pony cripes, NZ is a LOOONG way.
LOL @ Grey Horse.
I read in (I think) The oBserver's letters page a while back, something like (when a theme was being stopped at airport security)
"I'm sorry sir, you can't take those (insert whatever metal object it was) through with you as they could be used to make the pilot crash the plane"
"Mr Security Man, clearly I AM the pilot. In my experience, if the pilot wants to crash the plane, it usually does".
So no, I am not typically reassured that the pilot's stuff is being thoroughly checked.
skater have a fab time if I've not missed you.
pan We support the charity side of Manda. SOmeone said (sorry can't remember who) how glam it was to be invited to Africa. Sadly not . Nkwichi, where the lodge is, is the most beautiful place I've ever been and we've certainly stayed in the wonderful lodges there, which are amazing. But this time it would be the mud huts in the local village.
The nearest air conditioning is in Malawi, about a day's travel from Nkwichi. The AC in the lodges is open rooms - ie the rooms are made from wooden structures part thatched and huge open areas for breeze. The bathrooms are outside so you shower in the jungle with the monkeys and birds (it's really bush but much thicker where the lodges are than further back from the lake as there's so much water). The water comes from the lake which is so pure that it can be safely drunk without even filtering - although they do filter it anyway just in case (no BH or anything). The showers are heated by wood burners under huge oil tanks. You have one lock up box to stop the monkeys getting your stuff (they love toothpaste!). There's only one leopard in the area and he typically keeps away from the lodges (I think he's only been seen in one once and it was unoccupied) and there are baboons but they're further back into the bush, they don't come around the lodge.
There is electricity but as the nearest mains is about 10 miles away through the bush, it comes entirely from the solar panels which YOB installed 2 years ago. He spent a year working on that project which was great, then a couple of months out there getting them installed. I went out for a fortnight. They have a farm which they trial different methods of farming which can be used effectively in the surrounding bush. This has meant that the locals, most of whom are displaced people from the war, and who therefore don't have the knowledge of how best to use the land, can learn how to grow a much wider range of crops using only locally available tools and fertilisers, which has made a massive impact on the local's health. The farm also makes the cards which I use for gift vouchers in MAC. THey're made from waste paper left at the lodge by guests (eg newspapers) mixed with banana leaves - all mashed and re-made into paper by hand. My project while I was there was to get them making really nice cards which worked well, and they sell them now to guests which is great.
It's not really a very bad place for Malaria, not like Tanzania, the coast of Kenya or even Malawi, but there's plenty around and you'd get it if you stayed there a while (most people do within a year which isn't too bad). Even so I wouldn't travel there without AM, especially as you have to go via Malawi. ACtually just to travel to the lodge takes about 3 days so you really want to be away for a minimum of 3 weeks.
I do agree with you about travelling without the little ones though. I haven't yet taken LC there. But I did leave him for 3 days once when he was 3 months old, with huge amounts of frozen milk, and that was a nightmare as I'd upped my supply so much to express the spare milk that I was in agony all weekend (even though I was expressing like mad). We went to Olympia, which we do every Christmas with a couple of friends from Oxford, and in the interval I was in the loos, desperately expressing, and only afterwards did I realise how odd it was that two girls went into a cubicle together and then there was this bzzz-bzzzz noise coming out. On the way back to my friends' flat, we took the London-Oxford bus, and I had to go into the loos again and spend the whole time expressing. The bus was full of Metallica fans in their 40s and 50s, apparently the original generation now all grown up and professors and stuff, going back to Oxford having been kicked out of Earls Court, talking in uber-posh Oxford accents about whether the tonal details of "creeping death" were quite the same as the last event they were honoured to attend. Given that I hogged the loo the whole time I eventually put my head around the door to say to the person nearest the loo that I was expressing milk, not suffering from some bowel condition, and please to get anyone needing the facility to knock on the door. Hey, I'd lost my dignity and wasn't getting it back for some time yet.