October 19

I wake up early.

'Morning, Margaret,' Sian greets me as we pass in the corridor.  I attribute this rather obscure remark to the fact that the electricity is on: it affects different people in different ways.

Helen, our guest, has gone out to Matopos to see the rhino.  Yesterday, she told us she is a professional 'couch surfer'.  This is the basic idea:  if you want to go to London and want to save money on accommodation, you can go onto the Couch Surfing website and look for a suitable host.  These hosts offer their couches as places to stay free of charge.  In return, you get to meet people from all over the world.  Ideally, there should be some interaction between the hosts and the surfers(?) and if the hosts should later on find themselves in the surfers' part of the world, some reciprocal arrangement is encouraged. 

I wonder what this is like and whether I could do it.  I doubt it. I am too OCD about too many things: clean toilets, clean sheets, other people's coffee mugs.  If I stay in a hotel, I rinse out the cups on the tray before using them. The thought of a backpackers fills me with horror.  There is some appeal, though, in the idea of travelling light.  Sometimes I wouldn't mind just setting off into the sunset with only 'my knapsack on my back'.

This is not the first time I have heard of couch surfing.  Two years ago, a Russian lady booked to stay with us.  She had couch-surfed into Bulawayo, where her hosts offered to take her out to Matopos for the day.  What they didn't tell her was that they were bringing eight members of the family with and she was going to pay for them all to get in and for the hire of a minibus to take them out there. The next day it was a trip out to Khami Ruins.  Eventually, she had enough and booked with us for three nights.

  

It is a sweltering hot day.  The electricity goes off at about 2.30pm and comes back on when we are having dinner with our friend, Anne.  Helen arrives back much later than anticipated.  Her tour group consisted of two vehicles.  The guide in charge of the leading vehicle took a wrong turn and, although the guide in Helen's vehicle claimed he had not been down this particular road for many a year, he still followed.  At one point, they had to jack the Land Cruiser up as it struggled to get over some rocks.  They only had lunch at 5.30pm.