How to Regain Your Perspective

Okay, not much of a cliffhanger from my last post, as I'm writing the answer the very next day. I'm obviously more of a soap opera than a quality drama.

Well, at first nothing much seemed to go wrong that evening. We had beautiful weather yet again, and our new crew, accompanied by Paul, Heetan and I, were having a great time. The booze was flowing and we were all getting to know one another, as well as enjoying the sights of the mighty Zambezi (sorry if I belabour this, but every single time we heard anyone from the compay that owned our campsite, Safari Par Excellence, describe the river, it was as "the mighty Zambezi"). Admittedly, we hadn't managed to steal most of the bowls of snacks the way we did the previous time, and there was looking likely to be a serious queue for dinner as we were on the larger of the company's two boats this time, in company of a good deal of other people, some of whom were less likely to be viewing the exercise as a booze cruise than us (if only because they were severely underaged!). I ended up getting the tail ends of dinner, as I stayed behind on deck to get as many piccies as possible of the sunset - the previous cruise, I had decided against taking my digital camera with me, and so had ended up with just a couple of pics on a disposable 35mm job, and I had resolved to remedy that this time.

Our issues for the evening started off fairly soon after I returned to the table, when Heetan got near to the end of his dinner and decided he wanted to have a food-fight with Paul. It started off fairly harmlessly with a couple of crusts of bread flying, but then escalated, and was obviously irritating the people sitting around us, plus creating mess for the crew to clean up. At this point, I made the mistake of suggesting to Heetan that it might be a good idea to stop. For my pains, I was informed that I was condescending and in danger of wrecking his holiday, and that he really wished he didn't have to hate me.

This was something of a surprise to me, as I had thought that Heetan and I got on okay. I promptly apologised to him for anything I might have done to upset him, and considered the matter closed. I was also distracted as, around this time, a quartet of elephants swam across our wake, on the way back from one of the islands to the mainland. For me, the spectacle of an elephant swimming is just that little bit unnerving, as it seems unnatural that something that big and heavy should be able to, but I guess if I can then there's no reason why an elephant shouldn't be able to, too!

Throughout this, I had also been attempting to get people going with the old Zambezi Surprises, but there was significantly less interest than on our original trip - I think the absence of Valdy at this point may have influenced proceedings. Hence, most of us were in a fairly reasonable state when we returned to shore. I say most of us because, in retrospect, I have to admit that I was relatively trolleyed - I had been hoovering up people's unwanted Surprises, and that left me just a little bit woozy. Hence, I reckon I probably didn't make the best of impressions on the remainder of our new crew when we got back to the truck - I was probably slurring slightly, rather owlish, and realised a couple of minutes after I got back that I hadn't got my camera. Five minutes of panic (and a trip back to the boat) later, it turned out one of the others had picked it up and brought it along, much to my relief (the same, unfortunately, did not turn out to be true for my fleece when I realised the next morning I had left it behind - oops...). I also didn't remember a single name of anybody I met that evening, which is most unlike me.

Still, all seemed to be going okay, as I rather idiotically got started on the first of several more beers while waiting for the others to finish up dinner and come over to join us at the bar. And it still seemed okay for the next half hour or so, until I turned around from the bar at the sound of my name to be confronted by Heetan, who promptly repeated his earlier allegations that I was wrecking his holiday, along with a few further choice riffs around the theme, this time in front of the entire bar. I apparently just sat there flabbergasted for a couple of minutes, before getting rather upset. As far as I was concerned, I had thought any disagreement we'd had closed on the boat, especially as I'd offered to try and make sure I didn't do anything else to upset him. I think eventually Jon and Brandon managed to calm me down and make sure I went off to bed without doing anything stupid (something for a which I'm not sure I ever thanked them properly - in case I didn't, I'd just like to say that I owe you guys!). I only found out a few days ago, after the trip had finished, that Heetan apparently gave something like a 5-minute monologue to Brandon's video-camera that evening about how unpleasant I was. So, not the best of endings to the evening.

Against this background, the fact that I slept in the next morning, and did not join the new crew on their trip down to see the Falls (as we'd done a couple of days earlier) was fairly understandable. It was also remarkably stupid, as I neglected to get my camera off the truck before it departed, and I was lined up for a helicopter flight over the falls that morning. Luckily, Jon came to my rescue again at this point, lending me his own digital camera so that I could at least take some photos from the flight. The flight itself was extraordinary - I'd never been in a helicopter before, and this one went zooming along through the gorges at low level for a while, before popping up and flying around the falls - I had thought they looked spectacular from ground level, but only now realised just how small a section of them I had seen, and how incredible they were. It was an expensive little excursion, but an eye-opening one. However, my eyes (and any minor sense of injustice I might still be feeling about the previous night) were to get a rude awakening when I returned to camp.

I had left for my flight at 10:00am, which corresponds to 9:00am in the UK, and returned about an hour later. And this was Thursday 7th July, 2005. When I got back and went to give Jon his camera back, he mentioned that he had seen on the BBC News site that there had been some kind of an accident or power failure on the Tube, and we both remarked how typical this was the day after London had been awarded the Olympic games for 2012. I then went downstairs and noticed the TV behind the bar, tuned to Sky news. And the words "multiple explosions", "possible terrorist attack" and "London" plastered across the bottom of the screen. For me, this was a case of seeing something I had dreaded but halfways expected for the last few years, softened by the fact that none of my family were in the capital (although there were still a couple of my friends I was worried for, who luckily turned out to be okay). For some of the others, it was altogether more personal, and there were a lot of worried people heating up the phone-lines back to the UK, trying to work out what was going on. All the rest of us could do was watch, and hope that they got the right reply in the end.

Unsurprisingly, our lunchtime departure that day was delayed, and the drive down to the border (the Zambezi river crossing into Botswana) passed in a fairly sober mood, as people exchanged what little they knew of what was happening. After all the anticipation I'd had of what the atmosphere would be like on the truck with our new passengers aboard, this was not at all what I'd expected. By that evening, when we knew that nobody had got the bad news they feared, and the body counts were coming in (unpleasantly high, but could have been so much worse), things started to perk up a little more and get back to a little more like normality. It was to be a recurrent background theme for the rest of the trip, though, whenever we got near a TV - we would always be confronted with the latest news of the bombings and the aftermath. I have to admit that a selfish part of me was just really glad that I wasn't in London any more.

Anyways, my time is coming to an end again here, and I think I've probably depressed people enough for this posting. I will pick up the story in Kasane, Botswana, with our adventures in Chobe National Park, the next time write. Until then, I hope that you are all well.

Take care and have fun,

Pat