A CLOAK OF GREEN

IN REHANA'S WORDS

25 January

The Botswana I imagined was not what I saw through the window of our car as we headed towards Gweta in the centre of the country. The sky was unremittingly grey and rain swept sideways across our windscreen.

When we arrived last Friday, Botswana met my expectations exactly. The sun blazed down on our early start. I was so glad we had reassembled our car’s air conditioner in Nairobi. We were going to need it.

The door to the Botswana customs office had a note stuck to it: “closed on account of air cornditioner”. The penciled cross over the “R” did not hide the mistake. The office was a welcoming fridge.

The first Batswana I saw wore tight black denim jeans and long-sleeved sweaters in heat that melted my skin. I spotted several jackets. Some women wore sensible hats, large enough to shade their swaddled torsos.

I expected Botswana to be cattle country but was unprepared for the beauty of their beasts. Without exception, they look sleek and happy. Many are a rich red, matching the soil of their northern neighbours. Thousands of cattle, horses, donkeys and goats sensibly sought the abundant shade under the canopy of trees that flanked us from Divundu in Namibia to Maun in Botswana.

Preparing to camp in Maun, we programmed the Garmin to take us to the Spar supermarket – now that we’re able to shop at supermarkets instead of hot, dusty, fly-infested markets we do. Guess what we found? The first Woolies food since Maputo – ten long months ago. 
I did a little jig when we walked in. I wanted to buy one of everything, settled for wanting to touch everything and eventually left after we put a few things in a basket.

Happiness is ...

Once again, we camped at a hotel. Once again, we had a tiled shower with more than enough space to hang a towel and a change of clothing. There's nothing worse than having nowhere to put your clean clothes and your towel when you have a shower. We had plenty of hot water and another stainless steel sink to wash our dishes.

The swimming pool at Sedia Hotel was bigger than our previous four, but tiny compared to Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. Sedia Hotel had the kind of pool I liked – no eina eina at the edges for 15 minutes before I am brave enough to go up to my knees. It was a bath and I slipped in like a boiling eel.

Bliss is …

We met people in Maun who became lifelong friends within minutes. Mike and Carol, who we had travelled with on some of our journey, said friends of theirs wanted to meet us. Within minutes of hearing we were in town Christiane, Monica and Hilary came to visit us.

We met Christiane and Monica again the next morning at Hilary’s coffee shop and some of their friends. Jules and I cooked for Christiane and Monica on Saturday night (chicken kalya, Woolies had everything we needed) and on our last day we had breakfast with Christiane.

Sunday we spent in the Okavango Delta. I wished I had eyes above my ears and at the back of my head because two was too little to take in the small smidgeon we saw of it.

I fell in love with water lilies in Hermanus two years ago. I was invited to a 10-day writing workshop at Volmoed – an Anglican Church retreat in the mountains above the town. It had a waterfall and stream running through it, with rock pools filled with water lilies.

The Okavango Delta is enveloped in the delicate scent of millions of water lilies. Purple and blue dragonflies dart from white lilies to purple ones and rare passionate pink petals. Frogs plop off their islands of leaves at the approach of our boat.

Picture this replicated a million times

The lilies lift their stems out of the water as they twist their bright yellow faces towards the sun. Sue Grant-Marshall is on my mind all day long as we drift among the lilies. She had ancestors who were part of the Volmoed community and Botswana is her birth home.

Sue had primed me for dust – which she claims she loves – but we have seen very little of her prize. The Okavango Delta was a vibrant array of greens. Never before in my life have I been so taken by grass. Never before have I seen so many varieties in one place – each one as pretty as the next.

Elephant bones bleached white in the grass

We spent a day in the delta; ten thousand days would not be enough, I reckon. We explored a smidgeon of it in a canoe and on foot under the excellent guidance of Cross, a young and very knowledgeable local. 
We didn’t choose the options of a (haha) small plane or helicopter flight across the delta and I am so grateful. The canoe took us silently down waterways at eye level with the water lilies, reeds, frogs, dragonflies and two hippos.
Cross told us about a mishap with a group of Chinese tourists two weeks earlier. A hippo had charged at their canoe and one of the tourists panicked, tipping the vessel and sending everyone overboard. Fortunately, the hippo retreated and the tourists were spared.
We were very grateful Cross paddled rapidly across the hippo pool, we lowered our gasps of amazement to whispers until we were clear of them.

After a short break for lunch we set off on foot across an island. The weather was kind. It was overcast and a few fat drops occasionally struck our hot heads.  The rainy season is not the best time to visit the delta, the water floods into it from the north after the rains end. 
There were very few animals, which we only saw through binoculars from a distance, but boy was there a lot to see.

The grasses in the delta appeared to be of every shape and colour green – long and feathery; short, yellowish and skin-slicing, tall and reedy and green topped with delicate pinks and purples.

Eyes on stalks of grass. Click to enlarge

We returned to our hotel at about 5pm and collapsed. Not for the first time on this trip, the sensory overload of a day in a magnificent landscape drained every last joule of energy from my exhausted cells.

After Maun, we set off for Gweta, gateway to the Makgadikgadi Pans. Again, my expectations were proved to be completely wrong. As we drove through fat puddles of rainwater towards the Kalahari, Africa kept spreading a thick green cloak under our feet (the wheels of our car?). 
In a landscape empty of buildings and people all we saw – for hours and hours – were trees.

VOTE ZEBRA FOR FREEDOM

IN JULIA'S WORDS

30 January

“We were approaching the end of our long journey. […] We were not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine pleasure trip; we had fed fat on wonders every day; we were now well accustomed to camping life, and very fond of it; so the idea of coming to a stand-still and settling down to a humdrum existence in a city was not agreeable, but on the contrary, depressing.”

So wrote (with a few tweaks) that word-wizard Mark Twain in his hilarious gem, Roughing It. I’ve never read his work before, but here in Gweta, Botswana, lying with Rehana in a hammock-for-two under the vast baobab I’ve nicknamed Oom Die Boom, it was a chortle and guffaw every half-page. And it gave me that lovely tingle that you get when on a page written in a very different place and in a very different time you eerily read what you right now are feeling.

I am in deed by long habit a city mutant, so I know the ropes – the ones that bind, the ones to swing on, the ones with which to hang yourself. But – predictably I suppose – this Big Outing in the Big World has awakened a sprite in me that doesn’t want to again be pinned and wriggling to the rigours of concrete and crime. Albeit the conveniences – a reliable hot shower, easy electricity, wonderful Woolworths – do have their attractions, I’ll not deny.

Thankfully I have a bit of time after we’re back in SA’s borders to reassemble headage before once again biting the work/city bullet (and hoping it doesn’t break all my teeth).

But here’s a few reflections on things I’ve learnt that I hadn’t known I would. Like about animals and things. I’ve learnt to be less afraid of snakes: they still give me grille when I see one, but I’m quite sure they’re intent on slithering off, not attacking me. 

Monkeys, on the other hand, I’ve learnt to be very wary of. Yes, they look so cutesy with their sprouty whiskers and mini-adept fingers and their babies are a riot to watch, but what pesky thieves they are! And their snarly defiance!!

At the campsite in Livingstone, Zambia I decided to do the “top monkey” routine just to show them I know their foul tricks, and that this territory – that would be the BRC – is strictly out of bounds. With a touch of aggression and what I thought to be unmatchable “I’m boss” confidence, I marched towards the trees where a big daddy (with blue gonads and livid red dick) and two young males had just retreated after an attempted foray into our food supplies.

But as I stood beating my breast and boldly scolding them in my most convincing Monkey, instead of scampering away under the sheer force of my dominating gaze, they instead stood their ground and in unison bared their teeth in the most formidable way. 
Images of them leaping on me and tearing me to bits (and infecting me with rancid rabies) caused me to panic; I swirled and ran back to the car with my proverbial tail between my legs, howling pathetically to Rehana, “Help me, help me, help me, the monkeys are after me!”.

Oh, the relentless lessons in humility!

Then there’s the roaming game to consider. I am now more than ever a complete devotee of the zebra. It’s not just their enthralling zig-zag pyjamas, chunky flanks, proud heads and graceful power that gets me; nor their patient cohabitation with those daft and ooogly jokers, the Wildebeest. 
What’s most wonderful about them is that, unlike the horse and the donkey, they’ve declined to be tamed – or “broken in”, as the horse-folk would say – by humans. Freeeeedom, they exude. 
How often I’ve wanted to become a champion of donkeys – especially those condemned to living in Ethiopia – and organise them to liberate themselves to live with the zebras. Because what those poor belashed donkeys have been forced to endure, a zebra never would. 
In fact, I’m sure that the ones that humans experimented on – to “break in” and domesticate I mean – were thrashed until they were a bloody, dead mess. But unbroken! Viva zebras, viva!!! If I were ever foolhardy enough to start a political party, it would have to be called Zebra.

Free and cannily camouflaged on a pan

Zebras there were in abundance in the wonderland we’ve just got back from: the Makgadikgadi Pans.
This was the second of our generous friend Prospero’s wedding gifts to us: two nights at the way-fancy pan hideaway, Jack’s Camp.
Which is just as well, because what it cost to stay there was equivalent to what we would usually live on in 6 weeks.

Jack's Camp luxury tents

It was all languid desert-tent style with mopane wood floors and the kind of décor that’s just too classy to be swanky; we ate, drank and were merry in the company of a most fine retired Italian couple, Manuella and Roberto.
Manuella had been a journalist/speech writer/ghost writer and raised their two children; Roberto, with his white handlebar moustache and swept-back white hair, had ended up president of several corporate corporations (making sure us consumers were never short of absolute necessities like Cote d’Or or Philly cream cheese).
Now retired, he sure has the bank balance to prove it – Jack’s was not even a blip on his financial radar. I mean, back home in Geneva, the man drives a Bentley 4x4!

But – that would be despite their incredible wealth – they were, well, you know, like, really nice humans. And it was extremely fine to stretch the eyes from green to horizon to storm to horizon of the pan with them.

Roberto and Manuella flew off to their next lavish destination on day three, and Rehana and I were happily reunited with the BRC to drive the 50-odd kilometres out of the pan and back to our campsite just outside Gweta. As our “escort” on the bad roads, we had the company of a small man with skin-exceeding character from Jack’s Camp called Ditsa.

It had been teeming with rain through the night and some of the morning, and the pan was awash – the water table is so high that new rainfall has nowhere to go and lies murkily around as shallow lakes. Even driving along the tracks with their middle-mannetjie sounded and looked a lot like being in a motorboat with the wake we created.

About 30kms into our wet-whoosh drive out of the pan, Rehana (who was driving) made a split second and dreadful decision: she took the track less travelled which arched out from the wet, more travelled one, and before Ditsa could finish his sentence, “Be careful here, watch…”, we were wheel-high in pan mud. 
Our trusty L4 gear couldn’t budge us. And so Ditsa became our most recent hero, as he bustled around in the black morass collecting branches to put under our thickly embraced tyres.

The view from the least mired side

First try just further embedded the BRC; and then Rehana and Ditsa got our very, very, very nifty sandtracks out from the car and lodged them under the back wheels (I was playing cheerleader and chronicler with the camera, not feeling for a mudbath). Et voila!
A mere handful of minutes later, and Rehana was oozing and splattering the BRC out of the mucky sludge and back on to the waterlogged road.

This, too, I’ve learnt: I don’t much appreciate offroad driving nor getting stuck, but there is a certain thrill when you finally get unstuck.