Before any of my CrazyTraveler solo trips, I always download a bunch of TV shows and movies on my phone, assuming I’ll have lots of solo down time to watch them. But on my past few trips, I rarely did. I’d either find people at my hotels/hostels to hang out and have beers with, or I’d fall into bed exhausted after a full day of adventuring, too tired for even a tv show from home. (Last year, in Vietnam, I had my posse of pseudo-CrazyTravelers with me, which made for plenty of live entertainment!)

But on this trip, I’m with my 2 kids, 2 iPhones, 1 iPad and 1 laptop. And it’s all about watching downloaded shows – for the fourth, fifth or fifteenth time – on our devices during downtime.

On my phone, I have a bunch of episodes of Mozart in the Jungle (love it!), Animal Farm (to show Zara after she finishes reading the book for school), and I admit it, Baywatch – the movie that came out last year. It was free to download on Amazon prime. And it seemed like a fun way for me to kill time, numb my brain and have some laughs on the long flights to get here. But I never did watch it enroute, however. So it was still on my phone, unwatched and unexpired.

So that’s how yesterday we came to watch Baywatch – mom and daughters – on a blanket in the sand in front of our little cabin here in Zambia.

We had a two hour break between work sessions on the home building projects.

We were tired.

We wanted to chill.

The girls asked if we could watch a movie together. I said yes, thinking on one of their devices. But these Sherlock Homes-es showed up with my phone set up to Baywatch.

I figured, if I had decided they were mature enough to come with me to Africa to work on a home building project and to volunteer in local schools, then they were mature enough for Baywatch!! (And though I should not so publicly admit it, me and Adam have watched a number of R rated movies with them before.)

Few things are more disparate then going from mud hut building to Baywatch watching.

I don’t think my kids necessarily appreciated the multiple worlds and needs and economies we melded between – with our fancy devices, watching a very California-life style eye-candy movie, from a blanket on the sandy ground of Zambia, as we lay covered in mud, bug spray and sunscreen.

But moms have to keep their kids happy. Here in Zambia that may just mean feeding their kids a bowl of neshima (a traditional corn meal based porridge type dish).

For this mom, it meant Baywatch watching…