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.

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.

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.

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.

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