Things I'll Miss about Botswana

Since I leave Botswana today, I figured I'd post a list of the things I will and won't miss mo Botswana. More stories to come about my last few days.... too many adventures and great insights into the workings of the US embassy!

Things I won't miss about Botswana:
Seeing donkeys with their front legs tied together so they can’t walk very fast or go very far
Being honked at by every taxi that passes
Silent TV dinners
Mosquitoes
Throwing my trash on the ground because there’s nowhere else to put it
People who assume I can’t speak Setswana
Foreigners watching the progress of their Batswana construction crew for hours from their air conditioned cars
Slow internet
Not really knowing how to cook anything I’ve eaten here
Kagisong
Food poisioning… Thanks program house leftovers
Being asked where my husband is by every taxi driver. Don’t have one? Then where’s your boyfriend?
Sticking out like a sore thumb
“Sori mma, ga ke je nama.”
Writing papers
Boys peeing everywhere
Passports
Prepaid phone units
Switches where off is up and on is down

Things I’ll miss about Botswana:
Boitumelo, Bonolo, Dimpho, Kabo, Kagiso, Katlhego, Lefika, Lesego, Leungo, Mpho, Naledi, Neo, Tabo
Long good byes outside Bull and Bush with flickering lights and massive audiences
The skies
Letsatsi
Mickey tags
April
Dirt roads
Riding in the back of pickups
Gabs, Kasane, Manyana, Maun, Mochudi
My host families
Maun Homeopathy Project
P10 lunches
Parks
Chibuku cartons everywhere
Dirt roads
Rain storms when the sky seems to rip right open
Rummy 500
Bush breakfasts/lunches/dinners
Brian
My hubby
Department of Wildlife and National Parks
Walking by the State House every morning and afternoon
Wild dogs
Wonderful conversations with strangers
Pap pap
The efficiency of the US embassy
Safari drives
Land Cruisers and Range Rovers
Sunset
Favors
Thunder that booms, crashes and rattles your ribs for thirty seconds
Ame
Diphologolo
Motogo
Sour fruit
Crunchy YumYum
The molapo
Having an MP dad
Random dance parties
Linga Langa
Forked lightening
Football
Thari Daycare Center
Kudu
Liver-looking banana-smelling fruits
Pula
Amarula
Walking by Embassies
LBRs
Weddings
BOFWA
Oranges and peaches right off the tree
Birds
The air-conditioned rock
Quiet picnics under a huge tree
Choppies
Webby
The cool side of Manyana’s river
The Botswana soundtrack
Mokoros
Throwing wine on Lesh
Free internet in the best places; Maun airport, Barcelos, Linga Langa, Equitorial
Trees everywhere
Elephants
My wonderful eating buddy
So many kids
Night time walks
Dinaledi
Mmadua
Monkey Gland Burgers
Backpackers’
Walking
Milky Lane
Being a tourist
Khombis
Bull and Bush
Ditonki, Dikgomo, Dipudi, Dikatsi, Dintsa, Dikoko
Comfy beds
Bucket baths
Booze cruise
Dula
History
Setswana
Backpackers
Beef juice
Amarula
My Birthswana
Namibian women wearing beautiful hats and dresses
Meeting Atlha
My four new families in a beautiful and wonderful country
BOITUMELO, BONOLO, DIMPHO, KABO, KAGISO, KATLEGO, LEFIKA, LESEGO, LEUNGO, MPHO, NALEDI, NEO, TABO

End of Maun

The end of Maun was really fun. I ended up finding the Maun Homeopathy Project and spent a few days with them. I learned a whole lot like what exactly homeopathy is and why it's so effective for Maun. And it really is, the MHP goes into rural villages where doctors don't go and does amazing work. They reach people who don't have access to hospitals or treatment. And after talking to the two volunteers from the UK, I think it's better for a lot of people than "modern" or "western" medicine.

So probably the most fun I had was when three of my friends from the program came from where they'd been working to spend a few days with us in Maun. I went back and visited the abandoned hospital with Jesse and we discovered a lot of the office doors were unlocked when they'd previously been shut and there was a wheelchair in the courtyard where there hadn't been one before.

I decided to stay at a wonderful hostel with Jesse called the Old Bridge Backpackers. Where, if anyone ever goes to Maun, they should think about staying there. There's permanent tents (wood floors, twin beds, canvas rooves) and amazing food. Seriously, the food was incredible. After our first night, the septic tank broke and flooded our yard, so we got upgraded at no cost to a tent with a porch and lounge chairs, a bigger room, and a personal outdoor shower and toilet. It was so much fun to live there!

We also did a horseback safari. It wasn't a real safari where you look for animals, but we rode around for about an hour. Sometimes we were next to an electric fence and other times on the road, but it was green and fun. Our guide let us canter which was wonderful. I forgot how much I missed horseback riding until I was back on a horse.

We also did an overnight mokoro trip that was great. The drive to the starting point was honestly magical. There must have been some sort of butterfly migration because there were hundreds flying from our left to right on the entire 40minute drive. We saw a lot of them over the next two days too. So we hopped into our mokoros and ran into Vince, Katie and Cuz (who were doing a separate trip) on our camping island. We set up our tents and hopped into the swimming pool where we spent a few hours. After a quick lunch and nap, we took a walk where we saw zebras, elephants and one of the most incredible sunsets I've seen yet. There were patches of rain that were colored the way clouds normally are.

The next morning we woke up early and did another 3hour walk. (it was also Murphy's 21st birthday! what a way to spend it!) We saw the same zebras and amazing landscapes. We went back to camp, ate breakfast and went back to the swimming hole. We met some great people from the Netherlands and Canada. We packed up camp and got back in our mokoros. We were running late and I think we took some shortcuts because the paths weren't well worked in and we got hit in the face by a whole lot of reeds. Jesse and I were in the same mokoro and our guide, KP, made us each a neckless out of a lily. I figured out how and made two more.

The next day we missed our 6am bus because there weren't any khombis or taxis and had to take the 7.30 bus. Luckily, I slept all but one hour of the ten hour ride! Got back to Gabs and took a long walk with my sister, Ame, which was wonderful. Tiny's still really preggers.... she'll have the baby on Dec. 20!

pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2069203&id=1036350539&l=1771ebeda9

Maun Adventures

Adventure 1: Remember how I’d originally wanted to work with an organization called the Maun Homeopathy Project? Well after unsuccessfully looking for their sign for the past three weeks, I happened to see one on my drive from town to home. How I hadn’t noticed it before is kind of surprising and upsetting. The sign itself was for a clinic funded and built by the Project. The next day, Katie and I went on an adventure to find the clinic and ask if they’d still take me as an intern so I could write my final paper on something I’m actually interested in and don’t just enjoy doing. We found the sign again after walking about half an hour from our house. We turned off the main road onto a dirt path for cars in the direction of the arrow. We walked and walked but couldn’t find the building. We passed a huge Lutheran church though. We found a few abandoned, official looking buildings and guessed it must have been one of those. I was pretty troubled though, because the sign had looked so new.

We did see a sign for a hospital though, and went to investigate. Turns out we’d stumbled upon the old hospital that, it turns out, was abandoned in 2008. The only way we knew that was by the deserted memos still posted on the bulletin board. Katie and I spent over an hour looking around the grounds. There were at least twenty if not thirty buildings that had been part of this government hospital. We kept talking about how we expected a crazy old ghost doctor to jump out at us as we wandered in and out of the open rooms. We could have been on the set of a horror movie. We found an operating room that had an X-ray reader, a sink and a poster with instructions for how to make incisions still up on the wall. We found a storage room with a few pairs of shoes. The obviously beautiful landscaping was overgrown and taking over the paths we walked on between the buildings. We found the maternity and pediatrics wards, which were pretty creepy. An office was locked but pairs laid all over the desk and floor, I’m not sure why they were left. A number of rooms had lights on; the government must be losing money on electricity.

We eventually left and walked back to the Maun Homeopathy Project sign and I saved the number listed. We caught a cab into town and I tried calling the number. Somebody picked up! I was surprised, since phone numbers tend to change a lot here. The woman on the other side was incredibly helpful and willing to share information with me after I explained I was a student from the States hoping to do research on her organization. She told me they were going into the field this weekend but would be back in the clinic on Thursday. I tried to ask if I could come before Thursday, hoping she’d ask if I wanted to do outreach, but she didn’t. So Thursday at 8am it is! She asked if I knew where the Lutheran church was? They were located right next to it. So apparently Katie and I had walked right by the clinic and not seen it.

Adventure 2: When I was back in Gaborone, my host family had mentioned they had family in Maun. The husband owned Trekkers, the only night club in Maun and the wife owned a lodge. I should have thought to ask for the number then, but didn’t. So once I was in Maun, I called Tiny back in Gabs and asked for her aunt’s phone number. I called not even knowing her name. Turns out MmaDua is a wonderful lady who said she’d love to have me and friends over for dinner Friday night and then maybe the kids could take us to the club! She called on Friday and said “we’re having dinner at seven, how many friends are you bringing?” So I told her I’d bring one friend, and Katie and I left our house at 6:45, planning on getting there a few minutes after seven. She’d told me just to tell a cab driver to take us to MmaDua’s house and they’d know exactly where it was. We waited unusually long for a cab, and the first one we hailed said MaDua’s was 30kms away and he wouldn’t take us. He agreed to take us into town to find someone who would drive us the whole way. So we paid him the usual p3.50 each (about 40cents) and he helped us find another cab that agreed to take us to MmaDua’s for p20. A total deal. I called MmaDua and she said she was about 7kms outside town. It was already after 7 so I told her we were on our way and apologized for being late. So our taxi drove us to MmaDua’s Lodge. We told him we wanted the house and he agreed if we gave him another p10. We passed so many lodges on our drive – I didn’t realize they were all so far out of town. We drove another kilometer down the road to one of the biggest and most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen.

There was a wall ten feet tall with barbed wire all around the property. The gate was open. The first thing I noticed was the five cars in the driveway. Then I noticed the house itself. It was two stories, something I haven’t seen in awhile with a two car garage. There were three arched steps leading up to the double front door, which was behind a series of pillars. There were two or three balconies on the front of the house. We walked in to see a spiral metal staircase going up to the second floor and a beautifully decorated, modern sitting room on the right. We walked past a modern painting of shapes hanging in the hallway into the most beautiful kitchen. The cabinets were a deep red wood with black granite tops. The fridge was huge and there were a lot of appliances out. On the island was a dinner, complete with seven or eight different dishes… yum! CD, the oldest child and only daughter, had cooked for hours to prepare dinner.

MmaDua ushered us outside where Katie and I sat with her at a little table. Her youngest child, Lesego, a boy of about ten years old, brought us water. We chatted about what we were doing in Botswana and Maun specifically, as well as how she’s related to my host family in Gabs. We grabbed plates from inside and she insisted Katie and I each have a glass of wine. Since CD had finished the box of wine while cooking, we opened a bottle from South Africa (first bottle in awhile!)

We learned that CD had attended university in Cape Town and was back at school for accounting. She just wrote her exams last week and will hear in December how she did. It was interesting to listen to her talk because she spoke quickly and mumbled a lot. Plus she swore a ton, which has different meanings throughout Setswana culture. The middle child, a guy, is currently in university in Joburg and loves it there. Lesego raved about Six Flags in New Jersey when we asked him about it, after we learned that MmaDua travels to NY about four times every year (WHAT?!?!?). CD had two friends over who were also really interesting to talk to. One was named Chris and one was Shawn, although I never learned who was who. One was from Zimbabwe and was currently working as a lab doctor at the private hospital in Maun. He plans on moving to Australia next year to get his surgery degree and stay there to practice. The other man was from Jamaica and had moved to Botswana with his family about ten years ago. He comfortably used Setswana during our conversations, which were all in English.

We talked about random things while sitting outside. It was just like hanging out with friends back home and joking. Lesego, the youngest boy, was an easy part of the conversation. He loved to give his sister’s friends a hard time and initiated hilarious conversations about whether or not a cheetah was a cat.

At one point I went inside to use the bathroom and poked my head into a few rooms. First of all, to get to the bathroom, you had to go through the room with a bar. It was a fully stocked bar, with stools all around. There were also couches facing a big TV. The bathroom was really cute and clean. There was incense that smelled delicious – vanilla flavored, my favorite! Across from the bar room was another sitting room, this one had a Christmas tree decorated with lights and cards set out on the table.

After Katie and I had finished our glasses of wine, MmaDua said that was the last glass and that CD would take us out. We helped take in all the dishes and put the leftovers into the fridge. So we hopped into the car. We drove back into town so CD could get some money from her brother who had gone to the ATM. Then we drove back out of town, past CD’s house to the River Lodge, not Trekkers like we’d expected. It was absolutely packed, mostly with white people. There were two men on their cell phones standing far from the bar; obvious tourists. CD, Shawn and Chris tried to convince Katie and I that the rest of the people there were locals, but I wasn’t convinced. We ordered a round of beers and found a table a little ways away from the bar and sat down to chat and hang out. It was really nice to have such a low key night. After about an hour, we decided it was time to head home. Either Shawn or Chris (the Zimbabwean) gave us a ride home. That’s when I got to talk to him and hear about why he came to Botswana and his plans for the future.

Saturday, MmaDua texted me again to ask how we’d slept and if we’d had fun. I thanked her many times and told her what a great time we’d had. When I said we hoped to see her again before we left Maun, she responded “of course, my dear!”

Fish Fish Fisheries

So for the second two weeks of DISP, we were placed with the Fisheries Division of the Wildlife Department. We left Thursday with a man named MN to do sampling close to the village of Samochima, which is on the northwestern part of the Okavango Delta. It was about a five hour drive and it rained or drizzled for a good portion of that drive. There were beautiful lightening storms on the horizon. I also read the New Yorker and slept for awhile. We had a ton of stuff in that truck. Again, we were riding in the bed of a pickup. There were three large, backpacking backpacks with all of our clothes plus four regular backpacks with other stuff. Katie and I had bought three plastic bags worth of food for our six day trip. The other three had bought about six bags worth of food. We also had MD’s stuff and pots to cook with. There were two huge tents at the bottom of the pile, which was covered by our five mats. It was actually quite a comfortable ride since we had the sleeping pads to stretch out on.

The campsite was a nice one. We were borrowing space from a local fisherman’s co-op that was started by the government as a development project. The girls had one tent and the boys took another. There was a great fire pit where we would cook all of our meals. All breakfasts consisted of peanut butter and a grain (granola, bread or crackers). Lunch was typically more peanut butter on bread. And then dinner was typically veggies and chickpeas. For snack: a tomato eaten like an apple. yum.

Vince got up early Friday morning (6.30am) to take out the nets everyone had placed the day before. At 8 we were all woken up to start counting fish. Six nets were put out each day, although ideally there would have been eleven. The other five were destroyed past the point of use by crocodiles. So we pulled fish out of nets for over an hour. I am now an official vegetarian. I won’t eat sea food anymore. Watching the fish try to breathe and get manhandled. There was one species that could literally live for hours out of water. Some had spiky fins that the men just broke to make it easier to get out of the nets. They had to be sliced open to see if they were male and female and most of the fish were still alive when they were sliced.

So we weighed each fish and measured how long it was. We also had to identify each species and whether it was juvenile or adult. If it was adult, it was cut open to check for male female and reproductive stage.

That afternoon MD drove us around Samochima and the other villages. It was obvious we were in a different and less wealthy part of the country. All of the houses were traditional, made of cans covered by mud with reed roves. Almost every house had a beautiful fence made out of reeds that you couldn’t see through. The kids still yelled and waved as we drove by.

That afternoon Ian and I went out to set the nets for the next morning. We drove for about ten minutes before we got to the correct location. I was in front and ended up doing all the work. I had to put the bottom end of the net out as the boat was backed away from shore, where the edge was tied to a few reeds. It was a lot tougher than I thought it’d be. Sometimes the driver went fast and I couldn’t keep up and I’d have to ask him to slow down. Sometimes the net got caught on edges of the boat and we had to stop to take it off and sometimes the net would be tangled and we’d have to untangle it before continuing. Once the entire net was out, we drove in an arc back toward the bank, dragging the net through the water and secured it to other reeds. I think we were catching all fish between a ninety degree angle to the shore and the shore itself.

We asked if we could drive further down the river to see more. We drove by some gorgeous luxury lodges but the driver suddenly turned around. The guy I was next to simply said “hippos” and we headed back to camp. Guess our boat was too small to take on any hippos.

Saturday morning was pretty similar. We took fish out of the nets and recorded their information again. As soon as the first net was done I started to measure and weigh. I really wasn’t into pulling them out of the nets again.

We relaxed for most of the day, playing more cards, napping and reading. Back in Maun, Katie and I had tried a delicious fruit that was both sour and sweet at the same time, and Mma, the one lady who we were working with knew there was a tree nearby. We decided to try to find it. We saw a group of kids walking out of the trees with a bag full of the fruit and asked for directions. They pointed us down the right path. One girl said it wasn’t far at all and another said it was quite a walk. We followed the trail of pits the children had left behind to try to find the tree. After forty-five minutes of walking, Mma decided we should turn back because she was scared of elephants and warthogs. About ten minutes later, my flipflop broke and I had to walk the rest of the way back with only one shoe on. I only had to stop a few times to pull thorns and burs out of the bottom of my foot.

Katie noticed that there was no longer a trail of pits along the path we were on and we realized we hadn’t come the way we were walking. So we decided to just keep walking since we were probably heading in the right direction. Eventually we ran into two men and asked them for directions. They pointed us down the road in the opposite direction we were walking. We came to a fork in the road and luckily saw a group of kids walking toward us. It happened to be the same kids we’d asked for directions to the fruit. They told us how to get back to camp and agreed to take us to the fruit tomorrow, if they could leave the village. We got back to camp just fine and had delicious catfish (caught that morning) for dinner.

Sunday was another low key day. I didn’t go out in the boat again. But we did play a lot more cards and the kids came through on their promise to take us to find the fruit. So a group of about eight kids led us through the trees the exact way we’d gone the day before. This time, Mma, Katie, Ian, Vince, Ches and I all went. We brought a plastic bag too, so that we’d be able to bring a lot of fruits back for the rest of the fisheries team. We made it to where we’d turned around the day before and there was the tree. It was literally right to the left of the path we’d stopped on. The tree was huge! It had a massive trunk and the diameter of the branches was probably thirty feet. We collected fruit off the ground because they’d picked all of the low hanging ones the day before. And it was so delicious. They were about the size cherry but had really big pits. The kids picked the skin off but we ate them whole. A young boy climbed about fifteen feet in the air to shake a huge branch and literally made it rain fruit.

After we’d picked our share and the kids had filled a plastic bag to the top, they asked if we wanted to see a croc’s nest. We of course said yes. So we headed toward the river and came to a huge sand pit in the ground. We walked along the croc path to the water where we found a man fishing with a pole and hook. I was slightly freaked out that we were so close to the water with crocs and hippos, but the kids were totally comfortable and I realized we were safe. Or at least I was, standing behind a row of children. We sat down for awhile and Vince and Cuz saw a huge croc swimming close by. The kids got excited and we waited to see it again. After about twenty minutes, we decided to leave even though they didn’t get to see it.

We walked along a different path back to camp, this time with the kids leading so we knew we wouldn’t get lost. We came back to the river at one point and the kids drank the water. They ran to the river, scooped up a few gulps as quickly as they could and ran away again. There, they almost seemed scared.

That night we had more fresh fish for dinner.

Monday was an early day for me. Since the fisheries employees were moving to a new camp, they wanted to get started early. They woke me up at 6, thirty minutes before we’d agreed to go collect the last net. This net had been set a little farther, but I loved watching the sunrise over the river. I missed the initial colors so I saw the light reflect from behind clouds onto the still water. We saw a few crocs on our ride and I got really excited to see my first hippo of the day. Turns out it was right next to our net, and I’d already learned that the men liked to avoid hippos in our small boat. So we tried to chase it away. We would rev the engine and ride toward it, then turn away about thirty feet away and circle back to scare it again. We did this at least ten times. Slowly, the hippo moved away from our net. But then we lost track of where it was and the men got more and more nervous. We drove another few minutes down the river to a nearby lodge and asked two men to come watch out for the hippo as we collected our net.

So two hotel employees hopped into their boat and followed us to the site. I watched the men pull in the net as the other boat was between us and the middle of the river. Once we were finished, we thanked them and they drove off. We rode back to camp and saw the hippo around the first bend. Luckily, he’d swam away when he disappeared and we’d been safe the whole time.

We’d collected the smallest catch so far. Twelve fish. Before, we’d had a few hundred each day. It did make the morning go fast though. The four fisheries employees packed up their tents and gear, we said good bye and they took off for their next site.

MD had brought another man, Rocks, to take us on a boat tour. We couldn’t have been happier. Originally we’d been told we’d do a boat tour during our first full day but it hadn’t worked out. Then we were told we couldn’t all fit on the boat together so we’d have to go out in two shifts. But Rocks decided the six of us would be fine.

Jeez, was the boat cruise incredible. It took a total of three hours, from 11am to 2. There were phenomenal birds everywhere. We drove up to huge flocks of beautiful egrets perched in trees or on the white sand, saw a number of kingfishers and quite a few hawks and African Fish Eagles. We saw our first hippo within the first forty five minutes and saw a pod of about four hippos toward the end of the trip. We saw quite a few crocs, one just across the river from where we got out for a leg stretching break. And where we stopped was gorgeous. We stood in the water as Rocks smoked a cigarette (the real reason for our break). We waded into a little pond covered with lilies and watched the birds hunt for fish and bugs.

On our drive back, we essentially chased a flock of small birds down the bank. There were probably forty or fifty really small birds sitting in trees along the water’s edge. They flew further down the bank as we got closer and landed in the reeds. They were perched for less than five seconds before we got too close and they flew again. We followed them for at least five minutes before they figured out that flying away from the water would put more distance between themselves and the boat than continually flying further down the river.

After we got back, MD drove Rocks back into town. We really wanted to walk to Samochima to look around a take a few pictures, so Katie agreed to stay back to watch our stuff while the four of us walked into Samochima. Instead of taking pictures, we found a group of boys holding soccer. In Setswana, I asked if we could play with them. They agreed but didn’t walk toward the field. So I said “let’s go!” and started off toward the goal posts we’d seen on our walk from camp. The clouds were dark and it looked like the rain and lightening was getting closer to us. Perfect soccer weather.

We passed the ball around in a circle for a few minutes, the four of us and four boys who were probably around thirteen years old. They divided us into teams of four on four (with one goalie each) and we started. Our goal was probably six or seven years old and super small. But he was incredible. He dove like a pro and stopped almost every goal. Once the lightening got closer and the rain got a little harder, we decided to stop playing and head back to camp. We didn’t want to be the only tall things in an open field and a real soccer practice was starting soon at the field next to ours. My team ended up winning (!!!) and I think the final score was 4-2.

That night we cooked dinner over a huge fire. We could see a huge lightening storm a few miles away and decided to go watch. So we grabbed our jackets and sat about forty feet from the river to watch the huge bolts. Most of the lightening was behind clouds and instead of seeing the individual bolts, the entire sky would light up. Some bolts were really clear though, and it was beautiful to watch them stretch from really high up to the ground. After we heard a lot of hippo noises, I headed back to camp and the rest of the group followed in a few minutes.

We left Samochima on Tuesday. We visited our friend Amy, who’s on our program and doing basket weaving for her DISP. She’s staying in a village called Etsha 6. There’s a series of Etsha villages that are numbered in ascending order. We met her host family and saw her room and the basket she’s finished. I honestly expected a single colored, lopsided basket with visible mistakes, considering she’d finished it in two weeks, which seemed really fast to me. Instead, Amy showed us a beautiful basket that was a light tan color with a dark tan spiral coming out of the bottom. Although she said it wasn’t even, I honestly couldn’t find a mistake. She’d worked from 8-5, five days a week for two weeks to finish it. That morning she’d started her second basket, which will be much smaller but will have a flower pattern, be closed, and have a matching top. I really can’t wait to see it when it’s done. We finished our five hour drive home without a single rain drop! Again, we were comfortably laid out on our sleeping pads on top of our mountain of stuff.

pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071713&id=1036350539&l=9a11acb4be

Maun... week 1

So now I’m in Maun! Maun’s a huge tourist destination in the northern part of the country. On my first day, I walked to the airport with a few friends and recognized a bright orange shop that I’d seen with my family when we came here in 2007! Although I was in the same spot, I’m here for very, very different reasons!

So this part of my program is called DISP, or Directed Independent Study Project. Originally, I’d wanted to work with the Maun Homeopathy Project, an NGO based in England that provides homeopathic care to those living with HIV. But, I instead ended up interning with the Wildlife Department with four friends. Ian, Katie and Vince are all on the Pitzer program with me. Vince’s cousin, Cuz, has been doing research in Ghana for the past few months and came to Botswana when she finished. So now she’s working with us for Wildlife.

We were going to take a 6am bus from Gaborone to Maun on Sunday, the 7th. I’d called a taxi to pick me up at 5 and was woken up at 5:05 by my mom pounding on my locked door. I’d slept through my alarm and the driver’s honking. Luckily, she’d woken up and asked him to wait as I scrambled to finish packing and brush my teeth. I got to the bus rank in plenty of time and got lucky getting seats. The five of us had the first row with plenty of leg room and no standers next to us. We stopped for lunch around 1 and finally arrived at 4. Then my new host dad picked Katie and I up, since we’ll be staying together in Maun. We met the rest of the family, which is huge. Mom and Dad have 7 kids (aging from mid40s to 24), many of which still live with them. Katie and I are sharing a room and bed in the main house. We were given our own kitchen (one of three on the property) where we could keep our own food and cook if we wanted.

Monday, we reported to work at promptly 7:30am. Ian and I were supposed to work together with the Outreach Section and Katie, Vince and Cuz were going to work with Problem Animal Control. After we realized they didn’t really have plans for us, we walked around to all the departments and asked if anyone was heading out into the field. Although we met a lot of people, we couldn’t arrange a trip out for us. We were then told all of our bosses would be in a meeting for the next two days, we asked for the afternoon and Tuesday off. So the five of us walked to the airport (where I saw the orange shop!) to be real tourists and arrange a scenic flight and mokoro (traditional canoe) trip! We decided to take the 5pm hour long airplane trip that afternoon and mokoro trip the next day. Ian and I got lunch at Spar and visited his homestay, where conditions are less than ideal. Their home hasn’t had running water for weeks, so they have to drive to a reserve tank daily to get enough water to drink, wash and cook with. I’m so excited to have running water, a bath, and a washing machine!

So a few hours later we headed back to the airport (with computers, since there’s free wireless there!) for our scenic flight. It was incredible. Our pilot was a South African man who “spent a shitload of money and time” on his training. We saw beautiful clouds and so many animals from the sky: elephants wading in the water, zebras grazing with wildebeest, giraffes foraging in trees, and two HUGE herds of buffalo, one running all together and one ambling along in a single file line (which our pilot flew by twice so we could see it well). The fingers of the delta stretching out in front of us were breathtaking. The hour long flight seemed like ten minutes, and before we knew it we were back in Maun, landing at the airport.

Tuesday was our mokoro trip. The five of us hired three boats and three polers, men or women who stand at the back of the boat with a really long stick, pushing the boat along. Katie and I shared a mokoro and had the most awkward poler. He kept talking to us in Setswana but using words we hadn’t learned yet. The other two gave wonderful facts and conversation. We poled through the reeds for a few hours before we stopped for lunch. The reeds were three times as high as we were sitting in the low boat so we couldn’t see any of the surrounding landscape. But the reeds, lilies and birds were enough to look at.

We stopped for lunch and then took a walking safari. I’ve never been so close to zebras on foot before. We walked between two herds and stood in awe as one herd stampeded toward the other. The dominant male of the running herd corralled his females together and made them stop by kicking and biting them; he didn’t want them mixing at all.

After walking, we jumped into a swimming hole. Who knew you could go swimming in a body of water filled with crocodiles and hippos?? We made loud animal noises and took pictures making animal faces. When a group of over twenty tourists pulled up we just laughed and made hippo noises. They identified us correctly! After drying off (took less than 5 minutes in the sun) we poled back to where we’d started. There the five of us got to practice poling ourselves, and it is not easy…. although we all discovered poling backwards is.

Wednesday we had to go back to work. It was tough, tourists live a pretty sweet life. After sitting in an office for awhile and being told Ian and I would leave for the field on Friday, we were called into an office and told we were actually leaving in four hours. Surprise! So Katie and I headed home to pack all our stuff. We made a stop at Choppies, the supermarket on our way out, to buy food for the next seven days. Except we didn’t know how much food we’d eat and had to guess. We loaded up on chickpeas, pasta and a ton of veggies. Then we had the 2 hour drive to the park and 1 hour drive to our station. We would be staying with Nyex at North Gate. We were all in the back of a pickup and it was going to be great. Until we stopped at a bar and picked up a third Wildlife employee. I think his name was William. William liked to talk to us a lot, even though we ignored him pretty consistently. He tried to get boxed wine into a water bottle and spilled it all over me and our stuff. He kept grabbing our legs to get our attention when we didn’t answer his questions. Eventually Nyex came back and told him he wasn’t allowed to talk to us. So then he tried to light a cigarette and ended up breaking it, but it kept him busy for about half an hour. We all stood up and got rocked by the truck. I’ve got a ring of bruises around my stomach/back from getting thrown into the safety bars so many times. But it was worth it, the scenery was incredible and the wildlife (mainly birds, since we were driving fast and scared most other animals away) was awesome.

We watched the sunset from the back of the truck. By then William had decided it was okay to talk again. He also tried to stand up with us at the front of the pickup bed and we had him stand at the back. We dropped him off at south gate and admired the sunset for awhile before starting off on the hour drive to north gate, where we’d be staying. There was a lightning storm in front of us, past our camp, but it was beautiful to watch. The sky lit up each time a bolt formed, followed by a huge booming thunder. Thunder doesn’t clap like it does at home, it really does boom.

So then we arrived at our house, a townhouse paid for by the Botswana government and the EU. It normally homes two men who fix the roofs and was a complete pigsty. So by the light of a single candle and one headlamp, we moved all of their stuff into the bedrooms, swept the house, took out the trash and drained the bathtubs and sinks of disgusting yellow water (who leaves water in the tub?!?). We laid our mats and sleeping bags in the living room and crawled into bed, exhausted.

We started our day at 7:30 on Thursday. Nyex had to catch up on some paperwork, so we sat in the office. Plenty of tourists came in to pay their entrance fee and get directions; they were all decked out in khaki gear. Amos gave us a tour of the campsite, which was gorgeous. There was one site, number 4, that was on the river and had a massive tree great for both climbing and shade right in the middle. We had a quick talk with Nyex about park management before heading into Khwai village with Colin, another employee. We met the kgosi (chief). Since girls have to wear skirts when entering the kgotla, Katie, Cuz and I tied towels around our waists. I was pretty embarrassed when mine fell off and revealed my shorts underneath. Then we went to the Khwai Community Trust, which works a lot with the Moremi staff. The government gave them land to rent to lodges. They use the income to develop the village; in the past they’ve built houses for the elderly and a new office for themselves. They’re currently modifying an old lodge to generate more money. Apparently there’s also been a lot of corruption with trust leaders using funds to go to the States and South Africa for vacations.

We went back to our house, cooked dinner over a camp fire and watched the sunset from the bridge. With hippos in the river in front of us and impalas grazing a few hundred meters away, the view was breathtaking. I’ve seen sunsets that cover their side of the sky and the opposite horizon, but I’ve never seen one that covers the entire sky – and that’s just what this one did. All four horizons plus every inch in between was brilliant.

We walked back to our house and were told we had to move all of our stuff into the bedrooms. Way to ruin a night. The met who normally lived in the house had showed up; they were going to camp outside but wanted to be able to walk through the living room to the kitchen. So they moved all of their things out of the bedrooms as we laid on our sleeping bags, just wanting to sleep. Then I swept both bedrooms because there was nasty stuff everywhere. We moved all our stuff and then I fell asleep instantly.

Friday was an early morning: 5:30am. We were up at 5, washing up and eating a quick breakfast. Nyex came to fetch us right on time, Botswana time, at 6. We hung out at the office while he did his morning routine and went back home at 7:30 for breakfast and a quick nap. We met up with the Wildlife vet, Dr. John, who had to get a skin and blood sample from an elephant…. Epic trip in the making! So a rifle was loaded into the cab and we loaded into the back of another pickup with Dr. John (who carried the tranq gun) and another guy. We had one goal: to find an elephant.

Epic fail. Five hours later, Dr. John was frustraged and mad that we hadn’t seen a single elephant. He loaded a smaller dart and aimed at an impala. He missed. So he loaded another as we drove up to a herd of females. This time, he hit one. We jumped out of the car and tried to follow the hit impala although they were scattering in all directions. We lost it. After a few minutes of searching for the impala with the red dart, the doctor decided it was a lost cause and we loaded back into the truck. So we left an impala to pass out within 10-15minutes. Hopefully it won’t get eaten since it’s now easy bait, but chances are it became someone’s lunch.

So onto find elephants. An hour later, we found some! A herd of five. After circling around for a better angle, Dr. John aimed at the matriarch and connected. We all jumped out and followed the herd on foot, they were trotting away from the sound of the shot, but not running too fast. I stayed close to the guy with the rifle. We ducked behind trees so they wouldn’t see us. We could hear a low groan as the tranq started to affect her. About ten minutes later, we heard her hit the ground. We called the truck over and all hopped in. We circled around and were about fifteen feet from the matriarch, who was laying on the ground, and the other four elephants who were all standing around her. The rifle was shot into the air as a warning. Unfortunately, we hadn’t been warned and we all went deaf in one ear for a few minutes. The rest of the herd wouldn’t leave their fallen leader until another shot was fired and all of the men yelled loudly. After they were chased away, the guy with the rifle ran after them to make sure they didn’t return. A human on foot versus an angry elephant is not a good situation. So the vet ran over to the elephant and quickly covered her eyes and shoved cotton into her ears to reduce outside stimulation. We asked if we could leave the truck to get closer but the driver said to stay in the car.

Dr. John took his blood and skin samples from the inside of the elephant’s ear. In about three minutes, he and his assistant ran back to the car. Then the guy with the rifle came running back too. We asked if we could get close because it was obvious we were starting to leave. Dr. John said he’d already given it the revival shot, but that it was okay for us to get out. So we jumped out, cameras in hand, and crept close to the sleeping giant. I was super nervous and the farthest one back, although I was still about seven feet away. When she started to move her legs, we all turned on our heels and sprinted back to the truck. She made the really low grumbling noises again that were agonizing to listen to. It took her another two minutes to start to roll back and forth to get the momentum needed to stand up but she eventually did.

We drove away, past the rest of her herd that would find her soon. The five of us were in euphoria after that. We’d watched an elephant get tranqued and gotten so close to her! We drove about two hours to get back home, where Nyex told us we were moving to South Gate to live with a man named Bunny. So we bathed and ate and packed up. Then we made the hour drive to South Gate. Bunny had arranged two houses for us to live in, but we convinced him it was a good idea for us all to stay with him. Although it was fun, he may have been slightly annoyed with the mess we made with all of our stuff. But he never complained and was a great sport.

Saturday was phenomenal. Since Bunny is a Seventh Day Adventist, he normally doesn’t work on Saturdays. So we drove to third bridge to check out how its construction was going. I was super tired that day, so I was the only one sitting in the bed of the truck. When Vince crouched down and whispered “Wild dogs. Get up!” I sprang to my feet with my camera, except I couldn’t take pictures. Wild dogs were the one animal I wanted to see on our trip. They took my breath away. There was a pack of fourteen dogs, including three pups, lounging in the middle of the road. They calmly looked at us but decided we weren’t a threat and didn’t run. We stood still for a minute as I started to take pictures. Looking through the lens was incredible because I could see each dog so clearly. They were beautiful. Their markings are exquisite and seeing them was so much more exciting than I’d thought. They were so playful and their ears were huge. We started to creep forward and they stood up and trotted down the road in front of us.

Seeing wild dogs is incredibly rare and really special. I was thrilled. They had made a kill the night before and a few of the dogs still had blood on their faces and necks. One was carrying a piece of meat around. They periodically stopped to drink water from where it had collected in tire tracks. Bunny kept asking the driver to stop, but he was antsy and we left after only a few minutes. Had we been on a real safari, we would have stayed for quite awhile because you just don’t see dogs. About two minutes down the road, we passed a researcher with the conservation trust. They focus on predators and she was excited to find the pack and really glad we’d seen one collared dog.

So we checked out the bridge which is almost finished. Then Bunny arranged for us to take a boat cruise. He’s the greatest. So the five of us, Bunny, and three other park employees hopped into a boat normally used for patrols and rode around the delta. The delta was beautiful. Since we were in a pretty wide boat, we went through wider channels but I could see the really small ones meant for mokoros everywhere.

About twenty minutes into the ride, we turned a corner and found ourselves face to face with an elephant, shoulder deep in the water. Our driver got closer and then backed away fast. The elephant was walking toward us but along the far bank. He trumpeted and shook his ears and head at us. Our driver revved the engine and sped by on the left side. The elephant splashed water in our direction and we got a little splashed. Our wake got him pretty bad though.

We were out for a total of about two/three hours. At one point, we stopped at a flat field and got out to walk around. On our way back, I saw a HUGE croc sunbathing. By the time we’d reversed to look closer he was gone.

That night, Ian and I were sitting outside in the cool air because the house was hot from our cooking. We didn’t really notice that it had gotten dark, and we probably should have gone back inside. All of a sudden there was movement in front of us and we could make out a silhouette of an animal. We decided to sit still and not move. I was petrified with freight. I lasted for about eight seconds before I slowly started to stand up and Ian did the same. I tried not to make any sudden movements but I was also super scared. Once we reached our full standing height, the animal ran away. I think it was a hyena, judging by its size, shape and the way it ran. We sprinted inside laughing. Won’t do that again!

Sunday was super low key. We didn’t have any transport so we stayed in Bunny’s house all day. He spent a lot of time at the office doing paper work. We played a lot of cards (all 500 Rummy) and watched Zombieland on Vince’s computer.

We drove into Maun on Monday for lunch and a stop at the internet café. The drive was beautiful and we stood up the whole way. Or at least until we got into town and had to sit so the police wouldn’t stop us. It was weird to be back in a city again. We had lunch at Barcelos a pseudo-Italian restaurant with free wireless internet. We made a quick stop at Choppies, the grocery store, and headed back to Moremi.

Tuesday was a day of delays. We were supposed to leave the park to go home to Maun at 6am. At 7.15 we’re picked up so that we can drive over an hour into the park. Our driver has a meeting next to the airstrip, so we nap for a few hours in the back of the truck. The new plan is to leave at noon. At 1pm we get back to Bunny’s house. Since we’re already packed we just wait until 3 when we actually leave for Maun.

It was great to go back home and take a real bath and sleep in a real bed with blankets instead of the sleeping bag liner and camping mat I’d been using for the past week. But I wouldn’t have traded it. Also, my house has a washing machine which is AMAZING!

pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2071710&id=1036350539&l=31b0c4b273