Nothing rotten in the state of Denmark

     I was surprised to find myself the only American at Modisa.  In fact, there was only one other North American, and that was a young lady from Vancouver.  There was a Norwegian, a couple of Germans, and several Australians, but by far the majority were from Denmark.
     Now, I don't know about you, but before this, Denmark is not a country that came across my radar screen very often.   I may have mentioned at some  point in the past that on Netflix, Scott's and my favorite genre is "somber Scandinavian dramas,"  and some of those have been Danish, but that's about it.
      Now, after meeting all these Danes, Denmark is very high on my list of places to go!
     The first thing that struck me about them was "how did they manage to get here?"  Here we were, in March, during the middle of the school year, at a location that was, well, not exactly cheap to get to.  How did all these college students manage?
      I was shocked--in a very pleasant way-- to find out!  It turns out that there are virtually no private schools in Denmark.  The reason is that the public schools are so uniformly excellent, there is just no call for them.   Students not only get free tuition and board at the Danish public schools, but like all Danes, they enjoy free health care.   Students also receive a living allowance while they're in school courtesy their government.
      And there's more!  Studies have shown that students do much better in college if they've had the experience of a "gap year,"  in which they can travel abroad.  So the Danish government PAYS them to take a gap year, and the only way they would have to pay it back is if they failed to go back to school.  
      So, almost all these kids were travelling as part of their gap year experience.
      To a 21st century American like myself, this was almost incomprehensible.  We've become so used to  questioning government expenditures and to the theory of privatization of just about everything.   It sometimes seems like the collective universal American goal is to DECREASE TAXES.  It felt pretty weird to have them stare at me with surprise--and maybe a little SYMPATHY-- when I told them that in the U.S., we have to pay for our own health care.
      I can only imagine that  Danish taxes must be astronomically high, but these kids were outstanding examples of why that may not be such a bad thing.  
      They were supremely well-educated.  They switched back and forth between the Danish and English languages with fluid ease.

Some told me that most of their college textbooks were in English.  They glowed with good health.  They seemed amazingly optimistic and confident about the future and their role in it.  They were smart, funny, warm, friendly,  good-natured, and perhaps most importantly, adventurous!  Eager to take on new experiences with a completely open mind and heart!

     Looked to me like the Danish government was getting its money's worth!

Spring Break in the Kalahari

     My first impression of the volunteers who greeted us at Modisa was "Man!  There're so many of them!"  When I was at the Elephant Valley Project, we never had more than 4 volunteers at one time, and at Moholoholo there were about 6-8 of us.  It seemed like SWARMS at Modisa, and in fact, there were about 25 of us!

     The second impression was "My God---they're so young."  The first week I was there, the "senior" volunteer was Mofrid.  This elderly person is pictured here, and in my eyes,
she looked like a young super-model.  She was all of 36 years old.  When she went home to Norway after my first week, the volunteer next oldest to me was 26 years old.



     And, like young people the world over, these kids liked to PARTY!  All week long, most everyone retired early and got up early, but Saturday nights were for partying.  And party they did.  I would wake up in the wee hours and hear the music blasting and hear the laughter and shrieks and reflect that while I had never travelled to Fort Lauderdale for spring break, I was, at this late stage in my life, experiencing the Fort Lauderdale spring break experience, only in the middle of the Kalahari!  
     And what a strange sensation it was, to hear music and loud cheer emanating from what has to be one of the most isolated places on Earth!  
      I enjoyed it--from a distance--but I enjoyed it.

    Well, of COURSE, I felt every single one of my 61 years, but the volunteers themselves didn't seem to care.  They were uniformly friendly and generous-spirited.  We shared books, fears, and experiences,  past and future, and some confided their problems to me.  I was flattered to be made to feel one of the group.

     Here are some shots of the volunteers!

"So. Why are YOU so chatty all of a sudden?"

     It's possible that there could be a reader or two out there who did not know my mother, the late and formidable Marian LaRue Munninghoff.  Even though she's been gone for several years now, I can still her voice in my head plain as day.  And the above quote was notable among what Scott called "Marian-isms"
     She was a strong-minded woman who thought tact and sensitivity were for wimps; she was famous for "speaking her mind."  And she would call me on EVERYTHING, including the occasions I'd tell her some long-winded story.
     The question is a legitmate one, though.  It was on the many occasions she asked it, and it is now.  Why now, after having been home from Botswana for about nine months, do I suddenly get on a tear and write so much about Modisa?  What's up?
     It's been harder to write about Modisa because of my famously missing iPad.  It's been so kind of the many friends I met in Botswana to share their photos with me so that I can share them with you.  But it's not the same, and I have been considerably less inspired to record my impressions.  And it's considerably more difficult too.

     


     BUT, the more pressing reason is that in only one month's time, I'm off to Africa again!  And it seems an excellent idea to wind up the reporting on one trip before taking off for another!


     This time it's Zimbabwe and Kenya, and this time it's RHINOS!  


     These photos are from IMIRE, near Harare, Zimbabwe, and my friend Marcia and I are going there in January.  They have a newborn baby rhino there!

     One can swim with elephants there! 

     Check out their website!  http://www.imire.org/

     We can't WAIT!

      So, I better get crackin' (as Mom would say) and finish up writing about Botswana!

Setting up camp

    Modisa consists of a large compound of tents--perhaps around 15 for the volunteers and staff.  There is a communal cooking/dining/meeting open-air enclosure, and there are bathrooms, with toilets that flush (most of the time), sinks, and showers.  There is warm water when the sun has warmed the above-ground storage tank sufficiently.  There is no electricity at the campsite.
    It should be observed that the campsite that was in use when I was there (in March of 2014) was a temporary site, since the primary site was under inspection by the Botswanan authorities and not yet cleared for use.  The site that was pending approval DID have some power to run the freezers for the meat and to supply power to charge the oh-so-important electronic devices.  It seemed improbable that there would be WiFi access in a location so very remote as this, but there was (most of the time).
     I was assigned my very own tent, located at the edge of the communal campsite.  Sometimes it was shaded by an extraordinarily prickly acacia tree.  It was a very good tent with a huge array of zippers.  In fact, today, when I think of camp in Modisa, the sound I remember most vividly is the sound of zippers.   Zzzzzzzzzzzzzip!!!    Zzzzzzzzipppp! Zzipp!  Every time some one would enter or exit their tent, they'd have to zip and unzip multiple times--everyone was extremely vigilant about mosquitoes and other stuff that didn't bear thinking about.
    I had brought an array of solar powered lights.  I remembered all-too-vividly how very dark it could be in remote areas, so one of my first tasks was to get my lamps a-charging and to hang my clothes line on "my" acacia tree.  Here is "my" solar installation and "my" acacia tree.

 

My tent was furnished with a mat, a sheet, a coverlet, and a pillow.  Pretty basic accommodations, but I must say I was comfortable.  Not too hot at night, dry when it rained--and man! did it rain!--and no intruders to speak of.  By the time I completed my stay, it didn't even bother me to make the 100-yard walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night (most of the time).

 

And now, orientation to Modisa itself

     Now that I've told you about the Grasslands, I need to introduce Modisa itself.  It appears to me that it is becoming a common practice for the holders of these huge tracts of land in Africa to increase the number of ways they can produce income.  Whereas at one time, they may have been able to devote their lives to raising cattle, for example, they found they could also do well with offering safaris and luxurious housing to tourists, beginning with big game hunters and eventually transitioning to what I'll call "camera hunters."  And now they seem to be finding a new kind of tourist, one that is not looking so much for luxury as education, wildlife viewing, and service. 
     What happened at the Grasslands is that Val, who always loved lions and wanted to conduct research on them, heard about Wille DeGraaff and showed up literally barefoot on his doorstep one day to discuss an idea with him.  Val would undertake the considerable task of caring for Willi's 25 or so captive lions and some of the other time-consuming jobs at Grasslands if Willi would permit him to locate his volunteer project there and to undertake research there on the relationship between predator poplulations and the quality of vegetation growth in the Kalahari.  They were able, fortunately, to come to an agreement.  Hence, Modisa.  
     Significantly, the word "Modisa" means "guardian" in Setswana.   Here is Modisa's website.  I think if you take the time to look at it, you will see why I chose to go there.  http://modisa.org/
     So.  Back to my story.  Val gave us newcomers a lecture after lunch telling us primarily about his vision for future research at Modisa.  The primary thing that caught my attention in his lecture was his philosophy of human/wildlife interaction.
     I had observed that there seems to be two competing theories of dealing with wildlife in Africa.  One is the "hands-off" "let nature take its course" theory, which clearly values above all else the continuation of the natural environment as untouched by human activity as possible.  Subscribers to this theory feel that if, for example, baby animals are found to have been either abandoned or orphaned, they should be left to die rather than captured and cared for by well-meaning but ill-guided do-gooders.
    When I was at Moholoholo in South Africa, I was aware that many wildlife experts disapproved of their taking in abandoned, sick, and orphaned animals, when it may have been preferrable for them to simply die than to live the rest of their lives in captivity.  Brian Jones, the manager of Moholoholo, disagreed with that position, saying that Africa was no longer wilderness anyway.  All animals ARE affected by human habitation anyway, he reasoned, so why not try to affect them in a positive way rather than a negative?  The natural world is gone!
     In contrast, Val took the position that wild animals should not be domesticated and that wild animals were indeed better off dead than in captivity.  

     
 He made his point by talking to us about Girt, a young ostrich who for some reason had taken to hanging out at the Modisa campsite.  Val told us that if he caught any of us attempting to feed Girt, or trying to pet him or otherwise trying to domesticate him, he (Val) would KILL Girt right in front of us!  This is Girt!  

Need it be said that none of us tried to feed or pet Girt?

Orientation to the Grasslands

This photograph is by Fabian Gieske, a young professional photographer who was at Modisa.  Check out his website at http://www.fabiangieske.com/#!/index

    

     After a bewildering crush of introductions and greetings, we had lunch and an introductory lecture from Val.  Val is one of the founders of Modisa and is a young German researcher who found his way to the Grasslands Bushman Safari Lodge just on the edge of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.  Much more about Val later.
     This huge plot of land--tens of thousands of acres-- is owned by a Botswanan gentleman named Willi DeGraaf, who actually grew up in this area.  Mr. DeGraaf raised--and still raises--cattle, lots of cattle.  He also owns a safari lodge for tourists, including a private landing strip.  You will be hearing a lot more about this landing strip later on.
     Val told us that like all cattle ranchers in Botswana--maybe in all Africa--Willi regarded lions as a menace to his investment and to his workers' safety.  What workers, you might ask?  Well, the Grasslands is home to several villages of Bushmen, or more properly called the San people, those people who are SO successful at living with little or no water that they thrive in the Kalahari.      Those of you who saw either of the "The Gods Must Be Crazy" movies are a little familiar with the Bushmen and their fascinating "click" language.  You might even remember that when I was in South Africa in 2012 I was lucky enough to stay a few days at the Otters Den Lodge, owned by the family of Jamie Uys, who made the films.  And if by some chance you have NOT seen the movies, I strongly recommend them, even taking into account they may not be absolutely accurate and may even be rather patronizing and condescending to the San people themselves.
     But I digress.  Lions are dangerous predators, and they certainly view cattle as desirable prey--and San people as well.  So Willi--and most every other cattle rancher--shot every lion he saw.
     At some time 10-15 years ago, Willi had a change of heart.  He began to see lions as an integral part of the Kalahari ecosystem, and he decided to stop killing them.  He constructed huge (perhaps 20-40 acre) compounds in which to house captive wild lions.  Now, you might want to know why Willi wanted to house captive lions.  Although I was never fortunate enough to talk with Mr. DeGraff, I think his reasoning was that one can never truly rid a property of lions.  If some lions are killed, other lions will move into the newly-unoccupied territory.  When one lives "next door" to one of the world's largest game preserves--the Central Kalahari--one has to realize one is not going to be able to make a dent in the lion population.
     Keeping lions in captivity though has a huge benefit.  As anyone who has seen an MGM movie well knows, lions roar--big time.  Their roars can be heard for miles and miles, and those roars send an unmistakable message that this area is inhabited by lions, thus discouraging other lions from attempting to "move in."
     So by "keeping" lions, Willi was not only able to avoid killing them, but he was also able to keep other lions from moving in to endanger his cattle and the villagers.  And he also found that his guests loved to see the lions and especially loved to hear them roar.  And Willi himself came to love the lions, especially the senior male he named "Samson." 
    I guess this is what is known as a win-win situation.
    Here's the link to the Grasslands if you'd like to take a look:  http://www.grasslandlodge.com/

The Road to Modisa

     By the time I got my achy burny body out of bed the next morning, G and M were already gone.  They had only a few days left in Botswana before going home to Sweden and had decided to treat themselves to a luxurious safari into the Kalahari, where they would have a guide and a chef and be pampered , plus, hopefully, see loads of wildlife.  
     By then, I had gotten to know the other two women who were waiting to go to Modisa--Samantha from Vancouver, B.C. and  Lisa from Norway.  Alex picked us up early in his white [seems like almost all cars in Africa are white] truck and off we went.  After a couple of stops in Maun, we were heading southwest on a paved road crossing amazingly uninhabited land.  It was pretty in a desolate, dry, harsh sort of way--lots of long vistas--but nothing astonishing.  We passed through a "veterinary fence," where all vehicles had to stop, be inspected, and all tires and all shoes, even those that weren't actually being worn at the time, had to be dipped in some sort of pesticide.  While we were stopped along the road, we couldn't help but notice that there were these HUGE cricket-looking bugs all over the place--I mean, hundreds of them,  all OVER the place.  Sam in particular was completely freaked out.  She HATES bugs!
     We drove only a short while longer after the "fence" and then turned off on a dirt road.  I thought well!  We're almost there!

 

That would be a no, we were emphatically NOT "almost there!"  

     This road went on for more than 30 miles--62 km., to be precise--deep into the Kalahari.  Much of the time, we were travelling along fences that had as many as 10 strands of wire.  Keeping predators and competitors for grass away from cattle, apparently.  Sometimes we drove along the fence of the "buffer zone," which separates privately-owned land from the Central Kalahari Game Preserve .

     Alex drove really fast--at least it seemed so to me.  The roads were pretty bad.  There was a lot of water standing in them, and there were lots of potholes and erosion.  It was a pretty hair-raising drive.  Plus, there were a lot of gates to open--at least a dozen--I suppose to keep various herds of cattle from getting mixed up.

     And then, before we even began to suspect anything, we were suddenly "there"--Modisa.  We scrambled out of the truck and were immediately set upon by what seemed like a hundred young people--all smiling and shaking hands and in a celebratory frame of mind.  The three of us stood around awkwardly as emotional farewells were given to the people Alex was taking back to Maun, and it slowly began to sink in that yes indeed, this is where we would be living for quite awhile.

The Delta

     Here's a surprise:  the Okavango River Lodge is located at the edge of the Okavango River Delta.  While it's possible that you have never heard of the Okavango River Delta, it is simply an astonishing place.  Here's an excerpt from the book Okavango:  Africa's Last Eden by Frans Lanting.  Our friend Rich generously gave me this book to prepare myself for the trip, and an incredible book of photographs it is.  Thanks again, Rich!

          "Spreading over 8,500 square miles, this vast wetland in the heart of the Kalahari supports an unparalleled diversity of wildlife.  From its origins in the highlands of Angola, the Okavango River descends to the near-desert of northern Botswana, where it fans out as the world's largest inland delta; an ecosystem of a size and complexity rivaling any on earth, a rare place where desert and swamp dwellers meet.  Hippos, crocodiles, zebra, impalas, buffalo, giraffe, lions, hyenas, and the continent's largest unharassed elephant population find refuge and replenishment in the seasonal ebb and flow of fresh water into the delta." 

The story I loved best about the Delta is that the locals call it the "river that doesn't go anywhere."  It never gets to the sea at all.  All this water pours into the Kalahari, where it stays until it dries up.  I was told that the difference between the dry season and the rainy season is mind-boggling--hardly looks like the same place.  I was there during not only the rainy season, but a very rainy rainy season, and the waters were much higher than normal, and the Delta was very very lush.

A particular tribe possesses the exclusive right to access certain parts of the Delta, and they offer escorted "mokoro" rides into the vast marshes.  A mokoro is a long, narrow, dugout skiff that is propelled by a person poling it along, very much similar to a wild rice picker at home.  The boat however is close to 20 feet long and much narrower than a canoe or rice boat.

G.B. (Gebby??}, from the Lodge, took us in a motor launch up to the village, and there we were met by our guides for the day.  And here is the start of our trip:

 

When we stopped for lunch, our guide jokingly asked me if I wanted to try steering the mokoro; I said "sure!"  He was shocked to see that I could do it quite well--he said "You've DONE this before??!!"  I tried to explain to him about picking rice, but I'm not sure he understood.

It was a magical day, and we all came back sunburned, dehydrated, and happy. 

The Okavango River Lodge

     Our driver was named Alex, and I later learned that he was the chief transporter for people coming and going from Modisa.  He drove  the three of us, G and M and I,  through roadways cluttered with burros, dogs, goats, and cows, and maybe a few people too.  He tooted his horn at all without discrimination, and none paid any attention whatever, so he had to swerve around them.  Now, why all these critters feel most secure snoozing or just resting in the middle of a fairly heavily-trafficked road, I can’t imagine, but there they were.

     Eventually, we were delivered to our destination, the Okavango River Lodge.  You may have heard about  these extremely luxurious lodges all over Africa, where one can be pampered with every possible indulgence while viewing wildlife from the comfort of VERY expensive surroundings.

     The Okavango River Lodge is not one of these.  

In the first place, it looked remarkably like home in summer time.  The lodge is located right on the banks of a marshy river.  Honestly, you’d think you were on our deck overlooking the Wisconsin River.  There are “slow-no wake” signs.  There’s a pontoon boat tied up—in fact, it is called “Sir Rosis of the River.”  The first clue that it is NOT Wisconsin is the “Beware of Crocodiles” sign.  

The place is remarkably comfortable and low-key, made for comfort but not luxury.  Drinks are always flowing, and decent—not remarkable—food is always available.  The staff is generous with laughs and jokes and suggestions for all sorts of local adventures, and well, it’s hard to explain.  It feels like home the moment you set foot in the open air bar.

    

     So I made arrangements to take an adventuresome mokoro ride the next day and slept the afternoon away until it was time for drinks and supper in this lively setting.  The place was really hopping—lots of “locals.”  Everyone seemed to know each other, and if they didn’t, they seemed to have a genuine interest in getting to know everyone.

    G and M were meeting a young woman who had interned with them years ago and who now lives in Maun.  They invited me to join them at supper.  What a delight!  She was Canadian born and recently married to a South African biologist, and they were a warm and fascinating  couple.  Some of the other volunteers on the way to Modisa had arrived too, and before I knew it, I had a bunch of new friends.

     Incidentally, if any of the photographs accompanying this post look familiar to any among you, they probably are.  My iPad, complete with all the pix I took, is gone forever, so these are all photographs taken from Facebook.

New friends: G and M

      When I clambered into the car that had come to take me to my lodgings, I was surprised to find that it already had two passengers in it, two ladies of obvious European heritage.  They courteously squeezed together to make room for me and all my stuff and we began a conversation.  
      It turned out that the two women, to whom I shall refer as "G" and "M" in order to respect their privacy, were from Stockholm, Sweden, and that they were nearing the end of their trip.  They'd spent three weeks travelling around Botswana, and I was completely amazed at what they had done.  
     They had arrived in Botswana with practically no pre-conceived notions of where they would go, how they would get around, and where they would stay, but only a desire to see the country and an amazing amount of courage.  They also arrived with a healthy acceptance of an African basic truth, that being "This is Africa.  Don't expect it to be like home.  Don't expect perfect punctuality, perfectly reliable schedules.  Relax and accept it as it comes."  Man!  Is that a hard lesson for us westerners to learn or what?  It's absolutely engrained in us to expect things to happen when they're scheduled, dammit, as advertised, and there's hell to pay when our expectations aren't met!
      But G and M mastered this lesson and as a result, had an incredible vacation.  They travelled wherever it sounded interesting to travel and they took whatever transportation was available.  In Botswana, the main roads--and almost all the main roads are dirt--have a lot of little turn-outs every few miles, usually where there is a big tree providing plenty of shade to wait under.  Sometimes, buses come . . . . . . but don't ask "when?"  No one knows when.  You just wait.
     Sometimes, the buses DON'T come.  Sometimes, cars stop--people who are going somewhere and have some room in their vehicle.  They offer the people waiting in the shade of the big trees if they'd like a ride, and the waiting people choose to accept or not, depending on their destination, and all with the understanding that they will help out with the gas expense.
      And THIS is how G and M travelled, mostly, for their entire trip!!!  Sometimes they rode for hours with a car full of strangers, and sometimes they would rent a sleeping room from some one they met in the car, or some one recommended by somebody they met in the car.
      And here's the best part:  not ONCE did they have even a mildly unpleasant experience.  They were ALWAYS treated in a friendly, out-going, respectful, and accepting manner.  One time, as they waited along the road, a car stopped, and the white South African gentlemen inside were so very concerned for their safety.  They simply couldn't imagine that G and M would travel alone like they were--they wanted to protect them!  But G and M insisted that they didn't need protection and that they were doing fine--the South Africans were bewildered.  Frankly, so was I!  I wouldn't feel safe doing anything similar in Wisconsin!  What does that tell us about Botswana?

    


Well, these women were just wild, crazy, and reckless, you say?  Well, here they are, and if you can spot a hint of wildness, craziness, or recklessness in these women, I'll be very surprised.  It's not them, I tell you -- it's Botswana!    And what a fine thing to say about country.  More about G and M later!

So . . . THIS is what they mean by "frontier town"

     In preparation for the trip, I did a little internet research about the town of Maun, which was the place in Botswana that I was scheduled to land.  The first thing of interest I learned was that Maun is pronounced mah-oooon, not rhyming with "fawn," as I had assumed.  That's a start!  Also, I found that Maun was frequently referred to as "a frontier town."
     Now, that's an expression you don't hear very often.  My mind conjured up "Davy!  Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier" and I thought they meant that Maun was out in the boonies, so to speak.  But what I learned when I was getting there is that it meant that Maun is sort of on a BOUNDARY between relatively civilized territory and relatively wild territory.  
     A native Botswanan gentleman I was sitting next to on the plane between Johannesburg and Maun told me that the Maun airport is one of the busiest in Africa--that is, if you're counting numbers of take-offs and landings and not if you're counting number of passengers coming and going.  There are loads of private planes at the Maun airport, continuously taking people into the deeper recesses of the continent, those areas that are pretty much inaccessible except by plane.  Maun serves as a prime location for getting started on safaris, apparently.   He also told me that the paved road that goes all the way to Gabarone is still quite the innovation.  He remembered when there were only dirt roads in and out of Maun.
     With all this pleasant (and useful!) information, the trip between the two African cities took no time at all.  The airport was unencumbered by those "jet bridge" things that normally sanitize your exit from a commercial flight, so we walked out into the bright sunshine, where I was immediately struck by a pleasantly pungent scent.  I encountered this smell several times in the weeks to come but never did learn what it was--must have some kind of tree or bush that smelt sort of lemony-sagey.  Very nice!

     My seat-mate friend obviously made the trip often, and he chivalrously guided me through customs.  I surely could have managed on my own, but he knew everybody and made it that much easier.  So, in just a few minutes, my passport was stamped, and I had my 90-day tourist visa, I found my bags, and there I was:  Maun International Airport!!
      The very first airport I've visited where burros, cattle, goats, and dogs wandered at their leisure.  It felt very friendly!

Botswana 101

     The loss of my iPad increasingly appears to be permanent.  This has caused me to have the weird sensation that the trip didn't exist.  As an old friend (whose camera was permanently embedded in her hand) once said, "If I didn't get a picture, it didn't happen."
     Well, that may be sort of funny, but it's nonsense of course, so I will try to paint a picture of the trip with words only for the time being and perhaps supplement the words later with either my found pictures or else other people's pictures.
     I think I should say a few words about how I came to be travelling to Botswana in the first place.
    As the most faithful among you readers know, last year I travelled to South Africa, and while I loved working with the animals and admired many of the people at the Project, I was troubled by the lack of interaction among people.  It appeared to my oh-so-politically-correct eyes that, while the institution of apartheid was obviously dead and buried, there remained a strictly-observed hierarchy in the races, and while I frequently was working side-by-side with local blacks, we never so much as made eye contact with one another.  It was like the two races lived in parallel, but yet definitely separate universes and that all possible power and privilege was still the exclusive prerogative of the whites.
    Now, I MUST add that in all fairness, this is not something that I as an American can afford to feel superior about.  After all, we Americans treated OUR indigenous peoples considerably worse than South Africa treated theirs.  The South Africans relegated them to legally inferior status;  we did that and much more by "simply" wiping virtually all of them out.
     I had heard that Botswana was different from South Africa in that since its independence in the 1960's, it has been governed--truly governed--by black presidents of unimpeachable integrity and statesmanship, and that as a result, the black majority population was truly empowered there and as a result, race relations were much easier.  I wanted to see if that was true.
     And a much more mundane reason, is that I had, through the intervention of a friend, become a devoted fan of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels.  I love these books! and they portrayed a country of such admirably easy peaceful human interaction, that I wanted to see if that was true.
     Mind you, I was only in Botswana for three weeks, and I saw only a small part of the country and met only a few of its citizens, but you know what?  From what I could see, IT'S ALL TRUE!

It's the old "Good news, bad news" routine

     The good news is that I'm home from Botswana, safe and sound for the most part.  But the bad news is that I've lost my iPad.  It's just an iPad, you say?   Yes, but it had the nearly 500 photos I took on it.  I'm just sick about it.
     Scott and I are still making calls trying to find it, but I feel less optimistic every day.  The last time I know I had it was at O'Hare, and one can only imagine how many things get lost there daily.
     The fall-back solution is to rely on the photos of my many cohorts at Modisa and the handful of photos I was able to email to Scott while I was there--something that was very difficult to do, because of the extraordinary demands on the weak WiFi signal in the midst of the Kalahari.  It will take me some time to collect these, so for now I will post a photo of Sirga, the super star of Modisa.  
     She is an 18-month old lioness who was raised from just a few days old by Val Gruener, one of the founders of Modisa.  She is astoundingly fond of him and plays and wrestles with him as affectionately as the sweetest housecat.  But Val has achieved something uniquely amazing with her.  She hunts just like a wild cat, strolling along with Val until she gets a whiff of prey and then sprints after it. She has been successful in her hunts on several occasions, but seeing her come back to Val after the chase--completely of her own volition--is a wonderful sight.
     There were lots of wonderful sights, and I hope to be able to post many of them, just as soon as my iPad comes home! 
     Check out Sirga's story here!  http://modisa.org/sirgas-story/ 

The clock, she is a-ticking, my friend

     Well, I don't have to tell YOU that time flies.  Going to Modisa seemed like a hypothetical possibility until just a few days ago, and when I found myself saying "I'm going to Botswana Wednesday," no one was more surprised than me.
     Up to last Thursday, I was focused like a laser beam--and a highly nervous laser beam at that--on the presentation I was giving at Nicolet College for their Creative Arts series.  I was invited to talk about Cambodia and the Elephant Valley Project, and that required a LOT of preparation, especially since it had to be in PowerPoint format, which I've never used.  
     This preparation required me to immerse myself totally in my photos and old blog entries from 2011, and Cambodia seemed much more real to me than Botswana as a result.
      Jack had sent me a boxload of the little wooden elephants carved by the mahouts at the Elephant Valley Project, and I gave them away in exchange for donations to the Project.  This turned out to be hugely successful, and it was thrilling to realize we had earned nearly $1000 to send to the Project!       

I'm just not going to say what relevance this slide had--you'll just have to guess.

     Around 200 people showed up at Nicolet on a night in which the projected low temperature was minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit!  How exciting to think that so many people in our little community would come out on such a night to talk about a few old elephants halfway around the world!  And everyone seemed to go home happy, so I consider the whole thing an unqualified success.
     But what an abrupt shift now!  I am scurrying to get packed and prepared.  There's not as much to do as with previous trips, because Africa has much better access to quality veterinary supplies than did Cambodia, and Mikkel from Modisa assures me that they have a first-rate veterinarian on call and are well-provided-for in that area.
     Also, I don't have any shots to get, because those I got for Cambodia are still up to date.
     I am also assured that at Modisa, they have reliable WiFi access, so I'm hoping that I will be able to keep my blog up contemporaneously, which will be something new.  So, you faithful friends and readers, you and I should be able to stay in touch with each other.  I'm going to Botswana on WEDNESDAY (March 5)!!!!