Mission possible

Africa 21
Maun

I’m back from 9 days in the bush, on two-night quick hiatus from my first assignment as a volunteer at Desert & Delta Safaris.

A tough mission, this one. James Bondish. Valerie Plumish. Call me Spook.

Shhhhh. I’m speaking into my wrist now to let you in on how I was asked to go undercover as a “mystery guest,” one Mary Ann Henson, regular tourist from the United States, instructed to get “a bird’s eye view” of how things were going at the camps and whether there was consistency among them. I would fill out questions on a spreadsheet and take notes on my findings and return them to Maun at the appointed time to the head office, where I would engage in a debriefing with the big cheeses.

As I had paid a British company for this 3-month volunteer gig in which I would be placed with a safari company, I detected no ethical violation in following the first orders issued by the company for my volunteer assignment. Yes, indeed, you can send me by bush plane and boats to four camps in Botswana, put me in fine accommodations with elephants and baboons romping outside my doors and feed me all day long such delicacies befitting passengers on the QE2, all expenses paid. No problem. Nadda. Reporting for duty, one Mary Ann Henson….

It was harder than you might think. I had to keep remembering to say my name was Mary Ann. This was new to me to be anything but myself. It helped that two of my very best friends in the world are named Mary Ann, and so I threw myself into the role. Except I didn’t really have to BE someone else – just not be the volunteer Maria Henson whom the camps were expecting to see soon. The tough part was remembering to use the right name and fretting over whether the staff would shun me when I returned for hostess duty on-site. That question will be answered soon enough, when I leave for Savute Camp tomorrow.

I liked so many of the people I met, guests and staff included, that I ran into thorny situations when they insisted on getting my cell phone number or email so they could keep up with my sabbatical year goings-on. Staff wanted to spend the night in my guest room in Maun, except I don’t have a guest room. Some asked if I had a blog, but I managed to avoid giving them the address. One camp manager was on to me when a note arrived addressed to the real me: It was from a 21-year-old female Kiwi pilot wanting to sublet my little cottage. The Desert and Delta Safaris (here on out DDS) executive sent her my way with a first letter correctly addressed, but the pilot sent another one that was wrong and threatened to blow my cover.

Believe me, the camp manager gave me the bad vibe when she was trying to figure out how I could be Maria and Mary Ann at the same time. Turns out it was the paradise on earth camp and perhaps now I won’t be welcome for my hostess duty under that manager’s tutelage, or if I am I bet I will be churning the compost pile….

I also had to keep up a vigorous enthusiasm for spending numerous hours on 4X4s and eating enormous amounts of delicious food. I managed. I did get a bird’s eye view of what it’s going to be like on the inside with flocks of tourists moving through, and it will be a fascinating study.

I met terrific people from all over the world. I met unusual people. I met two former Playboy bunnies from the Bahamas. I met a charming, acclaimed statistician with a new book coming out in May and who once was under fire for three days in Khartoum, an uncanny situation for a math brain. He told me on a game walk, apropos of nothing, that he had had one of those “colonostomy thingies” after which the doctor remarked he had the longest colon he had ever seen. For once I had no rejoinder. And none of us will forget the 62-year-old chiropractor from LA who told us straightaway that she had been the paramour of the missing world adventurer Steve Fossett, the college chum of my Bee colleague Bill Moore. Too many surprises to name here about her, but one I’ll always remember: The guide was getting her a cup of coffee and asked how she would like it.
“Like my men,” she snapped. “Black.”
I almost spit out my coffee and I did actually hoot. But Obie, the black camp manager sitting across from me, kept a solid poker face throughout, including when it took 3 tries and six eggs for the chef to get the yolks soft the way the mistress liked them. The next day, I learned later, she instructed the chef on how to boil her eggs.
I already adore that camp's manager. He is the picture of composure and cool under pressure!

Besides the eccentrics and luminaries, I met my share of dim lights.
"Hey! Psst!" A tourist called for the guide to come back and answer a question on the game walk. "What's that white bird waaaay up there?" The guide gave a wry look and said, "That's a big bird." As if on cue, the big bird flew over, making a roaring noise.
It was a plane.
The dumb tourist was me. I had surmised the nonyane (bird) was an African fish eagle.

My batteries are running low and I have only a few minutes to run my errands and get to the internet café. (A friend of the DDS executive has a fancy lodge outside of town and wants me to spend the night there and investigate as a mystery guest, as I did for DDS. Hmm. Let me think about that. OK.)


I’ll close by including an excerpt from my report to DDS about one of the activities at Camp Okavango. By this time I had been on safari for days and days and so I had had lots of the same experiences over and over. Don’t think I’m complaining. No way. But it’s important to share that my proclivity for stirring wild animals’ curiosity or being at the right place at the wrong time is intact. I’ll write in July. Bye for now.

I’d been on so many activities for so many days that I found myself in the mokoro with guide Robert and a guest, Julian, gliding along, mostly with my mind wandering. We weren’t seeing much wildlife, just the beautiful papyrus and reeds. We’d been going like that for over an hour, and, having already been on several mokoro rides, I immersed myself this time in the study of lilies and lily pads with all of their colors and designs. Gazing at the intricate patterns, I was effectively in a trance.

All of the sudden, there was a crashing sound roughly a small swimming pool’s length from our canoe -- and from me-- since I was in the front. A hippo shot up like a whale, breeching the water!

“For God’s sake! Oh, no. This is dangerous!” Those were my cries, though made as quietly as I could.

Robert plunged the pole into the riverbed to stabilize us. Our mokoro hardly rocked despite our fear. Our boat was as stable as possible under those circumstances, thanks to Robert. Moffat guided the canoe behind us that contained terrified British newlyweds. He, too, apparently braked with skilled care.

Time stopped. What might happen next? I waited for the worst. I knew that the hippos’ blubbery, blockhead look disguises their real reputation as rampaging man-killers if someone gets in their way. I had seen enough hippo pods to assess the situation. Where there was one hippo, there was usually at minimum a couple more. I braced for the inevitable. I wondered whether I would have to swim for shore, whichever way that was and through who knew how many crocodiles. Robert began beating the water with his pole and shouting a weird call, over and over.

We were lucky, oh so lucky. We had frightened a lone hippo that decided to high-tail it away from us instead of attacking. No other hippo popped up.

Always the journalist, I asked Robert if he had ever seen anything like that. “That was close -- VERY, VERY, VERY close!” he said. He said it was a first. Never in all his years had he encountered a hippo on those sleepy channels beside Camp Okavango. He, too, expected other hippos to jump out of the water, mouths opened wide not in a yawn or a smile but a signal of threat.

I learned later that Moffat told the newlyweds he was afraid. He took their boat and went back in the other direction, while we continued onward in ours. I also quizzed Robert later the next day about what could have happened. If the hippo had decided to attack us instead of run away, he would have chopped the boat in half, then torn it bit by bit “until it was finished,” he said. And, yes, we would have had to swim “up to the papyrus.”

I drank a scotch straight-up when I got to shore, at a charming makeshift bar set up in a field from which to view the sunset. Turns out that field was the airstrip. My heart was still about to jump out of my chest.

The British bride ran to me and threw her arms around me in a bear hug. “We’re alive!” she cried.

I felt as though I had been on the “It’s a Small World” ride gone freakishly haywire by a monster visitation worthy of Stephen King. I pounded that drink back and learned two new Setswana words immediately. “Kubu etona”: Big hippo!

I returned to camp announcing, “Ke bona kubu etona!” --I see a big hippo! (I don’t know past tense yet.) I’m not sure anyone really believed how close it was until Robert briefed the staff; then we took our place in the history books.