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?