he’s had “Viva La Fiesta” tattooed on his arse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6gmC80CAJs

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DO NEW YORK

We didn’t get to do everything we wanted but thanks to the lovely people at from NYC & Company we were given media CityPASSES. They were very helpful in the Visitors Centre and can provide you with a useful Visitor Guide with all that you need to know. You can contact them via their website [...]

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GAP YAH SON

This is so weird. I’ve even got “son off to uni” written in my diary I was that sure of it. Now it’s all change and HE’S STILL HERE!! In my house. For another year! Actually I”m very pleased although we’re going to have to sort out a few new rules. Things like

1. Stop sleeping so much
2. Get out of bed before 3pm
3. Get a job.
4. Work out where the dishwasher and washing machine are in the house
5. Work out a way of making lunch by yourself that doesn’t involve standing in front of the fridge staring mournfully into it waiting for a three tiered sandwich to leap out by itself.
6. Find out where the local supermarket is and how to pay for your own items.
7. Start revising for retakes in January.
8. Start working out how to pay for your travelling later next year.

and so on…..I’m showing him newspaper articles of depressing stuff – the three 19 year old’s that had just started their travels all being killed on a coach in Thailand – so desperately tragic. Their mothers have launched a campaign to make more people aware of how dangerous it is to be on a coach after dark in Thailand – their road traffic accident figures are about 10 times higher per year than ours.

He has sent out CV’s and even had some interviews. He’s got a trial shift in a pub tomorrow and some event work to do so I think he’ll be fine. You just want them to make the most of the time and not waste it.

I am thinking of going with him on his gap year – anyone else want to come?

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