Okavango Trip Photo Drop

We've got new visitors coming on Friday, so I've got to get through the rest of A's parents' trip! The Okavango Delta is a really...big...delta. It's quite pretty. The water flows down from Angola, and bring minerals that end up in the Botswana salt pans (I visited some of these in September!). People go there to see the water, and taking a small, low-flying plane is one of the main activities--also mokoro rides, which I previously blogged.

We were led through the delta by our terrific guide, Judge, who was from the village right next to the entrance to the Moremi Game Reserve. The people who live in the village are a mix of Setswana and San. Interestingly, Judge told me he doesn't mind the word "Bushmen" and thinks that his village is better off outside the Reserve (they were relocated decades ago, unlike the people in Kaudwane, where we went in December).

He told us a story about an old woman in the village. When she was a toddler, the Bushmen were still living in Moremi. They were forced to abandon anyone too sick or weak to travel with them, and her mother was one such person. They left her and her mother in a kraal, and moved on. When they saw vultures overhead, they knew the woman had died, and they returned to collect the baby and moved on. Weird story--why not just take the toddler at the beginning--but anyway, his point was that maybe we romanticize life in the bush a bit and there are some advantages to life in a village with opportunities to capitalize on tourism and advance your family's lot in life through education.

While we visited in the off-season, and the grasses were high, we did see some game, including lots of elephants, some giraffes, zebras, impala, baboons, hippos (out of the water--absurd!), warthogs, etc.

It was also just really, really pretty. The scenery was really different from other parts of Botswana I have visited.

(Elephants! We saw a ton of them.)

(Looking at giraffes makes A's face fatter?)

(Spider safari.)

We flew in and out of our campsite on a tiny little plane. You know how my dad used to work on planes? And even so, one time when I flying with him, right before the plane took off, he said, "I still don't understand how these things get up in the air." That feeling is even more acute when you're in a 6-seater. But we survived, and I was mostly distracted from my anxiety by my nausea.

On to Madikwe!

I don't have a computer anymore.

One of the big themes of this year is that Botswana is not America, even though it looks and tastes like America. Even though the Indian food here is better than anywhere in Manhattan. The electricity goes out a lot, and with it (and sometimes without it), the internet.

Now my computer broke and I can't get it fixed. I took it to a computer-fixing place and they held onto it for a week and then were sheepishly like, yeah we dunno.

When you're trying to experience the world, it's OK if the internet goes out. Hey, it's even okay if I don't have a computer for a week or two. I actually sort of enjoy reading and baking and going to the orphanage, none of which require a computer except for baking and sometimes reading.

But when you're trying to work for people in the U.S., not having a computer or internet or electricity can be a real handicap. You end up being a bit unreliable, a bit of a disappointer. It's hard to just embrace the experience when you are frustrated that your real life self doesn't look good. You can't enjoy, for example, being stranded for five days in the Namibian desert (I still haven't written about that??!)

Again, I wonder if it would be a very different disappointment if we lived somewhere where our expectations were a lot lower. Like a village in Mali.

*

The traffic here is also killing us. It took an hour this morning to drive A to work (we've finally hooked up an iPod to our tape player so we can listen to This American Life). It should take 10 minutes. Once I drop him off, I drive another 20 minutes to the orphanage. That's an hour and a half in traffic before my day even starts. Is it any wonder that I don't have patience left to help 30 five-year-olds learn to cut?

Also, where'd all these people get all these cars?

*

I forgot to take my travel mug home over the weekend and on Monday it stank of rotten milk. Cannot get the effing smell out. Damn it all to hell.

*

The orphanage preschool continues to be, for lack of a better word, a shitshow. There's this overwhelming contrast between the fact that these kids are laughing and having fun and clean and well-fed and the fact that the classrooms are absurdly understaffed, there's no nurse, there's a million safety violations, and sometimes a teacher will beat a kid with a ruler. Undoubtedly it's a sign of my skewed perspective that I totally understand the hitting. 60 kids and ONE teacher? As long as it's not too hard.

However, in calmer moments, kindergarten is a lovely place. We cut and paste. We color. We sing. We read aloud. We learn to write our names. If my comedy career doesn't work out, and my back-up academic career doesn't work out, and my back-up food blogger/cafe owner career doesn't work out, and nobody ever publishes my books, and I can't think of a good enough reason to become a lawyer, then I think I'd love to be a kindergarten teacher.

Actually, I think as long as I'm not doing anything tremendously interesting, I might as well become a dentist because then I'd make a lot of money.

*

We're experiencing a record rainy season. Towns are flooding. A's office's roof fell in. The other day, my roommate S and I walked past a bus shelter full of goats hiding from the rain. Half of them were perched up on the bench. It was cute.

Rain means bugs. The government has issued some new malaria warnings, including for towns not far from here. As a result, Penn has told students here to start taking prophylaxis even in Gabs. I started taking pills yesterday, so hopefully they're giving me some protection against the millions of mosquitoes currently biting me.

Just kidding, the risk is very low, Mom.

Tastes like chicken, presumably

Today, on my way into the orphanage, I passed the National Botanical Gardens. In Gabs, finding something (anything!) new to do passes for big excitement. So on my way out of the orphanage, now with fellow volunteers S and C in tow, the three of us decided to make a pit stop and check the place out.

We filled out the guest register. We were the first guests to sign it in several days. The place was pretty much empty. We walked around one trail--not much to see. It was kind of like they'd fenced off a random bit of Gabs and called it a garden. I tried to put a positive spin on it: Look, a bench! Under a tree! But it was pretty boring. Then we climbed up over a hill, and we ran into some people.

(Side note: I've killed four mosquitoes since I started writing this--impressive, eh?)

Come this way, they encouraged us. We followed them to a little hut in a corner of the garden. As we entered the hut, the stench was monstrous. Five or six people were crowded around a table where a dead crocodile was being skinned, gutted, and taken apart. Flies were everywhere.

(Just like our croc, except for bigger and less cut-open.)

The crocodile was upside-down on its back. Its jaws were closed but dark red blood was dripping from the tip of its snout. Actually, there was blood all over the ground. The mood was jovial as everyone stood around laughing and joking.

Apparently, one of the people who works there had shot the croc in the Gaborone Dam three or four weeks earlier, then stuck it in a refrigerator until the day before, when they'd started to saw it into pieces. The skin would be stuffed and made into an exhibit. The meat would probably be eaten but they weren't admitting to it.

There were also large eggs, about 10 of them that they'd found inside the croc's belly. Those would be made into the exhibit as well.

Eventually, we said our goodbyes and headed back out into the garden.

*

It struck me as we were leaving that the randomness of this encounter reminded me of New York. One of the reasons I like living in New York is that you can't help but stumble upon strange things and into interesting situations. Not so much Gaborone--except for the occasional crocodile carcass.

I've been warned.

I've been warned about not posting any more gross-out photos of bugs on this site. So I thought I would just post a photo of a toaster, so you can think about how big a toaster is, for the sake of scale.

I literally thought a bat had flown into our apartment last night. That's how big this bug was.

We were just settling in to watch a little Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist after dinner, and I went to fill my water bottle (I've become one of those disgusting people who never stops sucking on their water bottle, like a baby with a pacifier). That's when I saw something huge and black fly in the kitchen window (it's stuck open), ram itself against a ceiling lamp, and fall onto the counter.

"It's a bat!" I screamed.

"No, it's not," said my roommate S. "It's a grasshopper."

Oh good, I thought.

But no! Not good! We tried to chase it out but man, this thing was fierce and practically the size of a toaster (see above). Using S's squash racket, a pot, and the bathroom trash can, we managed to scare it into hiding under the refrigerator. Still shaking, S, A, and I settled down to watch the movie.

An hour and a half later, literally as the credits rolled, our little friend poked his head out from under the fridge. We were off again! Thirty minutes of squealing, yelling "you try to hit it with the squash racket!" and "ew don't use my shoes!", and hiding in the bedroom later, and P came home.

And he killed it.

Storm!

Last night around 4:30 a.m. a huge thunderclap woke A and I. It was right over our heads and actually kind of terrifying. The storm lasted for about half an hour with no rain (we are waiting for the first big rainstorm because then you're not supposed to drink the water for a few days). Every time we thought it had moved away, the room lit up with lightning again. The thunder sounded like those big metal sheets they use to make thunder in productions of The Tempest. (n.b.: Shira's best comparison for actual thunder is manufactured thunder, specifically an image derived from Wishbone. Discuss in comments section.)

Eventually, A got himself out of bed.

"The end of the Phillies game is probably on right now."

*

We watched the new Wall Street movie last night at one of the two movie theaters here. It was sort of weird to watch a movie set in the financial world of New York City in a shopping mall in Gaborone, and it actually made me miss Manhattan, which I don't think was the point, really.

I assume now that Batwana audiences think all Americans drive motorcycles, attend galas at the Met, and can afford half-million dollar diamond rings, but actually those events at the Met are pretty hard to get into.

*

Four new mosquito bites, all on my face.

I mostly survived.

(The sun here will eat your face off.)

Thanks for all your concern over whether I was eaten by lions or not. I am alive. It's taken me a while to post because I've been sick since I got back. Anyway, I hope the suspense gave you some insight into the anxious mind.

So, our trip to the pans was many things--awesome, boundary-expanding, educational--but primarily, uncomfortable. You aren't allowed to hike in the national parks because you might get eaten or trampled, so we were basically in a Land Rover for four days straight. Temperatures reached about 100 degrees during the afternoon, and the only way to cool the car was rolling down the windows, which let the dust in. In between, we slept on the ground. Also, the last two days of the trip, I had a bad headcold and my throat was killing me. It was primal.

So back to Thursday. We left Gabs around 9 am and headed north on the A1 highway, which runs from Gaborone to Francistown, another major city. The first site we passed was the Tropic of Capricorn. It means we're closer to the equator than you:


It's good we saw one sight early on because that was pretty much the only thing we saw for the next Nine Hours. The scenery basically did not change the entire day, except for a quick stop at the nicest gas station bathroom I've ever seen and a stop for peanut butter sandwiches in the parking lot of a grocery store in Francistown.

We did discover that the sunsets in the region are unreal. The sun was unbelievably round and huge.


When we finally got to Planet Baobab, our digs for the night, we were all extremely relieved to get out of the car. Planet Baobab is this bizarre, hip campground and lodge in the middle of nowhere. They had a great restaurant, bar, and a huge swimming pool.

Baobab trees are these weird Dr. Seuss creations that look like they are growing upside-down, with huge trunks and weenie little branches. According to Joe, our driver, guide, and source of all wisdom, the local legend is that God was really pissed and threw some trees down upside-down, which I guess makes sense.

They're also big!





As we ate a lovely breakfast of oatmeal, canned peaches, and tea, we kept one eye on the giant ants crawling over our campsite. Joe explained they were "meat-eating ants," which I assumed meant they should be avioided. After breakfast, we drove to the Nxai Pan National Park.

Once we got to Nxai Pan it quickly became clear that this was the real outdoors. This is what a salt pan looks like.


It's basically a big flat, white expanse of nothingness. It's also salty.

We dropped off our trailer on the edge of a pan at our campsite, and headed over to the waterhole to track some animals. On our first drive, we saw lots of kinds of antelope (kudu, springbok, steenbok, impala, oryx), elephants, jackals, ostriches, and lots of kinds of birds. We drove around looking for lions for a couple of hours, with no success.




That night, we camped in an isolated spot. It was pitch black. For the first time on the trip, I started to feel nervous. It didn't help that our guide kept saying things like "Sleeping in Nxai Pan with the lions...what a rush" and "When you enter the National Park, you become part of the food chain." He warned us that lions or hyenas might enter our camp at night, and not to wander even a few feet away from camp on your own without a flashlight. He did Not warn us about scorpions, so when I found a big black scorpion as we were setting up tents, I was taken by surprise. We shooed it out of camp, and that was when I decided that maybe if I took my wise mother and aunt's advice and took a Klonopin, I could enjoy the gorgeous stars and dinner cooked over an open fire a bit more.

It was the right decision.


In the middle of the night, I heard something pawing around the flap of our tent. Appropriately, I flipped out, but after a few minutes, it scampered off. In the morning, I asked Joe about it and he said it was probably a mongoose.

I wasn't warned about mongooses!

I thought that was pretty lame because since I had already survived it, it might as well have been a lion.

We watched the sunrise as we drove toward the water hole for an early morning animal viewing. This time, we did see a huge male lion in the distance. He sat near the water hole and a few antelope kept lookout nearby. As soon as the lion got up and walked away, tons of animals came to the water hole, including antelope and zebras.


As we drove out of the Nxai Pan toward our next stop, Khama Rhino Sanctuary, we stopped suddenly. On the side of the road, outside the park, was a giraffe.


Definitely my favorite animal of the trip. Very weird. We spent the rest of Saturday driving to Khama, which took about six and a half hours. At Khama, we were back in a populated camping ground. I was in charge of dinner that night and I made rice and (unintentionally) smoky beans and chakalaka, this weird curry tomato sauce that comes in a can (I made it by opening the can). Sunday we did a rhino drive, saw four rhinos way in the distance, another giraffe (I'll spare you the photos), a bunch more antelope, ostriches, and birds, and then headed home to Gabs.

*

This is embarrassing.

I still think animals are boring.

Driving around, stopping to look at every steenbok and yellow-beaked hornbill, this does not get my pulse racing. The giraffes were cool, but we looked at giraffes for like all of 20 minutes of the entire trip. We spent most of our time looking at grass or the sun or a rhino that was so far away you could barely see it with binoculars. I got really, really bored.

I actually enjoyed the camping elements a lot more than I expected--cooking on the fire, looking at the stars, waking up early while it was cool and beautiful out. But looking at animals seemed somehow manufactured. There was always this barrier of the car between us and animals, which on some level made it feel like we were watching a program on television. It may have been The Wild, but it didn't feel like it. It felt like an organized, on-road, human-arranged viewing of animals placed there for that purpose.

It's sort of disheartening because I had this suspicion that safari, which is the main thing people do for vacation in Botswana, was not my thing, and it turns out safari is not my thing.

On the plus side, this trip was fun in other ways, and it got me excited for taking more trips in the region and seeing other parts of the country.

*

Also, I look great in a Land Rover.

Into the Wild

I'm not a very nature-y person. I definitely envy people who are wholesome and outdoorsy, like my sisters. People who hear the word "camping" and think "I'm going to have a great time" and not "I'm going to get eaten by a bear."

I have a completely irrational, totally stupid and yet entirely unyielding fear that I am going to eaten by a lion in a very particular way. And I have anxiety dreams about wild animals all the time, usually ones that involve me trying to Get Indoors and instead being singled out by said wild animals to be eaten.

My mom says she used to have similar dreams about tigers until she decided to "be the tiger." Her advice to me was to "be the lion." So sometimes I tell A, "I am the lion." It is not really helping yet.

Also, as anyone who has ever been outdoors with me knows, I don't like when things land on me, especially bugs (though this also extends to airplanes, etc.). Even lady bugs. I especially resent bugs that are "harmless" and therefore somehow to be welcomed in food, clothes, etc.

The last time I went "camping" I spent the entire weekend in our cabin watching re-runs of The West Wing.

So even though I like the idea of being outside in theory--like hiking is nice, if it's a pretty well-trafficked trail and I get to go home at the end--in reality, I am afraid of being outside. I don't even like some particularly not-domesticated parts of Central Park.

But tomorrow, in the spirit of doing things that are outside my comfort zone, I'm getting in a car with four friends for 8 hours or so and going camping in some place in northern Botswana that is best known for how desolate it is.

Also, there are lions. Wish me luck. See you Sunday.

This is Africa. There are bugs.

(Roach drawn to actual size.)

"This is Africa. There are bugs." says a sign posted in our apartment warning us not to leave food out. Well, we haven't left food out. A and I love eating in bed and watching TV (we once ate baked ziti straight out of the pan in bed--is this making us more attractive?--to be fair, we'd had a bad day), but we've been very good about not bringing food into our bedroom here.

So it was sort of surprising (I screamed) to see a "novelty-sized" (A's words) cockroach in our bedroom, right up where the wall meets the ceiling. I've killed about one mosquito per day in our bedroom, we've got a bit of ant problem (and a bigger ant poison problem) in the kitchen, and I've seen a few small, discreet New York-sized roaches in the bathroom. Also there are flies. But this thing was enormous--bigger than a Texas-sized roach.

So I screamed and ran out of the room with my hands over my head, and told A, who was in the bath, to kill it. A, ignoring the fact that obviously the only reason I'm marrying him or anyone is so that they will take care of bugs--I love sexism when it benefits me, like when women aren't obligated to go to services or carry heavy things--finished his bath.

When he got out, he made P kill it. P did an excellent job, and I made sure the thing actually went down the toilet, as I recalled that in Texas, roaches were sometimes revived by an electrical shock when they hit the water (someone please challenge flag me on this--I have no idea if I made it up).