Fire in the hole!

Maun, Botswana
Nov. 21, 2008

Pardon me for the break in my storytelling from Maun, but I jumped at an invitation to go to the bush again. I’m back for a few days, then out again on Monday with Wilderness Safaris to volunteer with their nonprofit Children in the Wilderness program for the week.

I was back at the River Lodge last night for a dinner at which the worms-in-ceviche story remains the talker. But now there’s another singularly odd Botswana story in this week’s Ngami Times that has people talking. I met the hero of the tale early in my time in Maun and confirmed the newspaper’s account with one of his good friends last night. This one’s delicious.

According to the newspaper (and flourishes contributed by Gary’s friend): Gary le Roux, a builder, has been erecting a remote safari lodge in Nxai Pan, lately a very dry area of Botswana. A couple of weeks ago Gary awoke in his tent to a loud banging noise and looked out to see a bull elephant banging a metal cup on a metal table.

This was a very thirsty elephant.

The bull moved around to the shower tent and destroyed it to drink the water that was waiting in the bucket for Gary’s shower the next morning.

Gary was unnerved. He decided to unzip the tent (his girlfriend had told him never to run for it, but he was contemplating a dash). The bull caught wind of it and lumbered over to Gary’s tent, now with the flap unzipped. Gary moved to the back of the tent, to the metal container where he was keeping extra water. Guess what came along? The elephant’s trunk, winding its way through the tent toward him and the water container. Gary did the only thing he could think of besides running. He lit a cigarette “to restore my shattered nerves,” took a long draw and then blew smoke right into the elephant’s trunk.

“It snorted and retreated out of the tent and away from my camp, making its way to the staff camp where absolute chaos erupted as it smashed its way through their belongings,” he told The Ngami Times, which concluded the piece by noting that “Le Roux has decided not to give up smoking….”

So have many of the fellows I’ve met in Maun, where it is not a rare thing to see a sign on a door that says “Smoking encouraged.” Now, darn it, the okes will pull out Gary’s story anytime they need it to justify their habit. I can see them now taking a long draw on their Peter (Stuyvesant) Blues and saying, “But baby doll, smoking can SAVE lives.”