Guest Post by Julie Curtis:

I sleep beneath a mosquito net, under a blanket that was originally intended to be a garment for a Masai warrior, in a house with no indoor shower, and electricity that cuts out at 10:30pm and then whirs noisily on again at 6am, filling the room with light if I left the switch in the on position when it quit, which I do, because I can’t remember which position is “off”. There are bush babies in the trees outside my window, enormous white cricket-like bugs plastered to the windows dreaming of getting in, and who knows what else roaming around at night. It seems unfair to expect the wi fi to work here. And yet, it kind of does. Enough to make me believe in the possibility of it. Enough to allow my clients in Japan to expect me to meet their quick-turn copywriting deadlines.

Things can get in the way of work here, though. This morning, Anne and I had an 8:30 meeting to attend. I gave myself plenty of time to shower before we had to leave. Part of timing the shower involves 15 minutes for heating a big metal pot of water on the stove. Then you carry the pot of water from the kitchen building outside Anne’s and John’s house across a bit of lawn and around a stone semi-enclosure within which a shower head hangs from a tree. The enclosure is spacious enough. There’s a sink on one end of it, and a mirror, and some sticks you can hang your towels and things on. There’s cold water running through the pipes, so you turn that on, take your hot water from the pot with a plastic pitcher, and add some cold water to that. You should test it though, before you pour it on your head. I learned this the hard way.

It deserves to be detailed that all the while you are focused on not scalding your head as you shampoo it, there is no door or even a shower curtain between you and the wilds of Africa. Elephants came around and tore up the plumbing to this very shower one night just a couple of weeks ago. Last night, a wild cat called a large spotted genet was seen prowling around it. A leopard apparently lives nearby, just a few trees away. And you’re in there, naked, with closed eyes and wet, leafy feet, in no condition to run if the need were to present itself. But it isn’t the showering that keeps us from making it to the meeting on time.

Shower enclosure

It’s the rhinos. A little family of them, Mom, Dad and Baby, giving us the stink eye from the side of rutted dirt trail that passes for a pretty good road around here. Their horns look even bigger in person than they do in National Geographic photos, just so you know.

Baby, spotting a succulent mouthful of grass, moves a few steps closer to us, unaware of our presence. “No, Baby!” Anne groans. Mom and Dad move toward us, acutely aware of our presence. From the looks on their faces, and we’re close enough to read them, Anne knows better than to drive the Land Cruiser even another inch in their direction.

So we wait. And they stare. And we wait. And they stare some more. And it goes on like this. Anne turns off the engine, which seems to put them at ease a little. Time passes. We sense the onset of their disinterest. But like cops who decide to let us off with a warning, they seem proud of the tension they’ve created between us, and that compels them to shift position slowly. Or maybe it’s just that extra thousand pounds they’ve been carrying around.

Anne starts the car back up as the rhinos pivot and amble away. A few minutes later, we spot a zebra crossing the road. A fresh wound on his right hind quarter about the size of a dinner plate hints at a recent scuffle with a predator. Maybe a lion. He limps a bit.

The fallout of our being late to our meeting and whatever trouble I may be in with my client as a result of my flaky internet connection seems pretty insignificant by comparison.