Monday, July 28, 2008

Parallel universes

A week ago I planned to write about one of the most intriguing guests I met during my time at the DDS lodges. On the day there would be an attack at the property where I live in Maun, out in Savute Paul Berg was telling me jokes --he spent two years as a stand-up comic -- and piquing my interest in his profession as a forensics psychologist. The trials for the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City defendants, Rodney King after the riots in Los Angeles: he told me was involved in those cases.

Do you remember the line uttered by Rodney King in 1992, Paul asked: "Can we all get along?"

I told him I did, absolutely; I regarded it as a defining line of the '90s. It was the statement that brought race relations into stark relief in the aftermath of the LA police officers' beating a suspect senseless. A passerby captured the brutality on videotape which aired on national television and enraged a city.

"I wrote that," he said of King's famous plea.

It strikes me as cruel irony that I was focused on thinking about the Rodney King trial and in particular his iconic statement on the day intruders beat and stabbed my landlords. I wish someone in this village would speak such a line, ghost-written or not, and mean it.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Africa, bright and dark


July 27, 2008
This photo I took at Xugana Island Lodge was supposed to commemorate Bruce, the raucous-sounding resident hippo, who made the rounds after the staff and guests went to bed every night. He sloshed out of the lagoon and wandered around chewing grass. I spent part of one full-moon night listening in awe as he chewed the grass on the other side of the wall from my bed, and then I listened some more as he trudged along the perimeter, his big feet making what can only be called a soft, spongy sound. I looked out my window and could see his shadowy figure in the moonlight.

Bruce often left a calling card. His tail whipped like the blades of a fan, spraying dung on plants, path lights and the markers for the path. It signaled to anyone interested that this was his territory, where he had completed his work for the evening. One day I spotted his calling card on what I thought was an orchid. My friend Julie Ardery, who founded www.humanflowerproject.com in Austin, took a look at my flower photo and sent it on to an expert. In a jiff the word came back from Julie that this was a shell ginger on the palm leaf. Shell gingers are found in Asia; Julie dubbed this a new example of globalization.

I thought the photo would be appropriate given the events of the past week. There is the beauty of the blossom. There is the coating of dung. The polarity of light and dark, the painterly fragility of a flower and the smelly spray of crap. Life hands us all of that. What do we do with it?

Acceptance. That's the only word that comes to mind for me today. Acceptance of it all.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

A bend in the river

July 26, 2008
Maun, Botswana

Before I came to Botswana I heard the rumors and fielded the questions: She’s moving to Africa?! She must have fallen in love with a man while on vacation. Why else would she pack up and leave everything – her normal life-- for a year? It HAS to be a man.

It’s true that I fell helplessly head over heels in the way I have done in the past for a man, but this time the heartthrob that left me breathless was a country. When I was standing out in the wilderness marveling at the sunset last July, my heart felt truly at home and as full as at any time I was falling off the familiar cliff for a man. Maybe fuller.

My many blog entries confirm how I came here to Botswana wearing sparkling, rose-colored glasses. I was crazy in love with a place. I also knew, much as I hated to entertain the thought, to prepare myself, for my idealized view would not turn out to be the whole picture and my affection would most likely be tested in some way.

This was the week.

I am writing about this because I find writing helps me to sort out my feelings and think through knotty problems. As one of my writer friends says, I’m not sure what I think of something until I write my way through it.

My last blog entry talked about how I was rushing off to the bush again, this time to fill in for an assistant lodge manager needing to return to his village for his sister’s funeral. I was sad that there was yet another young person’s funeral in Botswana (the numbers are astounding) but selfishly grateful to receive the request for my return to Savute Marsh, just outside Chobe National Park. I could see the elephants again and hear the lions and, with any luck, see my first cheetah in the wild.

The remote bush is magic. Sit and look in one direction for a few minutes. You will be amazed at the show changing before your eyes: Elephants silently come out of nowhere to drink water. A martial eagle flies in. A family of warthogs trots by. Over there, in the thorn-bush, the leader of a group of impala peeks through to see if the coast is clear to the water hole. A little elephant shows up, a deformed misfit -- he has a conical stump where his trunk should be -- but he manages, with his right back leg stretched straight out behind him, to tip himself forward, as if in elephant yoga pose, and with unspeakable grace he sips from the water hole. Later the wild dogs might circle. I will never tire of the view.

The plan was for me to fly in on July 15 and stay until Sunday or Monday. That would have me back in time to work on solving my transportation challenge and to prepare for my volunteer work set to begin on July 23 at Bana Ba Letsatsi, a Maun nonprofit that cares for at-risk children.

As it happened I was in the dark about my departure time. Our radio communications went out at the lodge, and I wasn’t getting any information about when I might leave. By Monday I was worried about when I would ever be back in Maun. Word finally came that afternoon that I would fly out on Tuesday.

And so this week, on Tuesday, I flew back to Maun, where I was met at the airport by Desert and Delta’s head of HR, Adrienne, who has gone out of her way to welcome me and help at every turn of my journey to Botswana. She lugs my bags. She gives me “mystery guest” assignments. She checks in with me by SMS to let me know she and her husband are there if I need anything.

This time she met me with bad news: On Monday night there was an intrusion on the property where I live and it was terrible. She offered to put me up in town for the night. But I said no. I wanted to go there and find out for myself.

The taxi ride on the sandy road to my house was interminable. Would my place be ransacked? Would my laptop be gone? How bad was it? I was supposed to have been sleeping there Monday night if not for the delay in my departure. What might I have faced alone in that cottage?

The local Maun newspaper, which got many of the facts wrong in the news story, got some of them right in its editorial yesterday, “The incident this week which resulted in a resident and his wife being stabbed when assaulted in their home has sent shockwaves through the community….”

I found my little cottage untouched by the violence. But next door, a few yards away in our fenced compound, I found Stuart with his face and eyes swollen and gauze wrapped around his head. His wife, Kim, had bruises on her head and a small but fat bandage on her back, behind her arm. Their 10-year-old son, my buddy who gives me survival tips for the bush, was physically unharmed but exhausted.

This is how the attack was described to me, in hurried and piecemeal terms, and I write this admittedly without my having had the courage I have in my professional life to go back and double-check every last detail before publishing. I am too heartbroken for my neighbors’ plight to ask again:

Kirk, an architect and one of the owners of the safari company who lives in an apartment in our compound, had been sitting in the living room of my and his landlords’ house, the green, thatched-roof house that I have described as having a storybook quality. He left just after 9 p.m. to go to the River Lodge for a drink.

Not 15 minutes later two men barreled through the door of the green house. Stuart was sitting on the couch doing work on his laptop. One of the assailants attacked him with a metal bar, likely a crowbar. He was knocked out, and he crashed through the glass coffee table. Blood was everywhere. They went after Kim and knocked her down. They left for a minute or two and returned. The smaller one zeroed in on Kim, now in the bedroom. He pushed at the bedroom door, trying to get to her and the boy. Kim struggled to push the door closed. They went back and forth like this until the man managed to squeeze his arm through the opening and began stabbing her.

The little boy was yelling at him to get out. But the knife worked. The attacker pushed his way into the bedroom and beat Kim some more when she lay crumpled on the ground. The little boy was brilliant, clever beyond words. He managed to slip past and out the bedroom door. He grabbed the 911 radio from the floor where it had fallen and rushed into the dark. He hid in the darkest spot he could find on the property and radioed for help. All over Maun this week people have been talking about the chilling call from the child, and I cried when I heard him tell me what he had done. How brave he was.

The 911-radio system is bush-style vigilance in a town that hasn’t yet earned the designation of being called a town by the Botswana government. Maun is still considered a village, a frontier-like settlement growing fast, where crime is on the increase and the police haven’t been able to cope. Most tourists never even see Maun. They fly into the airport on Air Botswana from Johannesburg and out by bush plane a few minutes later into the pristine world of the Okavango Delta or the savanna of Chobe National Park.

In Maun the citizens have stepped into the law enforcement void with a take-no-prisoners attitude. One woman who has seen the 911 response in action described it to me as a scene out of the movie “Mad Max.” As soon as a call comes in, residents from every corner of Maun in the network respond. They roar to the scene in their 4X4s and aboard ATVs, some with guns slung over their backs, some with sticks in hand and with their spotlights scanning for the intruders.

At the property where I live it’s estimated that they began arriving within about 3 minutes of the little boy’s call. The quick response has been a true comfort to those who live on this property.

You pay for a radio and an annual membership in the network, and in return you are expected to respond in whatever capacity you can to emergency calls. The head of the network is Sharif (I’m not sure of the spelling). He is a Muslim family man, a local businessman and a renowned tracker of criminals. The only thing that stops his pursuit is prayer time, when he unfolds his rug, falls to his knees and prays to Allah. He showed up at this property and tracked through the night. So did the police. They followed the criminals’ footprints in the sand in the way guides track the lions.

By 8 a.m. Tuesday, the police had caught the suspects, who I am told have confessed and have led police to the stolen money and items taken from the green house. The police performed so admirably that Stuart has written the head of law enforcement for all of Botswana to commend them.

Standing inside the green house as Kim was telling me the story, I looked at her and couldn’t stop my tears when I imagined what her family had been through. And I told her how before I left for the bush I had seen a man walking near our fence line. It was daytime. I was standing in my cottage, its sliding glass door open, and I was sweeping the dust and pellets from the so-called “tree squirrels” from my place. The man stared in at me. He gave me the creeps. He wasn’t like men in Botswana. There had been no greeting of hello and a wave. I had a bad feeling. I watched him as he walked and he kept turning back to look behind him. I remember thinking I need to remember this guy should anything bad happen. Later that day I asked Kirk whether I should be concerned about what I had seen. He said no, a lot of neighbors walk by the fence to go down to the river to fish. That guy was probably one of the neighbors, he said. I wasn’t so sure.

On Tuesday afternoon, Kim looked surprised when I told her the story.
“Can you describe him?”
I said I couldn’t really describe his face, but he had been wearing a striped shirt. Her eyes widened. Striped, how?
I told her horizontal. Blue and White.
“Dark or light?”
I wanted to say dark. I knew it wasn’t baby blue. I knew it was a rugby-style shirt.
A few minutes later, Kim had me peek out the window, from behind the curtain. The police were putting the suspects in the truck after having made them retrace their steps to find the goods. I couldn’t see the bigger one, the one called the more “vicious” of the two. But the “weaker” one, the one who had stabbed Kim, was wearing the rugby shirt I had described. The guy must have been casing the property the day I saw him walk the fence line.

As I write on this Saturday morning, men are outside hammering. Stuart has ordered a replacement fence to be built, a taller one far different from the chain-link model currently in place. Our bush view will soon be gone. New bolts are on my doors. We have security at night making the rounds. Beside my bed is a can of “Gettem,” a ridiculous-sounding name for Mace. I sleep with my cellphone under the pillow beside me with the number on the screen for one of the men I know who will respond in an emergency. For several nights it was the number for Bernie, Adrienne’s husband. Last night it was Kirk’s. A businesswoman in town called to check on me and said I must buy a 911 radio (or she would buy it for me), but I opted not to after Adrienne said it would frighten me more to hear it; a cellphone was fine. I opted as well not to buy the “taser” stick the woman recommended.

The newspaper editorial yesterday closed with, “The police in Maun cannot be blamed for an inability to stop crime in its entirety. The force is understaffed and there are not enough vehicles. Patrols mounted by the police and special constables, and on occasion by the security forces, are mounted day and night but the deviousness of the criminal element must be recognized. The community is urged to take all reasonable precautions for protection purposes.”

Which is a little like an editorial extolling to students the benefits of completing their homework.

What does one do when a love affair takes a turn?

I am watching. I am listening. I am sleeping, sometimes with one eye open. I recall how I lived for 3 months in the bush with my laptop and digital camera in full view and my wallet with its passport in my backpack on the floor. The lodge managers have no safes in their rooms and in most cases no locks on their doors. Except for the first day, I never worried for a moment about my safety or my belongings’ safety in my tent or house. Even with wild animals pacing at night, the remote bush, it seems to me now, is far safer than civilization.

In the outskirts of Maun where I live, the doves made their morning calls as usual today. The winter sky dawned its constant blue. My big plan for the day is a trip into Maun to buy groceries so I can cook spaghetti tonight for all of us who live on the property.

I am convinced that Africa has more to teach me, not just about light so bright one must don rose-colored glasses to withstand the splendor but about the shadow side of life that all of us would prefer to ignore, no matter where we live. For now I am staying. But I am not as giddily happy or as carefree as I was a week ago. And it brings to mind a common expression among Africans I have met, black and white; their quiet response to anything that demands sympathy or a signal of human connection in times of trouble: “Shame. Ah, shame.”

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Duty calls

News flash:
I'm headed in an hour or so to the bush. An assistant manager at Savute needs to go to a funeral and I was called by the head of HR to see if I want to go in as a relief manager in his place for a few days. Does a leopard have spots? Does an elephant have tusks? My backpack is packed and I am ready to board that plane to the bush.

HR Director said there's LOTS of predator activity at the camp.
I'll report early next week on whether a leopard or a lion was afoot. And if it's afoot, it will be a lot like me. I'm still hoofin' it. But I've got a line on a little Isuzu truck....

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Another reminder of Xugana sunsets


Here's what I won't forget.

I go out walking...before midnight.. out in the moonlight

July 12, 2008
Maun

When I lived in Austin a documentary caught my fancy: “Hands on a Hard Body.”

The joke, of course, was that the title depicted what might come to mind as available from a dark, sealed-off corner of the Blockbuster store, or, worse, at a gritty venue off Times Square where you wouldn’t be caught dead by anyone you knew. Fooled us, every one.

“Hands on a Hard Body” was cinema verite, darn right, but it was about an annual contest in Longview, Texas, at the Nissan dealership. The documentary captured the battle of wills: Contestants vie by standing until they drop – sometimes in a matter of hours, sometimes in a matter of days – trying to keep a hand on a vehicle. The sleepless, dazed, incoherent winner – the last one left standing with sore feet and with a numb hand on the hard body -- takes all: the spanking-new, Deee-luxe pick-‘em-up truck.
Ain’t she a beaut?

As a previous winner, man of the black cowboy hat with a porn-star mustache to match, summed up the competition, “It’s a human drama thing.”

I recall a skinny, ruddy-faced boy of about 20 describing to filmmakers his inclination to join the contest.

“You can do ANYTHING with a pickup,” he said.

He was consigned at the time to driving a VW bug on the backroads of Louisiana -- if I’m remembering right -- which must be a little like going hunting with a candy-colored letter opener. He had big dreams of being able to travel where he wanted to travel and do what he wanted to do and, best of all, haul whatever he took a mind to haul.

He didn’t last long in the competition. The Hispanic woman who listened to gospel music through her earphones and praised the Lord with one upraised hand (the other on the pickup, of course) clocked a better showing. So did the woman missing some front teeth who’d practiced in the noonday heat outside her house with its 3-ton air conditioner to get ready for the competition but ultimately stomped off in a pure-D butt-kickin’ huff, complaining how the danged contest was rigged because the judges hadn’t disqualified the ones who lifted their hands an inch or two here or there. What are you, judges – blind?!

But I have to say the ruddy-faced boy got it right. It takes living in Maun, Botswana, to walk a mile, or four, in the boots of that beetle-driving boy.
I find myself walking a lot these days, up my sandy road, along the main road, which they call the “tarred road,” to the Internet cafes, to the Bon Arrive, to the Spar grocery to the FNB bank. You name it. I’ve hoofed it already.

I look with yearning at the safari trucks barreling past me, kicking up another coating of sand and dust for my hair, of late a new color thanks to L’Oreal in a box. I admire the Toyota Hilux with a passion, not to mention the Land Rovers, miniature Nissan pickups and all-purpose Surfs. Coveting is a bad thing, right?

For the first time in my adult life I am without wheels. And for a woman who has been known to drive six hours from Kentucky to Washington, D.C., for a Sunday brunch, this is a sobering predicament. It’s high season in the delta. Even the local yokel City Car Concepts has no car to rent me, never mind the extortionist prices.

Trudging along in my cloud of dust on the road’s shoulder, not unlike Charlie Brown’s friend PigPen, I see all of the rugged people of Africa, men and women, white and black, hauling ladders, truck tires, camp supplies, even people, in the back of their trucks, and I feel like a teenager who’s been grounded. I cut short a perfectly lovely evening with a Motswana guide at 6 last night on account of my concern that my newest taxi driver, Phil, would refuse to ferry me down the sandy road after dark.

I am an oddity. A toddler on the side of the road with her mother pointed at me in amazement as I slogged toward the two of them, hoping to see a taxi at any moment. “Makgoa!” said the tyke.

I got my guide friend to explain it to me: “White person,” interchangeable, he said, with “Customer.” Nothing derogatory about makgoa. Just a fact.
And so I trudge on, understanding with a newfound depth of empathy what it is to long for a truck – any old battered model would suffice -- in the sands of Botswana. I could do anything if I had one.

Friday, July 11, 2008

The owner's home and my view



Here are a couple of more photos that Blogger refused to let me load for the posting below....

Survival 101






July 11, 2008
Maun

Today I unveil photos of my little cottage, home to mystifying night sounds and spiders of remarkable size. I let them be as I crawl under my bug net from REI, tucking myself in tight. The thought of the critters crawling on me makes me shiver. I stuff in my earplugs. The less pitter-patter I hear, the better. But that means I miss the screech of the barn owl, the hair-raising cry that sounds like brakes applied just before a car wreck.

I saw that owl, finally, yesterday in full swoop for only an instant but a magical one. I hope it got a rat -- a fat, hairy, juicy one.

You can see my home is fine – clean, equipped well and sunny. It even boasts a red wall in the sleeping area and a purple one in the bath. (On the table sits the excellent new book by my dear friend and former colleague, Bill Bishop, and the esteemed Bob Cushing. “The Big Sort” is about our self-selected, lifestyle segregation and its implications for American political life. It’s the talk of NPR, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and it’s well worth your time.)

The true storybook home – the green one with the thatched roof – belongs to Kim and Stuart and their 10-year-old son, Kyeren. To my delight, their Jack Russell terrier named Jenna and new puppy, Sandy, wander over to visit me most days. So does Kyeren, always in search of a banana.

Yesterday he regaled me with survival tips for the bush, a proper topic of discussion for a third-grader whose parents helped found People For Wildlife in South Africa and who now run their own mobile safari company.

“Do you want tropical rain forest, savanna or desert?” Kyeren asked.

“Well, I don’t need rain forest around here. I need something useful like for that out there,” I said, pointing to the blasted, endless sandy road that is my nemesis when it comes to getting back from town. (I’ve still not managed to find wheels. Taxi drivers give me what-for when I tell them to keep driving; we’re almost to my cottage. Needless to repeat, I am not living a big-night-out-on-the-town kind of life. I might as well be living by kerosene lantern, on the Abe Lincoln schedule.)

Kyeren began to expound on how in the desert the first thing to do is rip my T-shirt and wrap it around my head to prevent sunstroke. I then must go in search of shade and water, a slog likely to be fruitless but one I should undertake with optimism. Otherwise, I must harvest my sweat, but I’m not clear on how exactly to do that.

Now it’s time for my knife, or without a knife, a stick or stone. Kyeren inspects my Swiss Army knife and concludes there is quite a lot I can do with that piece of equipment. Once upon a time, pre-9/11, immigration officials threatened to confiscate the knife in Cairo. Considering my current and possibly imminent harrowing circumstances, I am relieved I talked them out of it.

I must kill a snake, cut off its head and then skin it. I then will lay the innards on rocks to cook in the sun, a perfect spot that Kyeren assures me will heat to 56 degrees centigrade.
By this time I am making faces at him.
“Yuck. I can’t do that,” I protest.
“Well, it’s bugs then,” he said, skipping forward to menu option number 2.

Or if I’m fortunate enough I can hunt down a hare, cut its head off first, then slice it from neck to groin, gut it and skin it. That would make a good dinner, too, he said.
I could tell Kyeren, a blue-eyed towhead who looks more burhead Buster Brown than mini-Indiana Jones, was enjoying himself at my expense.

“You’re probably going to die,” he said, noting that I had announced that too many things are too gross to eat. I surmise on my own that I am as good as the entrée and the dessert for the vultures, which I envision ready at the instant of my test of survival to jet in for a sure landing on my sissified heap of hysteria and chow down. (Everyone around Botswana says the same thing: “Africa is not for sissies.” Well, hello? Look who’s come to town.)

Kyeren moved on from the food part of survival to the more palatable instruction for building a camp shelter. That merely involved cutting twigs and grasses to build a shelter like the San build. No problem.

Pretty soon I could tell he was giving up on me. Who wouldn’t?
The remarkable fact is that I sit here in my little cottage and feel my heart aching for the bush, the bona fide bush, where it is entirely possible to have survival skills tested. I look at my photos and wonder how can I get back there. Stow away on one of Kim and Stuart's safari supply trucks headed for Moremi? I could easily hide under the canvas. Who would know?

I look at my photos and remember what it was like, only two weeks ago, to wake up to the sounds of wild animals, to revel in the gifts of nature that are all but forgotten in our cities of asphalt and metal. We walk around in a trance, receiving all manner of computerized information, but bereft of signals from the natural world that can soften the relentless static of modern life. Nature can bring us home, to ourselves. At least it has for me.
I sip filtered coffee poured from my new French press, a touch of city life that I savor down at the end of the sandy road. I promise myself I won’t forget.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

The Office


I am finding it unsettling to all of the sudden have no structure to my days. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying.

I thought you would like to see my office at Camp Okavango, the one I shared with the charcoal-gray lizard who warmed himself on the electrical plugs, with the lesser-tailed swallows flying in and out, with the swarms of papery wasps that landed on our windows inside and with the baboon who liked to stop and stare through the doorway before she shimmied up a tree to shake loose the tangerines.

My days were fully booked, from the moment I unlocked the office before dawn until the instant my head hit the pillow in the tent.

Here comes the bride, again, 25 years later






July 9, 2008
Maun

Gerald and Lally Warren will celebrate their 26th wedding anniversary in August, but, as Gerald told guests in Lobatse on Sunday, they are “still in their honeymoon phase.”

Was my interminable bus ride to attend their 25th wedding anniversary party worth it? You bet it was.

If the uploading on the blog works, you’ll see photos of Lally in a blue shawl and later in her wedding dress, and you’ll see the bride and groom kissing. You’ll see the traditional dancers from the village of Kanye and the Indian neighbors who performed a lovers’ dance as a gift to the couple. The baby is a cheerful friend I made at the party. Her name is Goone – “unto Him” or “unto the one” is the meaning. I wanted to take her home with me, but I had to settle for tending her an hour.

How is it that a couple can stay together more than 25 years anywhere on the globe in this era and in Botswana, where many people opt never to marry at all but insist on having children together? Gerald and Lally say it’s about finding the right person who is, above all, a friend and a spiritual companion, and, according to Lally, it’s about being “a professional coward.” She said neither she nor Gerald would dare make a big decision without consulting the other. That’s not always the case in Botswana, she told guests. Some women find a stranger at the door to announce he is the new owner of her house; the woman’s husband has decided to sell the house and it is news to her.

The anniversary celebration was a tribute to traditions in the Botswana culture and a plea for transformation, to a world in which men and women will be viewed equally and where the Batswana tradition of honoring marriage between one man and one woman for life can be renewed. Gender equality is after all a major tenet of Gerald and Lally’s Baha’i faith. The ceremony was filled with Baha’i prayers and blessings.

Their party first was a re-enactment of a traditional Botswana courtship and wedding. I found myself in the middle of the festivities as one of the actors. Women were chosen to be Gerald’s family, I among them. We wrapped ourselves in shawls under an unforgiving sun. (I must have looked awfully odd with my khaki safari hat pulled below my eyebrows and my cashmere paisley-print shawl from Provence draped around my shoulders. Talk about sweating.)

We had to travel beyond the gates to the house to find Gerald and the men sitting in a kgotla, a circle of democracy and decision-making. The bride was inside the red-brick house. One of the women in my line ululated, and there was a lot of that going on throughout the ceremony. But I don’t know how to do it: Somehow you make a high-pitched sound, vibrating your tongue back and forth as you shriek. I did the usual: I marched in step and kept my mouth shut. It had worked for me during the choir performances at the camps in the bush. It would work for me now.

We greeted the groom, who in theory was negotiating how many cattle would be given as a gift to Lally’s “family” in appreciation for the bride. During the ceremony, Gerald and Lally would stress that the “bride appreciation” has changed for the worse over time; too many young people use it as an excuse not to get married. They complain they don’t have the money or cattle to afford to marry. The anniversary celebration set the record straight: The bride appreciation, as it was in the days of old, can be a promise of cattle (or money) to be paid at any time during the marriage. The important thing is that two people love each other and have their parents’ blessing for the union.

We marched back into the courtyard to “meet” the bride’s “family.” We sat on the driveway on animal skins across from the women of the bride’s family. There was ululating as if in conversation across the divide, while we waited for the bride to come out of the house. This seemed to take a very long time. Or maybe it was the fact I was wearing a shawl in noonday sunshine.

We were told we must sit with our legs straight in front of us. Uh oh. That’s a pose we’re not used to holding for very long in the U.S. unless it’s in yoga class. I slumped. I leaned. I practically fell over on my side. Meanwhile, much older women sat primly, posture upright, legs straight in front, hands clasped in laps. (It reminded me how 15 years ago I had failed to sit still or primly in Korea at dinner tables low to the ground. My legs proved too long to fit anywhere, and I had trouble managing to sit cross-legged for more than 10 minutes at the same time I was fully concentrating on how not to fumble my stainless steel chopsticks and send them flying like missiles at my dinner companions.

“You have VERY long legs!” a little Korean boy announced to me in awe one night in Taegu. I guess that’s why I ended up in Korean strangers’ home videos as the giant big-boned gal come to town.) This straight-legged African seating was even more difficult.

But we managed. Lally came out wearing her blue shawl. Abandoning her air of confidence as a nurse and midwife in her usual life, she sat shyly, like a schoolgirl, in the place of honor. A representative set off to bring the groom. The groom’s group marched into the courtyard, and there were greetings all around, and an announcement that the bride appreciation was 20,000 Pula. Much hoopla! That’s a pretty penny and not a shabby offering from a retired primary school math teacher.

We all disbanded to move to our white plastic chairs. Relief. While traditional dancers and singers from the village of Kanye performed, Lally went into the house to transform herself into a bride in full white “goddess” gown with a pearl headpiece to top it off. One of the great moments of the day was when she was escorted from the door of her house like the leader of a parade, the traditional dancers marching behind with their ankle shells rattling. We guests loved it, and we celebrants were indeed a rainbow crew: Lally and Gerald’s three children and grandchildren; local Lobatse people, rich and poor; white Africans who drove up from South Africa for the day; a mixed-race couple from Gaborone who used to live in Atlanta when he worked at the headquarters for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; farmers and physicians alike. We all were witnesses to ritual and renewal.
And like any good ritual, the buffet food awaited and abounded: seswaa (Botswana barbecue), butternut, morogo (greens), pap, samp, salad, maize. I’m probably forgetting something. And we drank ginger beer from a big trash can, and lest you think otherwise, there is no beer in ginger beer. It’s nonalcoholic and delicious in a snappy way. (Baha’is don’t drink alcohol.)

I came away once again honored to know Gerald and Lally and grateful to my artist friend, Mary Jane, in Florida for making sure we were introduced in March. I know more about the culture of Botswana and the secrets of sustaining a marriage than I did a few days ago. Not a bad lesson in any culture and an invaluable reward for a roadtrip.

And how did I return to Maun?
As my friend, Kitso, a guide on time off from Xugana Island Lodge, said to me in a text message by cell phone, “U HAVE 2 B TOUGH 2 B A MOTSWANA LADY.” He was referring to my impatience in the art of bus riding. He messaged me “GUD” when I made it to Lobatse.

On Monday, I sent Kitso an SMS on my cell phone, “AM NOT TOUGH ENOUGH. TOOK PLANE BACK 2 MAUN 2DAY. HAPPY DAY! NO BUS 4 ME 2DAY.”

I am certainly no expert in marriage, but I think I got the overview of long-distance bus riding, along with a few tips: Don’t buy the fried chicken and chips (French fries) the hawkers try to sell you when the bus makes its quick stops. The chicken was probably cooked a day or two before and then rewarmed to release the redolent eau de grease. I didn’t make that mistake, thanks to my seatmate from Zambia’s warning. Truth is, I’m not tough enough to even consider trying the chicken from those corrugated roadside stalls. But I like to think I am.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Home & Garden notes

How do you dress up a three-star hotel room that has a bug crawling toward your suitcase and the remains of a squashed mosquito smudged above your headboard?
My solution: Tear the stem from a climbing rose bush that holds two perfect white flowers. Place them in the water glass beside your twin bed, the lumpy one that has the sketchy bedspread you don't want to touch.
Now, examine the perfect papery whiteness of the petals and smell the fragrance.
The room feels better already.
Instant interior decoration with a hint of interior illumination.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Seemed like a good idea at the time...

I have just arrived at the Cumberland Hotel in Lobatse, Botswana, home to the country's high court and mental hospital, separately, of course. I've checked into neither one. But I ought to have my head examined.

My friends I met here in March, Gerald and Lally Warren, invited me then and renewed the invitation last week for me to attend their 25th wedding anniversary. It would be a traditional Batswana celebration, with seswaa, pap, morogo, dancing and singing. I thought in March I should come and when I heard from Lally last week I was sure I shouldn't miss it. (Read about Gerald and Lally around March 17th on my blog.) I have just moved into my cottage in Maun and still have no wheels. What the heck, I thought. I will travel as Batswana travel -- by big fat bus. I didn't do much planning, just got a notion to head West, skirting the Kalahari to Ghanzi, then south to Lobatse and come around on the eastern side through Francistown back to Maun.
If you've ever seen a Botswana bus stop, you won't mistake it for Switzerland or Germany, that's for sure. It's chaos with buses coming and going and no centralized information about what leaves when. You ask around and hope you climb onto the right bus, and if it's not too much to ask you hope it's clean.

I got dropped off at the bus stop and to my dismay the Ghanzi bus was broken down. One man was telling me I could take another bus to the northern delta, get dropped off on the side of the road and get picked up by another one. No way! I envisioned standing under the searing sun with no one passing me by and certainly no hotel within walking distance. I jumped on a bus to Francistown.
It seemed like a good idea.

I was lucky and got a front seat in the aisle beside Bone (pronounced Bona and translated "them"), who got quite a kick out of me. I thought the fare was 20 pula; it was 70. I asked about where we might stop to go to the restroom along the way and she and the other seatmate fell over laughing. To the bush, was the answer. And so the traveling began. Whenever the bus would lurch, my seat cushion and I would go flying. The seat must have been torn from the frame oh about 15 years ago, I'd say. We would slow down for donkeys, cattle and goats. We kept picking up people on the way and depositing them. This is fun, I thought. I can see the country. Trouble is, the country looks pretty much the same for hours and hours and hours. I did practice my Setswana for a while, then read an "Oprah" magazine I got at the local supermarket in Maun.
I set it down for a minute to let someone pass and across the aisle a woman starting talking Setswana to me and laughing. When I didn't understand, she translated. The gist: Hey, I'm an elder and in this country elders get some respect, so can you let me borrow your magazine?
OK

I made it to Francistown after 6 hours on the bus. Lunch was a whole packet of vanilla cremes and I mean a big packet (think nigh on Keebler size), potato chips and a coke. What can you do? It was either that or french fries, rice and some weird looking meat to top it off, all of this from a truck stop. Forget the healthy living on a roadtrip around these parts. The thing about Francistown is that I had hardly stepped from the bus and asked directions when a handsome man in a security uniform decided to escort me to my hotel. He went into the usual M.O. among Botswana people: They want to know about my husband and my children. Without any, I am quite the object of curiosity, if not outright pity. This fellow was perplexed but undaunted. He insisted that he could be my Botswana boyfriend, and if not my Botswana boyfriend, my Francistown boyfriend. I sent him on his way. Wish I hadn't so soon, because I needed him in the grocery store when I was buying water and FRUIT. A woman in a black beret I noticed was awfully close. When I walked to the magazines, she walked behind me. When I went to the dairy counter, there she was again. I tested my theory, moving hither and yon and a clipped pace.
I whipped around and faced her. "What are you doing?!" I hissed.
She was shocked. "Uh, I was short 2 Pula," she said.
Right.
I waved her away and watched my back the whole way to the hotel.

The bad news is that I had to get on a bus again: this morning for a 5 1/2 hour bus ride to Gaborone, and on this bus they packed 'em in so tight that they were standing in the aisle. For miles I had a standing passenger's pink plastic pocketbook gouging me in the back of the head. At least I had a nice man from Zambia beside me. We had to stop at one point and exit the bus to show our passports and IDs. The police hauled away two guys and placed them in handcuffs. I'm guessing they were from Zimbabwe. Many are trying to seek refuge here, as you would expect, and the government wants to stop the influx. Francistown, only about one hour from the border, is one of those main entry points.

By the time I got to the bus stop in Gaborone, I'd had enough. I called Ernest, the trusty taxi driver who used to take me to my work at the University of Botswana. Would he take me to Lobatse? "Sharp. Sharp," he said. And so I am here, finally. When the sign said drive 50, Ernest drove 120. I know he was in a hurry to be at home "and just chill," as he puts it.
You can imagine that I'm already hatching a plan to catch that 8 a.m. flight from Gaborone to Maun if there is any seat for me and if there is any way under the sun to avoid another 13-14 hours on the bus and two nights in pricey hotels that are anything but posh. (This one has a lavender sink and toilet and truly ancient linoleum. Its rating? 3 stars.) Even the thrill of authentic experience has its limits.
But I did appreciate Bone's exclamation to me somewhere between Maun and Nata.
"You are living life to the fullest!"
That I am.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

An African bedtime story


At Camp Okavango and Xugana Island Lodge, guests find a different laminated bedtime story waiting for them each evening. One of the directors of Desert & Delta asked me whether I might write one, and I did, based on an interview with legendary guide John Odumetse Kata at Camp Okavango. (You can read the piece I wrote about him at www.desertdelta.blogspot.com)
But here's the bedtime story and a photo of John. He's the one wearing the green-striped socks. He's sitting beside Section, a tracker, poler and groundsman who carves tiny mokoros sold as keychains. He gave me one as a going-away gift. I'm going to hang it on my Christmas tree.

THE STORY OF THE LION AND THE HARE

Tau was a lion in the Okavango Delta. He prided himself on being the king of beasts.

“I am the king,” he said. “No one hunts better than I. No one has more meat in the stewpot than I do. I am the best.”

When dinnertime came, he paraded around his stewpot, inspecting the meat. There’s a nice, fat, juicy piece for me, he thought. And there’s another. And another. Mmmm! It’s good to be king.

All of the other animals gathered around and waited to be served. After all, they had helped in the hunt, and they were all neighbors. But when their time came to eat, Tau gave them only the tiniest pieces that had no fat. He didn’t really want to share. He didn’t really like to share. He handed out the worst pieces, and only begrudgingly, to his animal neighbors of the delta.

This upset the animals, particularly a hare named Mmutla.

“There must be a way to have a better dinner than this,” Mmutla said in dismay. Night after night, it had always been the same. Tau got the best. They got hardly anything at all, mostly gristle.

Mmutla thought a while. Then he gathered all of the animals, except Tau, and made a plan. They whispered well into the next day.

“Tau,” Mmutla said, “come here and let us groom you. You’ve had a hard day being king. We’ll pick the lice from your tail so you will sleep well tomorrow.”

They lured him to a tree near the stewpot.

“Tap! Tap! Tap!” came the sounds.

“Hey, Mmutla, you are hurting me,” Tau said gruffly. Tau was bothered but gazing so proudly at his stew that he never even turned around to look at the animals.

Mmutla said, “Sorry, brother. These lice are huge, and there are many. We will keep working.”

Tau grumbled and roared but allowed them to continue.

After some time Mmutla and the other animals were finished. They rubbed their paws and claws with satisfaction. Mmutla led a parade to the stewpot, right in front of Tau’s nose but far enough away for safety.

Mmutla reached into the pot and grabbed the thickest, fattest piece of meat and dangled it before Tau.

“Hey! What are you doing?” Tau roared.

“I am going to eat this one, brother!” Mmutla said with a smile. And he did.

Tau lunged in fury. But he didn’t get far. In a brilliant stroke of teamwork, the animals had nailed Tau’s tail to a tree. Too bad for Tau, but he had it coming.

All of the animals ate well that night, except Tau. He gnawed on the tiniest piece of meat, the one without any fat. And so Tau went to sleep hungry and feeling less than kingly. The animals went to sleep fat and happy.

“Robale sentle,” they whispered. From the delta their wishes abounded: Sleep well.

****

This is a modern adaptation of a story that
John Odumetse Kata said his grandmother, Maxaao, told him when he was a boy growing up on the islands of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. The legendary veteran guide at Camp Okavango for 28 years didn’t have schools when he was growing up. As a river bushman of the ethnic Bayeyi tribe, John Kata learned his lessons beside the campfire. The stories that the grandparents -- especially grandmothers—shared often had morals for the children’s education.

“The main point is sharing and that cooperation is always the most important thing in families,” John Kata said in recalling his grandmother Maxaao’s tale of the lion and the hare.


The best guess is that John Kata was born in 1944 on what is now known as the famous Chief’s Island. His clan moved among the islands in search of food and fish. They lived in makeshift reed huts, at each new location near a big shade tree.

Today John Kata leads Camp Okavango’s guests on walks where his villages once stood and where his tribe’s storytelling echoed around campfires into the night.

---Maria Henson

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Not in my own words


I took the photo at Xugana Island Lodge, where I moved to my assistant lodge manager assignment in the Okavango Delta in June.


I'll be struggling for a while to try to describe what it was like living with Botswana camp workers in an amazing wilderness for three months. I miss it already. For now, I'll share with you something I read from a dusty book tucked away in "Jessie's Suite" at Camp Okavango. (Jessie was the eccentric billionairess who collected pilots' toothbrushes, if you get my drift. Her suite has a notable array of mirrored walls and black tiles, although apparently fewer than when she lived there, and that's saying something.)

This is from Venture to the Interior by Laurens van der Post:
It is one of the more unjustifiable pretensions of our age that it measures time and experience by the clock. There are obviously a host of considerations and values which a clock cannot possibly measure. There is, above all, the fact that time spent on a journey, particularly on a journey which sets in motion the abiding symbolism of our natures, is different from the time devoured at such a terrifying speed in the daily routine of what is accepted, with such curious complacency, as our normal lives. This seems axiomatic to me; the truer the moment and the greater its content of reality the slower the swing of the universal pendulum.
*****

....Van Der Post loved Africa and filmed and wrote books about the Kalahari and its bushmen. This book, published in the early 1950s, is about one of his many journeys to Africa.
He opens it with this:

We carry with us the wonders
We seek without us: there is all
Africa and her prodigies in us. --Sir Thomas Browne

She can dance but don't let her sing....





It is an interminable process to try to get photos uploaded on this blog. I'd like to show you more, but the clock and the pula tick away while I wait. But I wanted to show you some photos of one of my going-away moments: one with the staff choir at Camp Okavango. They sent me off with a rousing rendition of "Mma Pula naledi," which I was told meant that Ms. Rain (my nickname translated from Mma Pula) is a shining star." Another is on a boat from Xugana Island Lodge going back to Camp Okavango to pick up a staff member. The tent is my home at Camp Okavango. The other is Pilot One, my side of a little building near the office. I lived there. A lesser-tailed swallow built a nest right above my door, and I visited her every morning.

What I did on my career break....




By popular demand I am going to provide you with first a photo of my roommate in my staff room at Savute Marsh, second a black mamba found on the lawn (one of six I saw in 3 weeks) and third a picture that one must say "doesn't belong." Those cuties I saw at Camp Moremi two weekends ago.

I am already missing the remote bush life, but I am settling into my little cottage on the Boro River. I heard the screeeeeech of a resident barn owl last night and the pitter patter on the roof of what we would fondly call "tree mice," when in fact they might be rats. I'd rather not know....If you have never seen a barn owl, it's worth looking it up. I saw one that was sitting in a tree at Savute Lodge, and it was one of my most memorable moments. What a gorgeous creature!

A magical flower

A magical flower
The guide squeezes this flower and it squirts water like a water pistol

Cathy and Joe Wanzala

Cathy and Joe Wanzala
They couldn't wait to paste the Obama sticker on their car

My main man

My main man
Ernest is my trusty cab driver who blasts music as we make our way through Gabs

Ted Thomas, man of intrigue and style

Ted Thomas, man of intrigue and style
My friend, Ted, and his wife, Mary Ann, hosted a Safari Send-Off for me in Austin and treated me to a special mix of African music that already a UB student and a professor want to download.