Out of Africa

Colin Randall

• Last Updated: October 15. 2008 9:30AM UAE / October 15. 2008 5:30AM GMT

It is a novel refinement of the slogan emblazoned, with variations, across a million chests: “My parents went to New York and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”

Passing through Abu Dhabi after three months on her African wildlife project, my elder daughter Christelle handed me my present. It looked and felt like a banknote, and it bore an impressive sum: $25 billion.

There were snags, which is where the lousy comes in; the dollars were Zimbabwean, and the issuing bank was the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

Christelle, I must assume, was sold a pup when she paid a few South African rand for the note on the border with Zimbabwe. $25bn notes have certainly been in circulation, but with an inflation rate of 231 million per cent, it is fair to conclude that mine, assuming it is genuine, has already been rendered worthless in subsequent currency revaluations. Why, you can get three loaves of bread for as little as 50,000 Zimbabwean dollars these days.

So what else did she bring back? Scores of great photos, and thousands of words, for a start. She will never forget what she did with the sabbatical from her job in film publicity (her stopover, sadly, was one day too short for her to catch anything of the Middle East International Film Festival). And although she wrote at length online about her experiences, she still has a fund of anecdotes as deep as a US bank bailout package.

That means lots more to say about lions and leopards, snakes and hyenas, and the great white sharks she met while descending, secure – or so she says – in a cage, from a boat off Cape Town.

But there are also some Bridget Jones in the Jungle moments to report.

The first came even before she left Britain, when she was overheard at a family wedding in Middlesbrough asking a cousin whether she’d have trouble finding beauticians in Africa (what the good folk of Middlesbrough might know of beauticians is a mystery in itself). And after several self-imposed brushes with danger in the game reserves, her last came right at the end. Staying in a backpackers’ hostel, she lay awake terrified at the sound of rustling. What manner of deadly snake had invaded her room?

Summoning the courage to shine her torch, having first taken the doubtful precaution of standing on the bed, she identified not one intruder but two. Out of one of her bags popped their faces, the faces of a pair of mice looking ever so pleased with themselves after feasting on anti-malaria tablets and her iPod headphones.

Which presumably explains Christelle’s need to re-establish her credentials as a fearless adventurer. During her brief stay in the UAE, she noticed a relatively large, feral feline presence outside our flat. “These days, of course,” she said a little haughtily, “I’m accustomed to rather bigger cats than that.”