Dear god, what a night! As we sat around eating chicken with veg and water-lily stew the south began to flicker. ‘Far away, that storm,’ Peter pronounced. An hour later we all trooped to the edge of the reedbed to watch bolts of searing lightning hammering unfortunate trees not to far off.
Around midnight a blast of wind rolled over my igloo tent and I groped around in the dark trying to right it from the inside. It was like being in one of those bubbles kids use to walk on water. The best way to hold it was to lie on my back in the middle with my feet against the windward pole. From that odd position I was soon mopping puddles from imperfectly tied down window flaps as rain thundered down.
With no clothes on I started getting cold and had to do some strange contortions to jam the mattress under me and throw the sleeping bag over me without, for a second, unhitching my feet from the pole or stopping mopping. An hour later I was still in that position as the storm raged on, lightning turning the tent on and off like a neon advertisement for canvas.
At about 01h00 the rain and wind suddenly stopped and I fell into a triumphant but exhausted sleep. I hadn’t been rolled into the Delta. The next morning people emerged from their tents looking soggy and exhausted.
After breakfast we packed the mekoro and headed south down the Boro River towards our last camp before Maun. It was a long, hot day in the mekoro. The trees receded, replaced by huge reed beds. Even the water lilies became scarce. We made camp and went for a swim in even darker water imagining saurian surges and sharp teeth.
That evening the mozzies relished our sweet flesh. They bit through anti-moz spray, they bit through trousers, they bit through T-shirts and treated citronella armbands with contempt. I fled to my tent. With the temp around 35 degrees it was hot in there.
