Why Girl Scouts matter

Already, only few days into my Africa journey, I ask myself: Now why did I fly up and out after Brownies?

I was initiated into Girl Scouts in the late 1960s, but for some reason after the ceremony where you look into the water, which is really a mirror, I took my prissy self home and said I was done. I got interested instead in fashion, Tiger Beat, Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy, not tying knots, orienteering and earning badges for firestarting. I figured I'd had enough training after having crafted my "sit-upon" out of old newspapers at one Brownies meeting and singing the Indian (now Native American) song, "Hi-ya! Hi-ya, ipsi ni-yah!" around a fake campfire in a Sunday School room at the Lutheran church where our troop met.

Any Girl Scout wouldn't have made the mistake I did yesterday. I was walking from Riverwalk shopping center (did I mention free wireless?), along a major highway, past people waiting for public transportation -- mini-buses called combis. The only vegetation in sight along my side of the road was one beautiful tree with feathery green leaves. I ducked under its branches to pass. Next thing I knew I was living a horror flick. That tree had thorns -- no kidding -- four inches long, shaped like Freddy Kruger's fingernails. They grabbed my white shirt and wouldn't let go. The more I moved, the bigger the holes being poked in my shirt -- and my right arm. It was as if I was getting that smallpox vaccine all over again. Those people in the combi line must have been laughing. I was jumping around -- ouch ouch -- and tearing my newly pressed cotton shirt. When I finally freed myself, I hung my head and walked on, rubbing my arm, humiliated again at my lack of wilderness skills. When I got home I inspected what was a nasty bruise and puncture wound. I showed it to Puni. "Do you think I'm going to die from this? Are those trees poisonous?"

She laughed at me. Obviously, she thinks I will be fine. Then she offered me some advice. Don't step in elephant dung. Elephants eat those trees and the thorns show up in the dung. Why -- those thorns will shoot right up through your foot if you step in it! Very dangerous!

Great. Another thing to worry about in the outdoors.
I bet Girl Scouts know which trees to avoid and don't have to be reminded not to step in elephant dung. But not dropouts. Oh, no, not dropouts. Hi-ya. Hi-ya. Ipsi-ni-yah.
Oh, well.
Since I'm at the mall I'm thinking of going shopping for girly-girl stuff. It looks awfully safe in there.

The funk lives!

Those of you who have known me since college remember how I loved the funk.( Why, I was founding mother of the Funk Band, for Pete's sake.) Cameo. Luther Vandross. Earth Wind & Fire. Rick James (my journalist friends are now making a collective gagging sound. I hear you.) And who can forget the road trip to Greensboro to see Teddy Pendergrass, where women were falling into faints when he bent down and caressed that microphone and sang, "Turn out the lights..." ? Yep, my friends and I were there. Not many white girls in the house, but we were there, although we didn't scream, "Teddy! Teddy! Take me, Teddy!" Well, maybe we did.
Anyway, college pals will be happy to know that Teddy is big in Botswana. Ain't no oldies' thing here, either. He seems to be playing on the radio or in hotel lobbies wherever I go. I had to share that with Ernest this morning. He had Teddy going full blast on the radio as he drove me to the Riverwalk, to the Equatorial coffee shop, blessed home of free wireless Internet. I'm going to take advantage of that free wireless while I can and flood your computers with blog entries. Then it's lights out when I'm back in the Delta.

Ernest, by the way, yelled out at his cab buddy through the window yesterday that I'm his best customer. I call Ernest my main man. And we laugh all the way to the coffee shop and home from the University of Botswana.
Today, I begin teaching....

Be all you can be (with Amway)

Africa 5

Puni Sechele, the 46-year-old woman who instructed her husband, Sechele Sechele, “to open (our) heart and our home” to me, is on a mission. She listens to inspirational Les Brown CDs on a player in a bag she carries around like a purse. She reads entrepreneurial books, one of which she handed me the other night for bedtime reading: “The Slight Edge: $ecret to a $uccessful Life” by Jeff Olson. Nearly every night after she knocks off from her job at Botswana’s Industrial Court, she goes out to make presentations to build her “network,” pursuing the American dream that is now a big-time African dream: her multi-legged organization of “home executives” who sell Amway products – a plan, she informs me, that can turn ordinary people “like truck drivers, clerks and house help,” such as a Mexican cleaning lady in the States, into millionaires.

Puni invited me to an Amway meeting on Monday night at the Gaborone Sun hotel’s conference center, and I leapt at the chance. As I expected, I entered the vast room as the lone white person among smartly-dressed doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, even lecturers from the University of Botswana. These were seriously happy people, optimistic, exceptionally welcoming and intent on networking. They were upbeat and fabulous. Zee – a former IT lecturer and computer professional, is now a home executive and mentor to Puni. Puni proudly noted when we drove over to Zee’s house one morning that Zee gets up “when her body clock tells her to.” Zee’s husband, Ericton (sp?), was the motivational speaker for the evening. He said he has had private-sector jobs, policy jobs at Parliament and now is in the Ministry of Education for the Republic of Botswana, but he and Zee have already reached a high Amway level that means extra income every month and it’s obvious they are working on reaching something called diamond level and beyond. I admit I didn’t follow all the numbers thrown around about when exactly ever-growing monthly checks come in until eventually, after hard work building enough connections and delivering quality, “biodegradable” products for home cleaning and personal grooming, a person can walk away from a salaried job for good and have two important things in life: “time and freedom.”

Ericton let it rip (without ever using the word Amway): He bounced across the stage, smiled broadly and spoke to people where they live: Some who have made it didn’t have a “thebe” in their pockets to begin with, meaning a penny in our lingo. He drew a circle and divided it into quadrants. On the left were the poor employees, who have to depend on 100 percent personal performance or luck of the workplace to keep the money coming in, plus they have to deal with bosses. The other quadrant in that half of the circle was the self-employed -- capable people, Ericton said, who can end up being slaves to their jobs. What do those people in both quadrants lack? Time and freedom. He drew a frowny face. Eighty percent of the world fits in that half of the circle.

On the other side of the circle are the investors and the “B.O.,” which stands for business owners. The B.O. crowd depends on the performance of lots of people and takes a percentage cut of their network members’ monetary success, so everyone wins! It worked for that retired colonel who started KFC, Ericton said. It can work for the rest of us -- once we know the secret! And it is simple! It really is ! And now we know it! He draws a happy face. That’s where the 20 percent lives, in those two quadrants. And when the B.O. crowd makes it, then they can dabble in being investors, using what amounts to “play money.” All of this means that anyone can go after his or her dreams with this formula; the dreams don’t have to be ground down as the years pass. (Newcomers see Ericton or the hosts who invited them to the meeting after the break…)

Puni is so fired up that she’s headed to an Amway conference in Johannesburg this weekend. She has already made a trip to Baltimore, where there was no time for sightseeing, what with all of the motivational speakers to meet in person. They came alive after all those CD lectures half a world away. And she wanted to investigate the program in more detail. Satisfied, she came back with her dreams intact: First on the list will be a vacation in Mauritius.

I have to admit I’m enjoying being on the B.O. side of the circle, at least with the time and freedom part of this journey. But, alas, I’m exhibiting faux B.O. By my choice of career, I rest on the wrong side of the circle – a mere employee, a sincerely grateful one, but an employee nonetheless, one lacking even a salary at the moment.

I made it only 5 minutes into “The Slight Edge” before falling asleep the other night, exhausted after my Gaborone treasure hunt for my residence permit. But I have to say those Amway products did a nice job of washing my clothes on Tuesday and cleaning the tub after my baths. And the “stylist” at the fancy hotel salon who gave me the bad bowl haircut even skipped all the Paul Mitchell products at arm’s reach and wielded an Amway bottle to spray a “brilliant sheen” on my hair. Let it be said there was nothing lacking in the sheen department—thanks, Amway -- only in the misshapen mop that passed for hair on my head.

Which leaves me thinking, my friends: What will you be today? What dreams do you have? How’s your hair?

Smiley face.

Obama in Africa

Some people in Botswana do seem engaged by the presidential primaries in the U.S. Mr. and Mrs. Wanzala in Maun were over the moon when I gave them an Obama bumper sticker. I took a photo to mark the occasion. Mrs. Wanzala is from Alego, the neighboring village to Obama's father's village in Kenya. She, too, is from the Luo tribe, the granddaughter of a king for that region. She looks like a queen, especially in the photos from the 1960s, with her hair in an updo like Queen Nerfiti's. Cathy Wanzala is glued to any news about Obama. She's proud that a man with African roots is doing so well.

And she feels connected to him -- Cathy and Joe lived in Nairobi and shared a roof in a kind of long house with Obama's father and his family headed by a white woman Ruth as the matriarch. (That was after Obama Sr. and his wife from Kansas divorced. Barack Obama saw his father only when he was 10-years-old when his father returned to America for a visit.) A wall and a fence separated the two families in Nairobi, but the Wanzalas saw them frequently, of course, and Joe used to go to the pub and have drinks with Obama Sr. "He was a man with a large voice that filled the room," Joe says. He also liked to drink -- a lot. He'd order "a double brandy," and when the waiter would ask with what, he'd say, "A double."

So one double brandy would come with another double brandy. Joe recalls him as a brilliant and generous man, one who used to be country's chief economist but got in trouble when he criticized the government, of which he was a high official. He fell from a very high post to impoverished circumstances for a long time; he was on a list not to be hired. Eventually, he made his way back to a better lifestyle, but the hardship had really taken its toll and he was drinking much too much. (If you haven't read Obama's book, "Dreams from my Father," you should. It explains the amazing story of Barack Obama's Kenya roots. I wish I had a copy to give the Wanzalas. They'd love it.

Wade in the water -- scary water, creepy water....

My first walk in the bush upon my return to Botswana turned out to be a world apart from my Wilderness Safaris experience last July. First of all, I hadn’t signed up for a walk at all. I’d signed up for a mokoro ride. As I did last summer, I was traveling through water channels lined with papyrus, this time in the original, leaky wooden boats carved from mokoro trees, not the plastic boats of July designed to be more environmentally friendly. Local “polers” whom our driver picked up at a compound of huts made of mud and dung spread straw over the watery flooring to make placesfor us to sit. There was a jovial couple from California: Charles Rudolph and Jennifer Jones (he from Santa Cruz and she from a tiny town near Oakhurst outside Yosemite. Dorothy K., I forgot to ask if he knew your piano man Tom).

Charles had been made “redundant” by his computer sales job in London, so he took the buyout money and set off on an adventure with Jennifer. They went to 4X4 driving school outside Krueger National Park in South Africa for about 3 hours of practice off-road driving and navigating, rented their truck and camping gear in Joburg, then headed, maps in hand, for Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Botswana. They signed up for the Audi Camp day trip, the place they were camping for a few days. The other guy on the mokoro outing = a regular Mr. Mean guy – insisted that he bought a single-person Land Rover ride and a single-person mokoro trip. Imagine my horror when the camp manager said I’d been assigned to ride with him in the mokoro. (Another reason I hate being single on some days.) I paid extra not to have to sit with him after he uttered an obscenity at Jennifer when she was trying to get us started; we were already late and Mr. Mean was being nasty with the Audi Camp manager. The four of us, however, had to ride in the vehicle together for 1 ½ hours, and we all steered clear of Mr. Mean as much as one can in that situation.

The real reason the day was very different is that the local polers didn’t inspire as much confidence that our safety was front and center. It was bloody hot. The sun was beating down, and we didn’t know how long we would be riding. It was gorgeous, though, with the water lilies popping open in all their glory. Summer is scorching here, and there was little protection from the sun, except for our hats pulled snug. We were all sweating buckets (except Mr. Mean, who was shirtless and in my estimation in need of a man bra) when we glided to a grassy bank so that water could be bailed from one boat. When our lead poler got back in his boat, he winced, reached down and plucked a leech from his foot. It then wrapped around his finger in a neat circle, a leech ring. Still wincing, he showed it off to us before tossing it ashore.

EEK, PREY, LEAVE! – (perhaps there begins my parody of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir.)

At our next stop, we are told to get out and start hauling all our belongings. We were going on a “game walk.” We had no idea about this, at least I didn’t. We were walking through full-on bush. My microfiber REI pants attracted all manner of thistles, which scratched and cut me through the fabric. Youch. I was covered. We plowed on like that for a bit, then the lead poler stopped, surprised. Aiyeh. The usually dry spot we needed to traverse had flooded. He tells us we must take off our shoes and wade through the water.

One thing I promised the former U.S. ambassador and his wife in Texas was that I would not go swimming or frolicking in water in Botswana. This game walk jaunt thus was not in the plan. I was thinking of that leech, along with various diseases that the CDC warns about, especially the one in which a worm that must be nigh on invisible crawls up your woo-woo and causes grave and irreparable damage. I was the whiny gal. Are you sure we should do this? Won’t there be leeches? No comment. The poler was on a mission to deliver our mokoro experience in all its splendor, not to mention by the clock. No one else was balking and so off we waded – through thigh-high water. Every scratch, every prick on my feet in the muck – I was sure it was a leech the size of an ottoman. The only thing worse was knowing we’d have to wade through the same muck on the way back.

I’ve had this thought sometimes during my travels over the years: I PAID for this kind of fun? What am I crazy? But what was I to do? I had no choice but to carry on, grimly, imagining with the furor of the worst hypochondriac that it would be only minutes before some river illness struck me down, and, no doubt, the lead poler would leave me because he was, after all, on a schedule. (Now, I know that with my family reading this, all sorts of alarm bells will go off, and this pretty much seals the deal that my Martha Stewart mother will come nowhere near Botswana. But I can’t forgo describing the adventure. I promise in the future a gentle and safety-conscious mokoro trip, should my mother ever wake up with an urge to board a plane to come see me. Mom, they do have luxury hotels here, and your outdoor activity could be confined to a crossword puzzle session at poolside. Really, I’d love to see you and Dad.)

The way things were going it was no surprise that when we got to the hippo pool -- our destination it turns out -- there were no hippos. Lead poler looked through the binoculars (mine, of course) and pointed to some black spot afar, but I couldn’t tell if it was a hippo or a rock. We ate our lunch and returned the way we came. Mr. Mean, however, couldn’t get enough. He’d been muttering all the way, off and on, about whether we might see anacondas in his broken English (he was from Brazil). Before we got back on the Land Rover, Mr. Mean asked once more about anacondas and, I guess satisfied by a poler’s answer, plunged into the river for a long swim. Where’s an anaconda when you need one?

Bureaucracy overcome!

It's official: I'm a Motswana for a year, which means citizen of Botswana, although I am just a temporary resident.
Of course the search for the official document was anything but easy. Last I heard in the United States from the Bots embassy, I was supposed to call a woman to check on where to pick up the permit in Gaborone. She was out sick the day I called in January. So I left the country hoping it would all work out.

Today, my hostess Puni took off plenty of time from work to help me navigate the bureaucracy. The sick govt. worker woman is now officially on leave and I was in the lurch. Puni spoke Setswana and wouldn't take no for an answer at every office we visited. I cooled my heels for over 2 hours in the U.S. embassy, which independent of botswana immigration officials was helping to track down the paperwork. I'd hoped to see the U.S. ambassador, but she is out of the country. She had wanted to have coffee after former ambassador Bob Krueger had told her a lot about me by phone. Bob and his wife, Kathleen, hosted me at an amazing dinner at their home in New Braunfels, Texas, on Valentine's Day when I was traveling across the country. I didn't leave their driveway until 12:30 a.m. We had such great conversations about Africa, destiny and spirit-- and politics. When I gave his wife a thank-you gift at the beginning of the evening that included a card with a quote I love from Doris Lessing, Kathleen burst into tears. She, too, feels the pull of the African sky and misses it every day. I'll share the quote later when I have my journal nearby. I recommend with great enthusiasm the book the Kruegers wrote together called, "From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi," published by the Univ. of Texas press. That was their first ambassadorial post before Botswana; they were there for the genocide that coincided with what was happening in Rwanda. They both were brave in trying to stop the killings, document the massacres so that the murdered were identified and support the choked gasps of democracy. They are an exceptional couple and among the precious guides along my path.

On the lighter side -- but don't judge it by my waistband --at the moment I'm in the Gaborone Sun hotel business centre, having downed the biggest celebratory lunch you can imagine with Puni to mark the occasion of putting the permit into my backpack and becoming official and able to come and go as I please across borders. The lunch, as usual, included major spillage -- beets on my white jacket that I wore today to meet govt folks and the dean of the university. There is an emergency laundry crew on the job. I'll pay whatever it takes for a bleach-out. I also took the afternoon break to have my hair trimmed, and was it ever a disaster! I've returned to my childhood haircuts that looked like someone put a bowl on my head and cut around it. Egad. This head is going to have to be under a hat for weeks. Of course, I didn't let on to the nice guy who whacked my hair; he might as well have used a weedeater.

So Puni is coming back soon from her office to hang out -- government workers "knock off" at 4:30 pm. Her husband, Sechele, has set off today with U.S. embassy officials to Ghanzi, a full day's drive away, to do some workshops for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he works as a communications director, as local staff. I'll see him again Friday, and I'm looking forward to it. He's a trip -- funny, friendly, former editor of the Mmegi newspaper who took it from a weekly to a daily, a history buff, a maniac squash player and a fan of "township jazz," which he promises to introduce me to. I'll be attending tonight's AMWAY motivation session with Puni here at the hotel; she's got big dreams to be a millionaire selling Amway products and she's making it happen, she says. (Wonder if they have miracle hair care potions to make my hair return to curls from frizz and to grow really, really fast?) We'll see. My savings will be draining away for hair products. Ain't it always the way for us girls?

at the feet of a master...

On Saturday, my hosts Cathy and Joe Wanzala wanted to say goodbye to their friends, George and Jackie, who are moving back to Tanzania. We drove a while and turned into the official Botswana wildlife training camp. Imagine how thrilled I was! Here was the place that trains and certifies the guides who go into the bush with tourists -- like the Harvard of wildlife training.

It turns out that George has been teaching there for 15 years! He appears very young to be an Obi Wan Kenobe (spelling??) type, but he clearly knows his stuff. Poor thing. I pestered him like a 2-year-old. And what have been your scrapes? What's the best part? What's the worst part? His specialties are wildlife resource management, mammals, radio contact from the bush and, best of all, "animal senses." He says he can teach pretty much anything about dealing with dangerous animals, but the two he doesn't like: snakes and cape buffalo. Cape buffalo are the most dangerous, he says. If one is running toward you, you better not run unless you can get quickly to a tree and climb it -- not any tree, a BIG tree. If that's not an option, lie flat on your stomach. The Cape Buffalo will try to scoop you up with his horns, but he can't get you. George says, "He may lick you and you will have scratches from that, and he may step on you and you will have a few broken bones, but you won't be dead."

He says lots of hunters succumb to the Cape Buffalo. They shoot a buffalo and follow the trail of blood. The buffalo is so cunning -- smart, he can hear, see AND smell -- he comes around in a circle and, before the hunter has a clue, gores the hunter from behind.
The buffalo, in a charge, "is the only animal that will weep if he misses you," George said.
Holy moly. I was in awe and won't be looking for any buffalo soon except from a safe distance. Meanwhile, the only dangerous animals I've encountered are donkeys, spiders and one friendly lizard in my bedroom the other night.
Today it's off to the big city for me -- Gaborone, Botswana's capital, known around here as Gabs.
cheers!
p.s. It's not that I don't have a camera. I've not got the hang of uploading the photos yet, and every minute counts in the internet cafes.