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.