Family Affairs and other matters

As the (red, African) dust settles and we are all reunited in our little house, our lives feel small and safe and controlled again. I have many, many thoughts and things I want to write about but it’s so hard to formulate and put into words what it is that I want to say. Africa is the most extraordinary place, terrifying, beautiful, raw, but above all, totally humbling. It made me want to shout at the woman in the supermarket yesterday, who was complaining about the lack of choice in apples (only six different varieties available) and that the air-conditioning wasn’t cold enough.

It feels strange to be back. With the memories of that vast, dry, cracked, almost prehistoric African bush enticing you back into a world that existed centuries ago – challenging you to go on a journey back in to your past. Where you feel immensely alive and completely awestruck by the raw, huge, immense, out of control world where you experience nature in it’s most basic form. Where you can sit on the edge of your bed feeling very small and defenceless whilst an enormous Bull elephant rips branches off a tree just oustide your window, having lumbered up from the river to remind you that you are a part of a life force that is so so much bigger than you.

I am not sure how long my vast picture of life is going to last. It appears to be diminishing by the minute. As I write, teenage son is throwing a tennis ball against the wall right in front of my face, relentlessly and my teenage daughter and her friend are on “Singstar” next door and singing horrible songs very loudly and very badly and my youngest son is boredboredbored andthereiscompletelynothingtodoaroundhere and I would quite like to killthemall.