I can't resist showing a few more paintings...

More art scenes from Khumaga

Lifting up my eyes at Tsodilo Hills, for a price

Maun, Botswana
Sept. 29, 2008

With only a couple of music CDs with me on this journey, I have incessantly played an old one I have by NRBQ – remember that bluesy, piano-pounding Kentucky group, anyone?

It is a great 4WD companion for singalongs in my rented Toyota Surf on sandy roads, but it is the source of many an earworm. An earworm is a song you cannot get out of your head. Like a gnarled tape it reverses and plays over and over again. It can be a terrible song (“Do you like pina coladas,” for example, or “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro come to mind. Sorry, pal, if I gave you an earworm just now.) But it can be a fabulous song, usually a single line or two that gets stuck in the brain. NRBQ’s ditties belong to the latter category.

NRBQ has infected me with several earworms lately, and one is, “There ain’t no free. There ain’t no free…It might be credit. It might be barter. But they’ll always find a way to make you Pay! Pay! Pay!”

And that brings me to my latest excursion.

When I came back from Leroo La Tau on Friday, I got word of a dandy offer. I could hop on a bush plane on Saturday afternoon, fly to Shakawe, meet a guide with a game truck crew who would take me to the Tsodilo Hills in the Northwest Kalahari for an overnight camping trip and drive me back to Maun on Sunday. A Norwegian civil engineer on assignment to Botswana’s roads department in Gaborone had booked the trip and paid for it; there was room for me to come along for free. (cue to sing along with NRBQ....”There ain’t no free.”)

I had been hoping to go to the Tsodilo Hills around Oct. 1 on a trip with a guide friend to meet his sister, a basket weaver in Etsha 6 on the western edge of the Okavango Delta. But on Friday, I had felt a distinct call in my morning quiet time to go to the hills and sleep under the stars at Female Hill (if it sounds woo-woo, too bad; it’s the truth.) And voila. Here comes the offer for a free trip a few hours later. I think I’ll answer the call, I thought to myself, and say yes right away.

The Tsodilo Hills are Botswana’s lone World Heritage Site. They are sacred to the San people, and even today people make pilgrimages to the hills to wash in the spring water, which is considered holy. Rising 400 meters above the bush scrubland, the rock outcroppings inspire awe and any flatlander’s desire to explore. On these hills are about 2,000 rock paintings dating back 3,000 years – orange-colored renderings of kudu, rhino, giraffes, zebra, dancing people, geometric shapes. It is said that the spirit of every animal and insect is here. The San believe that powerful gods live in the caves of Female Hill from which they rule the world and can cause harm and misfortune to offenders.

I must sadly report that my group of 5 apparently contained an offender. Could be me, for all I know. Here are the facts:

John, a 62-year-old Norwegian family man, and I were dropped off at the quaint, thatched airport gazebo in Shakawe by the two pilots of a four-seater plane. No one was there to greet us. I found an official Botswana military cap sitting on a shelf and a torn canvas tennis hat on a counter, the only signs humans had been there lately. The pilots were concerned. Would we be ok? Sure, I’ve got the booking-agency representative’s emergency phone number. The pilots flew away. John and I stood and waited. No one ever answered the emergency number. I enlisted help from my friends at Desert & Delta, who went to work trying to assist me. John had no water, and I had a few sips left in my bottle. I wondered how far we might need to walk. I wondered how long my cell phone battery would last.

Forty-five minutes later the game truck arrived. Such tardiness is way out of line in the protocol of meeting guests in Africa. Tourists drop down out of the sky often into grass airstrips in the middle of nowhere; someone must always be there to greet them, offer water and move them safely into vehicles, away from elephants and predators. While we didn’t have to worry about wild animals at the tarred airstrip in Shakawe, we did have legitimate concerns about where the heck we were and where the heck we might need to be before dark.

The guide Thabo was most apologetic, and I figure it was not his fault that the expedition arrived late. The culprit appeared to be Kilos, the cook in the crew. He was off his rocker drunk as a skunk. The other crew member was Linda, sober and efficient.

We were late, and we needed to be at the campsite before dark. My heart sank when I realized the guide was counting on Kilos to direct him to the proper turns and bush tracks. Ai yi yi. What a predicament. Directing meant that Kilos would occasionally flap his right hand in some direction before he would fall back into his seat. We were speeding in that Land Rover – up to 80 kph, which is teeth-rattling fast. You can only duck your head to keep the wind and sand out of your eyes. Forget seeing the scenery, not that there was much variation in the desert surrounding the hills. We did stop quickly once to get out where the sign said “Tsodilo view;” because of smoke from bush fires I couldn’t see anything. I chose the occasion to say to Thabo that the cook was drunk off his butt.

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t notice. He’ll lose his job,” he told me.

Sounds about right for a penalty. How could John and I not notice, especially when the crew stopped to collect firewood and Kilos contented himself with trying to pick up and drag a log big enough to span a river? Needless to say, he failed. And how could we not notice when he stepped from the truck, turned his back to us a few feet away and peed in the grass? Or when he sat with his finger up his nose for quite a while. I felt my appetite dwindling.

We stopped for John to take a photo of the sun slipping behind Male Hill. (The Tsodilo Hills include Male Hill, Female Hill, Child Hill.) How we powered through the bush at top speed past thorn branches without serious injury I don’t know. But we made it in one piece. We worked together hurriedly to set up camp at dusk and in the dark. Kilos fumbled but managed to cook something for us and not burn down the park. Thabo ate with John and me. At one point John’s comment about a young woman he had met eating like a horse tickled Thabo, which prompted Thabo to spit out his red wine, all over me. At another point he said out of the blue how he was feeling bad because he had been “cross and aggressive” with his girlfriend the night before. When we had made a quick stop before the park’s entrance at a local village, Thabo had gone to see the head man to request a guide for the paintings tour the following morning and, unbeknownst to us at the time, to ask what he could do to make up for being “cross” with his girlfriend. He was mulling the situation over dinner, which, I guess, is why he brought it up.

I can only conclude that Thabo had an appointment with the avenging forces at Female Hill; poor John and I were the lucky bystanders. (“There ain’t no free….”)

During the night a dog barked warnings. I woke up to hear a man yelling in Setswana. A few English words were thrown in: “I’m going to KILL you! I’m going to DESTROY you!” It was Thabo. Somewhere out there in the dark, he was instructing us “to be very careful!!” Young men from the village were around, Thabo yelled. They wanted to invade our camp. They wanted to steal our food. I moved into a fetal position in my sleeping bag after hiding my wallet and camera under my pillow. How exactly should I “be careful?” That was about 1:30 a.m. At about 2:30 a.m. I heard what I imagine were lids being screwed on and pans rattling. I figured this was going to be a long night. I was right. The next thing that happened: a raging windstorm was upon us. Gusts of fine sand blew into my tent, covering everything in it and making me feel at times I was being buried alive. It’s a mystery how I got sand in my belly button, but I did while the fierce winds blew. The winds were still churning when we arose for breakfast; even the milk blew off the cereal in the bowl. You’d think we were on a ship tossed and turned by waves.

The sooner we could start the hike, the better. Female Hill, imposing and gleaming yellow in the early sunlight, awaited us. With local guide KT, Thabo and Linda, we started our climb. Those paintings were wonderful; they naturally set one’s imagination rolling back to the time when Botswana’s earliest tribes lived in the caves. And for me there was a definite vibe around the place, a certain energy I can’t define. Last year I read about Sir Laurens van der Post’s first experience of the hills. My Bradt guide gives you the nutshell version: In ‘The Lost World of the Kalahari,’ you can read the story of his first visit, “of how his party ignored the advice of their guide, and disturbed the spirits of the hills by hunting warthog and steenbok on their way. Once at the hills, his companion’s camera magazines inexplicably kept jamming, his tape recorders stopped working, and bees repeatedly attacked his group – and problems only ceased when they made a written apology to the spirits.”

The Tsodilo Hills museum displays an excerpt from van der Post about this phenomenon.


Early on our hike Thabo explained to me that he thought it was very possible Female Hill was working its magic on him. He went into full confession mode about how he had hit his girlfriend and how the police might be waiting for him in Maun with an arrest warrant. Would I consider going with him to see his girlfriend to “mold her opinion” of him. I couldn’t believe this. To relieve his conscience, he unknowingly picked as a confidant an American who has devoted part of her newspaper career to writing about the ravages of domestic violence. It was all very strange. Our conversation went like this:

Did your father hit your mother? I asked.

No. He hit me. He thought it was good discipline.

Would you ever hit a stranger on the street or one of your guests?

No, never, never.

Then why would you hit someone in your home, someone you say you love?

I don’t know. Alcohol, maybe? No, I don’t think that’s really it.

I don’t think so either. In the United States I have found that this happens when a man wants power or control over a woman. Could this be you?

Maybe. When you’re in the bush a long time, thoughts of jealousy come; maybe your woman is with another man. I don’t know what will happen. I want forgiveness.

I told him I would not go with him and make peace with his girlfriend. “In the U.S. we have a saying that if you make a mess, you clean it up,” I told him. It’s never ok to hit someone you love.

Thabo was quiet after that. When we got to the cave where the legends say the powerful serpent spirits live, he did not remain outside as he has done on his previous three visits. He went in, a trip that was part of the penance the village head man had instructed him to do. I stayed outside (I don’t like closed spaces), sat on a rock and closed my eyes to behold glorious colors in meditation. John was pleased with his trip into the cave. Thabo felt better.

We returned to the campsite, ate more of Kilos’ cuisine, which I don’t recommend, and broke camp. On the 5 _ drive back, John wisely sat in the passenger’s seat in the cab of the truck with Thabo. I sat in the game drive seats, my ears bursting with the noise of the wind, my eyes swelling from the grit and wind. I don’t think I’ve been that dirty since I made the four-day trek to Machu Picchu. My shower at home in Maun felt like a visit to a dream spa.

And my trip to Female Hill feels like a dream that unfolded in violent gusts under starlight. The company that led my excursion and to which I paid with cash tips and unexpected guidance counseling? AfrikaCalls. Considering my reveries last Friday, interesting name, that one. But my advice is hang up. There ain’t no free.

Scenes from Tsodilo Hills

Bravo! Art!

On the road in the name of art

Maun, Botswana
Sept. 27, 2008
(blogger is letting me down again. lots more art and scenes to come....)

I have always liked the saying, “Life is short; art is long.” This week I had another reason to embrace the adage.


I spent the week at the edge of the Makgadikgadi Pans National Park at Leroo La Tau Lodge. That’s where hundreds of zebra parade to the water hole, and their friends the wildebeests meet them there. I will always remember the distinctive sounds of Leroo: the strange honking, barking noises that zebra make and the beat of their hooves when they are spooked by the least little thing, even a shadow. This week the sounds included the bellows of vociferous lions at close range. I could hardly sleep from the excitement of hearing those roars that can shake a bedridden body right through to the core. One sounded as though it was just outside my room, but I couldn’t find tracks to confirm it.

But back to the art.

I stayed at the lodge to be near Khumaga, a village of 800 people 6 kilometres away. As the DDS volunteer, I went to the Khumaga Primary School Monday through Thursday afternoons to conduct the Khumaga Primary School Art Project. I took a cue from Bana Ba Letsatsi and devised an idea for a DDS community project to raise money for the number one item on the school’s wish list: new traditional dance costumes for their students. Any child who wanted to participate would draw on Monday, and then 30 children would be asked to paint versions of their drawings on fancier paper the rest of the week. We plan to sell the paintings in DDS curio shops, with all proceeds going to buy the costumes. (To see the kind of costumes I’m talking about, look at the Kanye dancers’ photo for my blog entry in July at Lally and Gerald Warren’s 25th wedding anniversary at Lobatse.)

I have this belief that we can learn a lot from children if we stop to listen – and I mean REALLY listen by being totally present. Children the world over, I believe, are innately gifted artists, singers, dancers and storytellers who can prompt us to remember our best selves. Somewhere along the way, especially in the United States, we grow up and find ourselves hammered, nailed and fitted into certain boxes. We close down. We lose our voices, our glorious sense of abandon, our bright-eyed willingness to say yes. We demur if asked to sing (guilty as charged). Mouthing the words becomes our m.o., even when attempting “The Star Spangled Banner.” No, we explain: We can’t draw so much as a stick figure. And, for Pete’s sake, don’t make me step away from this table to dance at the wedding; I’ve got two left feet. (There was a notable though less than inspiring hiatus during the unfortunate Macarena phase and, in Texas, during the call to the floor for the calamitous Chicken Dance. I blame it on the alcohol, and in this case beg anyone wishing to strut around to poultry music, opening and closing your fingers like a chicken’s beak, to take a seat.)

Aside from the Chicken Dance, I say what a pity that so many of us have put away our gifts like tattered teddy bears stuffed into a closet’s dark corner. We used to throw ourselves into the arts with grace and ease, without a whit of self-consciousness. I wonder if we can reclaim that state of being?

My hunch was that the students of Khumaga would delight us with their view of the world, and I was right. They live in an environment that today is largely sand – the color of sand adorns everything. A fine sand blows in great gusts throughout the day. You wipe it from your ears, your sunglasses, the keyboard of your laptop. Nearly all of the villagers’ houses are brown, as is the thatch of the roofs. The few trees to be found are brown and thorny with only a touch of green. A refreshing color is the light blue on the Botswana flag flying high over the kgotla, the gathering place of democracy for the village.

We are approaching the harshest time of the year in this country nicknamed the Thirst Land. The animals move slowly in clouds of dust to the few water holes around. Even the cattle forego grazing for hours to huddle under the shade of acacia trees. The children’s world – what they see every day – is brown save for the blue sky.

What would Khumaga children do with the colored pencils, crayons, magic markers, new brushes and tempera paints that Mpho Ditirelo, a DDS assistant manager, and I brought them?

You’ll see. They painted with abandon. With color. With smiling yellow suns, red flowers and even blue dashes to signal the most precious of blessings in these parts: rain.

In short, the project was a success, at least for this phase. Sixty-two children showed up the first afternoon to do their sketches. My good friend and exceptionally talented painter Frances Hairfield in Morganton, North Carolina, advised me by email not to make it a competition. All children will be doing their best art, she said. If there are “winners,” there will inevitably be disappointed children when there need not be.
And so I told the children, ages 7 through 14, that I knew all of them were artists, and all of their drawings would be shared with managers at the lodge and in Maun. I knew that all of their work would be wonderful. I never said “the best” would be asked to paint; just that some would be asked to paint in groups of 10 in the following days. (Mpho was there the first day to help me in case my Southern-accented English left them confused. She reassured them in Setswana.)

I saw children throughout the week grow in confidence and in pride in their work. On two days the painting sessions occurred under a tree in the courtyard when it was 105 degrees in the shade. The students never complained, even when the wind blew their precious paintings from their desks into the sand. When teachers weren’t around, other children sneaked up from behind and pressed in close to watch the painters work. I had to ask them to back off and give the artists room. That didn’t work. I went to the office to enlist an authority figure, and as soon as Mma Ghanzi appeared in the courtyard, the peanut gallery scattered in a flash, back to their classrooms.

Why were the participants mostly boys? I asked. A teacher told me that girls thought art was boys’ work. How strange, I thought but doubted the conclusion. I could tell as the week progressed that the girls were especially interested in seeing what was going on. I think they were just shy about trying in the first place. The teacher said more of the children every day wished they had joined in, girls included.

At the end of every session, the teachers wanted to see the finished work. They were so pleased. They reported that some children were busy sketching in class during the day in their composition books, to practice.

“They are doing their level best,” one teacher told me.

Which was quite fine indeed, especially for children who had rarely if ever had such brushes, paints and paper. The lack of materials was an obvious issue for the school.

The children didn’t say much to me as we worked together. They were quiet and serious. They wouldn’t so much as pick up a pencil until I said “Start,” which I needed to do until I asked a teacher why they weren’t drawing yet. They shared materials, flattened their hands on each other’s paper if the wind threatened to blow it away. They helped one another with advice in Setswana and sometimes with a careful brush or pen stroke on their neighbor’s paper. The gesture was always appreciated, it seemed. I knew, though, that the project had worked when I heard the children imitating my words. “Very nice. Excellent. Perfect!” They were encouraging each other, just as I had bent over their shoulders and proclaimed those words to them.

As a painter finished a piece, I would hold the art aloft for the children across the courtyard to see. The onlookers smiled broadly, giggled, waved and stamped their feet a bit in approval. The painters themselves stood taller. They loved the acclaim; I could see it on their faces. But most of all they loved making their art. One child did extra drawings and brought them to me as a gift. Another, Percy, did four in one night. There wasn’t time to finish painting them all, but he knew I thought his work was beautiful, and it pleased him.

Why is art long? I could see a spark ignite in these children. As long as the tempera paint lasts, they will be painting, to the delight and wonder of all of Khumaga.

P.S. If any of my friends out there see a painting you’d like, let me know. I can front the $25 (up to a point) on this side of the globe, then I can swap you the painting for the cash when I get back to the U.S.)

Khumaga kids' art

After the lovin'

Ngorongoro Crater afforded my first viewing of lion mating, a wham-bam-thank-you-m'am affair. I'll leave that to your imagination. But here's the cigarette moment.

Animal kingdom

Maun, Botswana
Sept. 19, 2008

(with photos of a lion visit to the game truck and Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania)

What’s the first animal tourists want to see when they come to Botswana?

In my experience, it is a lion. Oh, how the Italians yearn to see a “leee-o-neee,” followed closely by a “leeee-eh-pahhhh-doe,” and not just the tail, thank you very much; we paid too see the WHOLE leopard. (Made me giggle when those words were actually uttered.)

That’s why I gather so many of the guides I’ve met never pick the lion as their favorite animal. Lions laze around for hours. They hide out in the bush sleeping. And the more adamant guests are about finding them, the more often lions seem to take a holiday. The guides are left frantically following tracks and feeling the hot breath of exasperated guests on their necks: “Vee MUST find zee lion before vee fly away!!!”

Guides have their favorite animals, and they list a variety: impala, elephant, wild dogs, leopard, zebra. I haven’t met a guide yet who named a lion.

I’ve tried to identify my favorite, and I cannot do it to any lasting effect. One day it is the elephant, so close to me at the fence at Savute I could look into that soulful eye of his beneath the long eyelashes and imagine that he and I understood each other. Another day it is the zebra, a playful creature of brilliant markings that comprise solely its own calligraphic pattern. Against the pale green grass of Savute Marsh after the rains, a herd of zebra is artistically stunning. Of course, after my encounter with the leopard on my balcony, the leopard jumped to the top of my list. And there was the week in Savute when I had three encounters with wild dogs; that week they were my favorite.

But I am never without reverence for the other creatures I have seen, save the mosquito. One night a lodge manager aimed a torch on the path to the guest chalets. I peered into the dark and saw a shrub that was about knee-height. My glory. It wasn’t a shrub. It was a porcupine – a huge one. All these years I had thought porcupines were small, of hedgehog size. That enormous mass of needles from which a wary eye watched us was a heart-stopping sight.

On another day, the tiny Scops Owl that blended into the nook of a tree, its feathers camouflaged as bark, left me smiling on my way out of Savute.

One night I heard evil growling sounds from what seemed to be under my bed -- or at least under the floor of my chalet -- and the high-pitched shrieks of a dying animal. The sound of hell – truly the scariest sound I’ve ever heard from an animal – went on for the longest time. At daybreak I saw the broad-shouldered culprit muscle its way along the sandy path from my chalet: it was the honey badger. If Hollywood needs sound effects for its latest horror flicks, the honey badger, with its gut-ripping grunts and growls, is the animal for the job. When two honey badgers showed up at the door at dinner last month and looked as if they were going to walk right up to my chair, I instinctively lifted my legs straight in front of me, off the floor, and warned guest to look out! I don’t want to meet a honey badger up close anywhere. It will never make my favorites list, but it has earned my respect, and it has left me with the ability to mimic its horrifying sounds ,to the delight of friends and guests. I’ll entertain you with that newfound skill when I return to the States. (rrrr-eeek-eeek!)

I still like lions, too, despite all the hand-wringing hoopla from guests about ticking them off their game lists. (here's how to be sure to tick them off your list: Go to a zoo.)

I wrote recently about how I encountered lions while I was on foot. A few days later I was seeing lions again, at Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. The game drive vehicle allowed us to stand up with our heads sticking outside the roof. That’s how we were standing when these three lions in the photos came calling. When the biggest of three walked straight toward the vehicle, it occurred to me she might leap onto the hood. I sat down in the blink of an eye, which told me I would have run if I had been on foot. Not the response you want around lions. Lucky for Kelly and me and our driver, the lions paraded past, with one hugging my side of the vehicle. The big one you see came so close that she stopped inches from the back tire and looked up at me. (I was standing up again by this time and leaning over the top of the vehicle.) The photo just missed that nanosecond when her face turned upward toward me. Look at her reflection in the window. She is close!

All this to say I remain fascinated by lions and all of the animals I have seen in Botswana and Tanzania, from hippos to crocodiles to bush babies. I don’t have a favorite. I guess I never will.

No reality show could beat this: Maun Life

Maun, Botswana
September 18, 2008
(with photos of a Maun sunset on an August boat cruise on the Boro River and of Audrey, who didn’t seem to mind Maun’s reputation when she visited from Texas last month. The boat driver is James Howard, a motorcross fanatic British fellow who can’t get enough of Maun.)

While Kelly swims the pristine waters of the Indian Ocean at Zanzibar, I am in hot, dusty Maun back into the swing of my volunteer work.

I am looking on the bright side of having left a tropical paradise a week ago.

Maun is an outpost from days gone by, quirky as can be, teeming with legends about “characters.” And the thing is, some of the characters are still alive and walking past the same goats and donkeys as I do most days.

I haven’t seen him myself, but my friends at Karibu Safari say you can pitch up (a South African term for show up) at the bar at the Okavango River Lodge and see the guy without the arm. A lion ate it. The former national beauty queen from South Africa might be there at the same time. She’s missing a good part of her calf, thanks to a hippo attack.

Last night a gristled, bearded man at River Lodge was sitting at the table where my friends were. Kirk, one of Karibu’s owners, told me that the guy has two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from universities in Germany. He came to Maun and never left, making his living by running a marketing campaign for a safari company. It turns out that a woman I met a few months ago in Savute, a graceful slip of a gal who drives a huge truck and trailer filled with camping equipment for her husband’s private safari company, is a former French horn player in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Her husband used to be the guide for Lloyd Wilmot, who set up the tented camp 30 years ago that eventually became Savute Safari Lodge. Lloyd is one of the many children of Bobby Wilmot, famed crocodile hunter who died in 1968 after a black mamba bit him in the face. (Lloyd’s sister was attacked by a crocodile that left teeth marks in her boat but not a scratch on her.)

Lloyd is still around somewhere in these parts, and he is known to be fearless. I saw it myself: He cut a hole in the wall of his Savute house beside his bed. He’d put food on a ledge there for the lions; from his bed he could turn his head to the right and see the lions inches away and take their photos.

Friday night I was at the Bridge at Backpackers, the place Prince Harry and Chelsea frequent, when friends pointed out an older bush pilot at the bar. Everyone thinks that’s Lord Lucan, they said, telling me: Go ahead; Google him. Which I haven’t done yet. They said years ago a wealthy British man who meant to kill his wife but killed the nanny instead disappeared before he was brought to justice. Within a few weeks a wealthy British man, very mysterious, pitched up in Maun, to stay. The locals looked at the photos, and they are convinced it is the same guy. And that doesn’t even touch on the CIA stories I’ve heard here, but those are for campfires back in the U.S.

If you go to www.jacanaent.com, you can see a truly grab-bag of a Web site. The businessman in town who sells tasers and Leathermen and sandals and embroidered safari wear for the lodges’ staff and my can of “Gettem” quick defence spray has compiled photos and the history of Maun, for all the world’s viewers.

He writes of Maun, population 94,698 in the 2001 census: “This magnet for rural people eager to find work has been described in many different ways, from being ‘a place too far from civilization,’ tsetse fly infested (in its early days but now eradicated) rumbustious, the last frontier and ‘a dreadful hole,’ to the far more delightful and appropriate, the ‘Place of the Reeds.’’’

You can see I fell short of selecting Tuscany for my sabbatical year. But I can guarantee you that in Tuscany there are no classified ads in the local newspaper proclaiming the need for herdgirls and -- should any of my embattled journalism friends need a career change -- crocodile skinners.

I like the word “rumbustious” to describe Maun. It fits the can-do attitude so prevalent here, the best example of which I found on the front page of The Ngami Times on Friday. “LEATHERMAN SAVES PILOTS: Four hour drama in the air.” A female pilot and her husband had been flying a Cessna 210 to Jao Camp in the Okavango Delta to deliver supplies when the right wheel locked. For four hours, they did everything they could think of to free the wheels, including dumping freight and making three dives from high in the sky to see if they could get the wheels to work. Nothing helped, despite all sorts of instructions from all sorts of people on the radio.

How appropriate that in Maun finally came the magic words from one of the flight company’s’ ground crew: “Do you have a Leatherman?”

When the man in the air said yes, he was instructed to cut a hole in the seat above the undercarriage and then into the floor of the plane. The guy told the newspaper he used the Leatherman “like a tin opener,” and reached through the hole in the floor to free the wheels.

“I was more concerned about saving the lives of my wife and myself than losing a hand,” he told the newspaper.

David and Cathy Kays took out a quarter-page ad in the newspaper thanking every last soul who helped them land the plane, including “To the people of Maun, friends and family for being behind us in spirit and prayers while we circled overhead and for their loud cheering when we made a safe landing.”

They wrapped up their ad with a tribute to Maun, “a very special place with a community spirit that is rare to find. It is thanks to the above that we were able to come out of a nasty predicament. You all gave us the strength to be calm and practical.”

In Botswana, that part about being “practical” means they had been instructed with those all-important, ubiquitous words, “Make a plan.” They did, with flying colors. And now they will be among Maun’s legends, not as quirky characters, but as the latest names on the roster of can-do Africans. Makes me proud to roam around this rumbustious place of reeds and heat the likes of which could melt your toenails.

Is peace at hand?

From the time I was little, I heard the Sunday School stories about peace will come -- or a new earth will emerge -- when the lion lies down with the lamb. I'm wondering if that holds true when the impala lies down with the kitty.

This is Impy, a baby impala who lives at Antelope Park, a lion breeding program in Zimbabwe. Impy doesn't know it's an impala. She and the kitty cuddle up together for naps. Occasionally Impy wants to join guests for dinner, but her hooves slide across the concrete floors, wide apart, like a giraffe's. She slips and slides and goes kerplunk (Does that remind anyone of the movie "Bambi?") She has learned to content herself with hanging around doorways, head poked inside to see what's happening with the people, or letting kitty rest its head on her back.

My friend Kelly Swift volunteered at Antelope Park in June and July and befriended Impy and the kitty, and a host of lions. See her blog KellySwiftinAfrica.blogspot.com for amazing photos of lions stretched across her lap. When I saw Kelly in Tanzania, I asked to have this photo to show you and to spread the word that I, for one, would like to acknowledge a prophetic sign from Impy and kitty. Peace on the horizon. Why not?

Ben, the two of us need look no more...(hum along)

Maun, Botswana
September 14, 2008
(With photos of the approach to Xugana, a pied kingfisher known at Xugana as Spike and the view from the boat as you move through nearby channels)

Sometimes I check my email and find cheerful notes of encouragement: You’re so brave. You’re so adventurous. You’re a risk-taker.

“Aren’t you ever scared?” they (i.e., you) ask.

To which I can only reply, “What do you think!???”

Let me tell you a story about this intrepid traveler.

It happened at Xugana Island Lodge in the Okavango Delta last month. I had settled into the Pilot One room. That’s not the fancy digs for guests; it’s for pilots and management. The accommodation is comfortable but spare and shall we say a bit more rustic than the charming bungalows where guests stay. I like Pilot One. I spent most of June living there during my volunteer assignment.

So I was back. By this stage I had many more days of bush living under my belt, but that didn’t mean I was lacking alarm when in the middle of the night I heard serious rustling in my room. Whatever it was, it was on a mission to dig into a plastic bag. The intrepid traveler - c’est moi - froze in her REI bug hut. My mind raced. What if the varmint jumped on my bed? How many of them were there in the bedroom outside my bug hut?

My first instinct was to shut my eyes tight and try to ignore the sounds. But then I remembered: I am brave. I am adventurous. I am a risk-taker.

I decided to slip out of bed and confront my intruders, whatever they may be. I feared the worst, because I suddenly remembered I had done the unthinkable: I had forgotten to take an apple out of my red plastic bag on the table across the room. (Note to visitors to Africa: Never leave any food –not so much as crumpet or crumb -- in your room.)

Not only did I have intruders on the premises; I had invited them in with a butler and a silver platter.

The noise stopped when I reluctantly crept out of bed. By now I realized that I didn’t have my contacts on, my glasses were who knows where and my headlamp was in the pocket of my fleece jacket on a chair that seemed a mile away. I couldn’t see a thing. Ah, but here was my trusty MacBook beside me. I hoisted it into the air so that I could shine its tiny green battery light in the corner where the plastic bag lay containing the apple.

Horror.

Two gigantic rats had their noses right up to the bag. Big black rats. One’s tail was standing straight up against the wall. The other’s stretched across a tea tray on the table. My heart stopped. Exactly how much bravery could I muster at this moment? I had to pause before I decided, yes, I was brave enough, adventurous enough and risk-taking enough to deal with this situation. I stepped quickly and quietly with my toes curled up lest anything leap on them as I made my way to the cupboard to retrieve my weapon: a can of Doom. Insect spray that is the African equivalent of amped-up Raid was the best I could do, but it would have to do.

I backed up to my bed, the better to be ready to jump atop it. I leaned backward, stretched my arm forward and, with the tenacity of a New York City firefighter, aimed at the rats and sprayed the heck out of that can of Doom. Then I waited, wondering if the critters would spring toward me in their flight to escape.

How odd. Those rats were paralyzed. How could they hold their breath that long? The room was quiet now. I must have killed them with the Doom. But I wasn’t sure. What to do?

Inspect the situation, that’s what. I sidestepped across the room to my jacket to dig out the headlamp. I found my glasses and put them on. Toes curled up, I moved back to my safety zone beside the bed and beamed the light at the bag.

The rats didn’t jump. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe, nor could they even if they hadn’t inhaled the poison gas. To my utter astonishment, I had faced up to my fears in the dark and confronted not rats at all. I’d pretty much unloaded the whole can of Doom on what turned out to be my sunglasses (hey, one earpiece unfolded and resting up in the air truly looks like a tail in the dark!) and my Coolpix camera (hey, in the dark that strap on the camera case absolutely looks like a rat tail!).

Oh, the indignity of it all, to think that the intrepid traveler finds herself gaining new skill and insight in the bush, only to have her brave act reduced to a cartoon of incompetence. Oh, ignominy.

I tell the tale to say to all of you, my cheerleaders out there: confront your fears, head-on, blindly if necessary. They may not turn out to be as scary as you think.

P.S. I made fun of myself to all who would listen the next morning. (Poor Audrey visiting from Texas suffered through the story more times than she could count.) Upon my return to Pilot One the next afternoon, I found a mousetrap set in my room. I queried Mark and Lizl Carlsen, the lodge managers, to see if they had placed it there to gig me. Good joke at my bumbling expense, right? Heh. Heh.

Nope.

Turns out it was the housekeeper. Well, well, well, it seems that the room did indeed have mice or rats or critters of unknown identity leaving traces of their visits behind.
Let the record reflect: Should the rodents return, no matter how wee the hour, no matter how dark the night, I am ready for them, Rambo-style.

My passion for African skies

I never tire of the African sky.
Here the sun is setting over Kendwa Beach, up island on Zanzibar, where I lay on a white beach with nothing to do but survey the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Now that I'm back in dusty Maun, I ask myself, "Now, why exactly did I need to rush away from the sea and the skies of Zanzibar?"

I left my pal, Kelly, there. She plans to hang out and write in a room just off the beach. She had planned to come visit in Maun, but when she heard about the heat, the
lack of air conditioning, the venomous snakes that occasionally show up in my storybook cottage (no reptiles have visited yet on my watch, thank goodness)and the flurry of mosquitoes this time of year, she paused and made a different plan that involved staying put.

I'm glad I saw Kendwa and its sunsets. I'll carry them with me on this journey.

From my cottage tonight I will look up at the Maun sky in awe. And, yes, I'll slap a few mosquitoes from my arms as I toast my days on this continent -- all of Africa, from desert to delta to the sea.

If the shoe fits...

Maun, Botswana
September 13, 2008
(with accompanying photos continued in the blog entry below)


With all of my travels in the past few weeks, my blog will be certain to consist of dispatches out of chronological order. No matter. As I settle back into my cottage, I’ll work my way through tales as they strike my fancy.

Today is the day to remember the shoe.

If you look at the Sebego in the photo, you’ll see the ink purported to have launched a movement in Zanzibar’s Stone Town, a warren of ancient buildings with narrow alleyways and artistically carved wooden doors. Think of it as Zanzibar’s French Quarter, only with a Moorish architectural style.

“Obama for President” is written on the shoe. And thus one fan with a single pair of shoes began a chorus of “Yes, we can,” and the establishment of a public patch of ground devoted to Barack Obama.

“If Obama can, we all can!” says the shoe’s owner, 25-year-old Masoud Salim, whose business card says, “VOLUNTEER ALSO EXPERT TOUR GUIDE.”

What a scene. There are two oil (maybe acrylic?maybe tempura?) portraits of the Democratic nominee hanging from a tree. A news article rests underneath one of the paintings. An Obama game board with bottle caps for checkers is painted on the concrete ledge. There are bumper stickers, T-shirts and carved key rings in the shape of the island. Zanzibar is burned in wood on one side; Obama ’08 is on the other. (I couldn’t resist buying the unusual trinket. I figure it’s got historical value, and it’s practical, too, since I now have wheels, praise be.)

Wherever I go I continue to be astonished by the reaction that Obama inspires in Africa. White, black, Methodist, Catholic, Zion Christian Church member, wealthy, poor, Muslim, mixed-race, baggage handler, security company owner, game tracker, government official – whether from Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawai, Kenya, Uganda – you name it, this part of the world is awash in Obama fans. (On the plane back to Maun from Joburg the other day, the flight attendant on Air Botswana pointed to the in-flight magazine in front of me and whispered, proudly, “I’m a supporter of Obama. And that’s OUR Obama.” The magazine cover shot was of Botswana’s new president, Ian Khama, son of a black tribal chief and a white British insurance employee from London. The Oxford-educated chief went on to become Botswana’s first president, Sir Seretse Khama, in 1966.)

Last month Masoud spoke at a gathering of 150 people in Stone Town, a group that included tourists from America who he says changed their support from McCain to Obama after Masoud himself spoke. His take: Obama offers “the great message of hope and change….(His) achievement is that he can inspire change in Africa.”

Masoud said Africans like the fact that Obama’s father was Kenyan, from the country next door. “But that’s not the main thing.” Hope is, he says. “My father insisted on honesty, sincerity and respect. I see that Obama embodies all those things my parents taught me.”

I and my friend Kelly Swift, formerly of The Sacramento Bee and with whom I traveled in Tanzania, got a kick out of the enthusiasm, not only in Stone Town but on the way to the Ngorongoro Crater on Tanzania’s mainland. In Karatu we stopped to take photos of enterprising entrepreneurs who dolled up their curio stands with political slogans. I’m not sure if the Obama stands are helping sell any additional wooden giraffes or beaded necklaces, but I have to believe people like us will keep stopping for the political photo op of the season. Dare I say of the century?

Tanzania

Need I say more about the Ngorongoro Crater area of Tanzania?