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!
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!
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!
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/
