Joe enjoyed tidying the garage, much to his surprise. He came across toys and games he’d forgotten about, two of which he decided to reinstate in his bedroom.
When his father found a box of photographs from their trip to the Philippines, they sat together on an upturned crate, going through them and recalling where they had been taken.
‘We’re supposed to be clearing up, not reminiscing,’ Aesha grumbled, though she kept stopping to look over their shoulders and her own efforts were somewhat half-hearted.
‘There’s a lovely picture of you here,’ Peter said, grinning and showing it to her.
‘That snorkel mask really suits you.’ Joe laughed.
Aesha snatched the photograph and tore it up.
‘You’re mean,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Dad, you look like a pot-bellied pig in that one.’
She pointed to a photograph Joe had taken of their father in his swimming shorts holding up a bunch of seaweed.
‘I do not!’ Peter protested hotly. ‘That finely honed body could model for any number of top magazines, if only someone would discover it.’
‘Yeah, wildlife magazines!’ Joe hooted. ‘We could take photos of you posing with an elephant and ask people to spot the difference!’
‘I have such cruel children.’ Peter sighed. ‘Nobody understands what I have to put up with.’
There was a sudden barking at the door. Joe jumped up and opened it to Foggy, the family schnauzer, who made his way straight to Peter and put his head on his master’s knee.
‘Nobody except Foggy,’ Peter added, stroking his ears.
‘I don’t know why he likes you when you’re the one who sticks him in the doggery every time we go away,’ said Aesha.
‘Waggy Tails Boarding Kennels is the equivalent of a five-star hotel but for dogs,’ Peter countered. ‘He’ll be treated like a superstar while he’s there.’
‘Do they treat animals well in zoos?’ Joe asked.
‘Good zoos do,’ said Peter. ‘When I went to London Zoo to take photos for a magazine project, I was shown to a meal preparation room where the walls were covered with menu boards for each species, with special diets for the elderly and sick – including one for a gibbon with no teeth! Not only that, but the meat and vegetables were top quality. There was even a shelf lined with large jars full of spices so that the keepers could add variety to the animals’ meals. In fact, I thought about moving in!’
‘Cool!’ said Joe. ‘Can we go in there one day?’
‘You’ll have to ask your mother to arrange it,’ Peter replied. ‘But the answer will be a big no if we don’t get a move on with this garage.’
He stood up and gently pushed Foggy back out through the door.
‘Do you think we’ll see leopards when we’re on safari?’ Joe asked, as he repositioned his bike so that it wasn’t blocking his mother’s filing cabinet.
‘It’s not very likely,’ Aesha piped up. ‘Leopards are extremely rare and they’re very well camouflaged.’
‘You’d think their spots would make them easy to see, wouldn’t you?’ Joe said thoughtfully.
‘Shadows make trees and grass appear dappled, which plays tricks with your eyes, and that’s why leopards and cheetahs are hard to pick out with their spotted coats,’ Peter explained. ‘But the safari guides know where they’re most likely to be sighted, so we might be lucky.’
‘It would be so cool to be a safari guide,’ said Joe. ‘Can you imagine spending all day tracking animals in the wild and watching them hunting and playing?’
‘I bet it would soon get boring,’ Aesha responded.
‘I don’t think it would get boring at all,’ Joe said hotly. ‘It’s nowhere near as boring as working in an office, is it, Dad? Is this tidy enough now?’
‘I think it should just about pass your mother’s high standards,’ Peter said, picking up two large suitcases and signalling for Aesha to open the door.
Foggy, who had stationed himself on sentry duty on the other side, leapt to his feet the moment he saw them and looked up, as though expecting some sort of treat for his dedication.
‘All done?’ Binti enquired, when they walked back into the house.
‘It’s spick, span and spotless,’ Peter assured her.
Joe disappeared up to his bedroom, in case his mother had any other chores for him. He wanted to immerse himself in a book about African wildlife that he had found on her bookcase. He knew about ‘the Big Five’ – elephants, rhinos, lions, leopards and buffaloes – and that they would see zebras, wildebeests and lots of different antelopes, but he was keen to find out if there were any lesser known animals that he could keep a lookout for.
Stretching out on his bed, he was thrilled to read that he might see hippos, and giggled at a photograph of a group of them wallowing in a muddy river. He wondered if there were crocodiles as well.
It would be so cool to see a crocodile, he thought to himself. Crocodiles must be the scariest animals ever!
What surprised Joe most was the discovery that ostriches live on the savannah, and he hadn’t realised they were so big until he came to a photograph of one standing close to a giraffe.
‘I hope we see an ostrich and a cheetah and a leopard and a crocodile and a hippo,’ he said to Peter, who had poked his head round the bedroom door to ask if he wanted to go to the shops with him.
‘I don’t think Surrey is renowned for its wildlife!’ Peter said, chuckling loudly.
It seemed no time at all between the day they retrieved their suitcases from the garage and the day before their departure, when Joe carefully cushioned his camera in the middle of his case. In just a few hours they would be on their way to Kenya and a whole new world of adventure would open up before them. Joe was certain that this would turn out to be one of their best trips ever, especially since there were so many animals to be spotted. He had checked his camera over and cleaned the lenses, taking special care with the long-distance lens his father had bought him for their trip to India, where they had helped with vulture conservation.
I’ll definitely need that. He grinned. I definitely won’t be taking close-up shots of a rhino!
Joe hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps as a wildlife photographer, though sometimes he thought he would prefer to be a vet like his mother. Either way, he wanted to be involved with helping animals. His friend Adam had told him he was the luckiest boy in their school because his parents’ professions gave him the opportunity to go to such amazing places. Joe couldn’t help but agree. In the past few months he and his family had been to eastern Russia, the Philippines and India. Now they were about to go to East Africa.
On the last day of school it seemed no one wanted to talk about anything else! Everyone asked Joe about the animals he was going to see. They even devised a rowdy game where they charged around the school field in teams, some of them rhinos and some of them elephants, and the winning team was the one to knock over the most opponents. It made Joe feel important, even though he was on the losing team of elephants and had a number of bruises to show for it.
‘All my friends wish they were going to Africa with me,’ he said to Binti on the way home. ‘Can one of them come with us one day?’
‘I think you and Aesha get into more than enough scrapes when it’s just the two of you!’ she replied.
‘I promise not to get into any scrapes this time,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you can help yourself!’ Binti laughed. ‘You seem to attract trouble.’