You can't always get what you want...

Maun, Botswana
Nov. 22, 2008

Often in my time in Botswana I have met tourists intent on checking off the animals on their lists. They have watched the National Geographic documentaries, so they arrive tuned and ready: “Lion…Order up!” They simply MUST see a lion or a leopard or a wild dog or a cheetah. They don’t want to hear how filmmakers spent a year in the bush to capture the images seen on TV. They look to the guide to deliver on demand.

Is it any surprise that the vibe of “power and control” is in the air when they take their first steps on the Maun tarmac wearing their starched khaki ensembles, with a host of techno-camper gadgets at the ready? I wonder if the animals sense it, because they sometimes prefer to hide away on their own holiday rather than meet the guests. I like to imagine the elephants down by the water hole stamping their feet and sharing a few chuckling snorts about the Air Botswana parade. They tell their jokes and before the guests return from an afternoon game drive, the ellies amble off silently in all directions, lickety-split into the bush, just for the fun of leaving lodge managers to say, “You just missed them! I promise. There must have been 10 bull elephants at the water hole, not 5 minutes ago.”

What I wish for anyone who visits Botswana is to arrive with senses wide open for all that can be perceived. An opening of the heart will surely follow, by virtue of approaching the land’s treasures with the reverence of a novitiate, from the Fireball lily ablaze in scarlet to the dung beetle rolling a ball of wet buffalo poo with Herculean purpose. Where is that armored fellow going with that boulder of dung and at such speed? Sit and watch. The landscape and its occupants are grand, the whole of it, not just The Big Five.

Across the planet we are all sojourners among landscapes in constant change. It’s easy to miss the unfolding of the miracles where most of us live, stuck in traffic jams, a Bluetooth in our ear, a Blackberry on our dash. Underneath it all and through it all is a tapestry of nature woven from morning to night and all night through, indeed woven right through us. We forget to look for the gossamer threads. We’re walking amnesiacs huddled on street corners waiting for the light to say proceed. Here, in Africa, the recognition slaps us in the face, wakes us up. This is the light you’ve been waiting for. This is where you came from, this is what you’re connected to, this is the new news, same as the old news. Forget Times Square, for a digital moment anyway.

The other day I was in Camp Moremi, surprised to find I would be the only one on a game drive with guide Kagiso, a river bushman whose name means “peace.” I was overnighting at the camp to interview managers and guides. I hated to take Kagiso away from a rare opportunity to have an afternoon break. Just an hour’s drive would be fine, not the usual 2 ½ to 3. Anything we saw would be appreciated, I assured him. (This is usually the time I tease guides by amping up my demands, “You must find me a lion today!” We have a good laugh over it.) I was happy to see the Fireball lilies and dozens of baby impalas, tiny antelopes that belong under the lid of a music box, some of them not more than two days old, grazing and skipping throughout the reserve but sticking close to their moms.

I looked at my watch. We’d been out for an hour. It’s ok to go back now, I told Kagiso. Not far away an African fish eagle watched over the pond where golden-green crocodiles rested on the banks. The eagle took to the sky, throwing back its head to call its long whistling cry. (I am determined the sound of the fish eagle will be my cellphone ring tone back in the States. It will be the signal that elbows me in the ribs, “Wake up. Remember.”)

Kagiso started the truck rolling, but something caught his attention in the wet sand. Fresh leopard tracks. He wanted to check them out. Fine by me. Whatever we saw would be a gift. I really meant it.

You can see photos of the male leopard Kagiso tracked, a leopard with yellow eyes that were sparks. For some unknown reason, the leopard granted an audience, letting Kagiso and me join him on his afternoon walk, we in the truck of course, inching behind. To my astonishment, we spent 45 minutes with this leopard while he scratched his head against a log, sharpened his claws, marked his territory, rolled in the grass and sipped water from a puddle in the road. He was close enough that if I had leaned out of the truck I could have petted him. Radical notion, that one.

I was so close I watched the heaving of his chest as he breathed. How can nature paint a coat like that? I wondered. I found myself transfixed by him but not unaware of the whole. In the distance a giraffe stopped eating fresh leaves from an acacia treetop to crane his neck; his neck was the Tower of Pisa. (Did you know, despite that long neck, the giraffe has the same number of vertebrae as you and I?) The impalas froze as if on ice. The leopard carried on. Nothing else moved except the red-eyed francolins. They squawked and scattered about in a panic, sounding the alarm calls, running around like headless chickens. The leopard lazed. He was the picture of nonchalance. No question who was boss on this reserve.

To think the visitation happened without a whit of desperation on my part or that of Kagiso. The leopard granted us an audience, and we accepted with reverence. It was one of those moments of grace, fleeting yet eternal. I wish all the guests in Botswana could have shared it with me. Then they would understand and perhaps remember to keep their eyes open for the gossamer threads at home.

The leopard

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.

"And the gold medal goes to...."

Aug. 18, 2008
Maun, Botswana

Alpha Kilo Kilo – radio-speak for the plane that brought me back to Maun yesterday afternoon – ferried a lone reluctant passenger. You know who….

Not so the rest of my Savute friends: guide Gwist, who kept checking his cell phone as if news from his mosadi (girlfriend) would pop up any minute, rooms ladies (that’s what they call housekeepers here) Maggie and Keba, groundsman and all-around fix-it guy Mocks and waiter Mbombo. They had worked their two months solid and were headed to Maun for their 11-day time-off. After tourists disembarked at Kwando, Matt the pilot reflected the staff’s mood by pumping a low-volume bit of rock and roll through the plane’s speakers.

From the co-pilot’s seat beside Matt with the bird’s eye view, I surveyed the dry scrub of Savuti, then the lush green of the Delta as we made our way west and south, and, yes, I wanted to turn around and go back. I love the bush. I exclaim it from the top of the morning until night swallows day: I absolutely love the bush. But this time I kept my mouth shut. I know those folks from Savute like me, but I would have sparked mutiny had we ventured anywhere short of Maun. Skydiving with no parachute would have been my fate. They were tired. They wanted to see their families, eat traditional food and go to the cattle post. No way, no how would a romantic makgowa (me) with stars in her eyes about Africa stop them.

Why do I love it? The bush reclaims my attention from distraction. I listen with new ears and see with new eyes, and I never cease to feel reverence for the wild.

Last week I was in one of the chalets getting ready for dinner. I had just had a shower. The bathroom sliding glass door was cracked open about a foot and a half. In the bedroom the sliding screen doors were all that separated my room #4 from the balcony overlooking the water hole where the elephants meet. It was 6:08 p.m. when I heard the quick rustle and the thud. I looked out from the bathroom and couldn’t believe it: On the railing of my chalet was an adolescent female leopard! She must have been chasing a guinea fowl, and it was this cat that had landed with the thump on my rounded timber railing just a few feet away.

Job one for me: Close the sliding glass doors in the bathroom quietly, hastily, with care.
Done.

I watched the leopard glide like a gymnast on a balance beam. Slow move. Quick step. Slow move forward again. The sun was setting, so she stood in contrast to the yellow and pink glow behind her. She walked the length of the railing, then jumped down onto the balcony to snoop around. No guinea fowl here. She leapt up on the big tree that leans into the balcony, crawled partway up and came down again. I was watching it all, eyes always on her, my body frozen except for my hands digging through my backpack to find my camera. I failed at retrieving it in time. No matter. I’ll never forget the scene: Her sleekness and elegance, the length of her tail. She jumped off my balcony, and I heard the crunch of leaves as she moved on. I exhaled. Time had been suspended. I wanted to dance with joy. I was shaking with the thrill of it all, though slightly annoyed that I didn’t have a photograph to commemorate those minutes. Of this I was certain: The leopard’s visit was etched in my memory in burnt-black detail. Rembrandt couldn’t have done better.

And then! There she was again! She was at the right-edge of my chalet, craning her neck around the corner to peek in at me through the sliding glass door. Her face was so like that of a house cat, it was uncanny. I glanced at my watch: 6:10 p.m. She sat there looking at me while I muttered something silly, “Hi there, kitty. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s ok. It’s ok.” We stared at each other in high alertness. We were in a sea of stillness. We studied each other intently. I held my breath through it all. Then she was gone.

When nature comes calling with such a creature carrying its calling card, no words can do such a visit justice, only gratitude. That I felt in all its fullness.

I finished dressing in a flash. It was 20 past 6:00 by then, probably safe for me to go from my chalet up to the lodge, but, well, maybe not. My sissy mode appropriately kicked into gear. I knew that the two lodge managers Kobus and Sanet liked to watch the sunset from the chairs near the fire pit when guests were on the afternoon game drive. I figured they were there, close by my chalet but out of sight because of the trees. “KOBUS! KOBUS! CAN YOU COME GET ME IN NUMBER 4?” I yelled. Without a bright flashlight, I figured this was my safest course at dusk, and indeed Kobus came running. He and Sanet had heard the thud and rustle. They had run toward #4 just after 6:00 but stopped short when they saw the “Do Not Disturb” sign stretched across the path. They thought guests had been cavorting. They forgot that was my room for the day, where I had been napping during my break.

I told them the leopard story, and, sharing my excitement, off they went to see if they could track her. My job was to meet the guests coming back from game drives to tell them what happened and how the hunt was on for the leopard. Kobus and Sanet came back to the front of the lodge a few minutes later. They hadn’t found her. Some guests had already gone to their rooms. Energy and Gwist were leading their guests to rooms near #4. It had been a hot afternoon, and the animals had “taken a holiday,” as we say in sympathy about game drives in which Italians in particular arrive back at the lodge disappointed by an absence of big cats. Well, the game activity wasn’t over. The leopard –my leopard visitor – was in a bush on the right side of my chalet. She hadn’t gone far after all. The guides shone their spotlights, and guests got close and shot their photos. Smiles all around. Alas, I still hadn’t dug my camera out from the pile in my backpack, but from disappointing experience I knew that it would have failed to capture the leopard during nighttime anyway.

So I am left with only this tale to tell you, and it is true and will stay with me always. What can be contained in three minutes of clock time? Reflected through nature, it is an alchemical blend of depth and stillness, exquisite, heretofore unknown to me, wherein clock time matters not at all.