As the African worm turns

Maun, Botswana
Nov. 15, 2008
with a photo of the view of the Boro River, where I live, from Colin's boat and a photo of Tony the Tiler and Colin (he's holding on to the boat)

Whenever I return to Maun from the hinterlands, I wonder what crackerjack story I’m going to hear next. I’m never disappointed. Either my hair is left standing on end, or I’m doubled over laughing. This outback village is lousy with storytellers accustomed to chewing the fat around bush campfires. I could listen to them all day.
Colin is a safari company owner and jack of all trades who’s been here for years, and, though soft-spoken, is one of the jaw-boning champions. You’ll usually find him at the helm on his party-rental boat that cruises the Boro, a whiskey-drinking captain who named his boat Sir Osis of the River. He is beyond wry. Once he looked around at all the young married couples with babies at the River Lodge (Colin calls it the Liver Rot) and said they might look happy now, but just wait a few years and they’d end up divorced like his group of 40-somethings and older.

Divorce, sadly, in Maun is common, especially in the crazy month of October when temperatures soar past 120 degrees Fahrenheit and the hunters come home from safari season to find that some home-wrecker has hooked up with their sweeties. But from Colin’s standpoint everyone in Maun has always taken such bouts of misfortune in stride.
“You don’t lose your partner,” he said. “You just lose your turn.”
Hoo-boy, I told him. That is cynical.

I saw Colin yesterday at the pilots’ hangout, the Buck and Hunter (also known as the Duck and Ambush for a shooting outside the building a few years ago that amounted to guns going off with nobody hurt). I could tell by Colin’s smile this story was going to be good. He started off talking about a “cute Mexican” gal, an artist visiting Maun recently. He took a shine to her, tried to make some plans with her, which she accepted but then cancelled. He’d had enough of that, so he moved on. Somewhere along the way she phoned and invited him to a dinner party at which she would cook a traditional Mexican dinner at a local backpackers lodge where the young British royals like to hang out when they are in town. Colin said he was busy and declined.

Turns out that the people at the dinner, none of them British royals as far as I know, were treated to a Mexican dish that featured raw fish from the river. Colin didn’t know the name. The best I can figure was that the artist made ceviche using Okavango Delta bream. Now, I’m a sushi lover, but even I would run from a plate of raw river fish. I’ve heard the same story again today from another source: the number of people is somewhere between 6 and 8, including the artist, who, post-dinner, are battling horrific worms.

“You can see the worms move under the skin,” Colin said. They move up and all around and “can go to your brain!” To be rid of them, a doctor has to cut them out.

(Aieeeee! This was the kind of gross my boss in California would salivate over.)

Just like the movie “Alien!” I said to Colin.

And I added, “Great, one more thing to worry about in Africa.”

Nonplussed as usual, Colin looked on the bright side. “I feel like one of those guys,” he said, “who missed the plane that crashed.”