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

Not in my own words

I took the photo at Xugana Island Lodge, where I moved to my assistant lodge manager assignment in the Okavango Delta in June.


I'll be struggling for a while to try to describe what it was like living with Botswana camp workers in an amazing wilderness for three months. I miss it already. For now, I'll share with you something I read from a dusty book tucked away in "Jessie's Suite" at Camp Okavango. (Jessie was the eccentric billionairess who collected pilots' toothbrushes, if you get my drift. Her suite has a notable array of mirrored walls and black tiles, although apparently fewer than when she lived there, and that's saying something.)

This is from Venture to the Interior by Laurens van der Post:
It is one of the more unjustifiable pretensions of our age that it measures time and experience by the clock. There are obviously a host of considerations and values which a clock cannot possibly measure. There is, above all, the fact that time spent on a journey, particularly on a journey which sets in motion the abiding symbolism of our natures, is different from the time devoured at such a terrifying speed in the daily routine of what is accepted, with such curious complacency, as our normal lives. This seems axiomatic to me; the truer the moment and the greater its content of reality the slower the swing of the universal pendulum.
*****

....Van Der Post loved Africa and filmed and wrote books about the Kalahari and its bushmen. This book, published in the early 1950s, is about one of his many journeys to Africa.
He opens it with this:

We carry with us the wonders
We seek without us: there is all
Africa and her prodigies in us. --Sir Thomas Browne

She can dance but don't let her sing....

It is an interminable process to try to get photos uploaded on this blog. I'd like to show you more, but the clock and the pula tick away while I wait. But I wanted to show you some photos of one of my going-away moments: one with the staff choir at Camp Okavango. They sent me off with a rousing rendition of "Mma Pula naledi," which I was told meant that Ms. Rain (my nickname translated from Mma Pula) is a shining star." Another is on a boat from Xugana Island Lodge going back to Camp Okavango to pick up a staff member. The tent is my home at Camp Okavango. The other is Pilot One, my side of a little building near the office. I lived there. A lesser-tailed swallow built a nest right above my door, and I visited her every morning.

What I did on my career break....

By popular demand I am going to provide you with first a photo of my roommate in my staff room at Savute Marsh, second a black mamba found on the lawn (one of six I saw in 3 weeks) and third a picture that one must say "doesn't belong." Those cuties I saw at Camp Moremi two weekends ago.

I am already missing the remote bush life, but I am settling into my little cottage on the Boro River. I heard the screeeeeech of a resident barn owl last night and the pitter patter on the roof of what we would fondly call "tree mice," when in fact they might be rats. I'd rather not know....If you have never seen a barn owl, it's worth looking it up. I saw one that was sitting in a tree at Savute Lodge, and it was one of my most memorable moments. What a gorgeous creature!

Moments in Maun

Morning. I'll do other versions of the lion kill story and the John Kata interview later, but look on the Desert & Delta Safaris blog for what I had mentioned in a posting below.

You might imagine what I am doing now that I'm back for a little while from the bush. I'm sure you're thinking it's something exciting. Nope. Tomorrow will be. I'll hop another bush plane and head east for my last few days with DDS. But for now I am eating pizza, a cheeseburger, french fries,a Kit-Kat bar (not at one sitting) and hoping to get a manicure and a pedicure during my 48 hours in town. Oh, the small pleasures.

What I am not doing: drinking red wine or Jameson's. Life in the bush provides ample opportunity for sundowner drinks, and I took advantage of every opportunity. Plus, I became an erstwhile bar tender at Xugana Island Lodge. Got quite good at gin and tonics. Shook with fear when a guest requested "a Manhattan" or "a cosmopolitan." I ran for help every time. Drinking the fancy-pants cocktails is quite different from mixing them.
Healthy living. That's what starts today.

I also woke up in the night hearing a strange animal noise. It was new to me. It sounded like a motorcycle at first, punctuated by ee-ors. Ah, yes. The sound of Maun: wall to wall donkeys. If I can't hear the lions' roar, the donkey is a poor substitute. But, then again, I acted just as frightened of them when I was walking down a Maun road in March as I did when I got close to the lions at Camp Okavango.

Next week I'll be up and running with the blog again. It's been a pleasure to hear from you who've sent emails and notes. Many thanks.

Escaping the puff adder

Hi friends -- I'm back in Maun for a few days and finishing up my safari life stint in the remote wild of botswana. I hate for it to end! Below entries are a couple of things I wrote about camp experiences. I figure I'll add them to my blog so you can get the flavor of my life in the bush.

I tell you it was over-the-top grand. I'll have a lot to contemplate when I move to my little cottage on the Boro next week. I'm not sure how I will manage without the wonderful staff around and the many guests I've met, who've ranged from a professional clown to a UN adviser on climate change and architecture. As if to complete my introduction to truly wild life, yesterday marked the occasion for me to watch a puff adder slither away. Now i can say I have seen black mambas, boomslangs, a cobra and a puff adder. Pythons were nearby a couple of times, but I didn't have the pleasure of meeting them.I happen to work with a woman, however, who once pulled a problematic python out of a trough in front of men who were chicken. Even she was surprised to see that snake turn out to be longer than she was tall. It started wrapping itself around her arm and the men had to extricate her. It takes some kind of guts to be that kind of heroine in the bush. I cannot count myself among them.

Thanks for your notes and well wishes by snail mail. They arrived by mail bag on our bush planes, and when any of us received mail in the camps it was a red letter day!
more after I come back from my next assignment.