kalahari clouds & moon

You could sell this place on the skies alone. I wish I had the equipment to take some super-long-exposure night sky photos... They'd be stunning. Oh well. A mission for when I'm older and richer, and return to Botswana.

On Wednesday night I spent the evening with C and H, the creators of the Naro Language Project. After a delicious supper and some interesting conversation, H and I went outside to fiddle around with his telescope. I'd never actually looked through a small telescope before; I've been on various school field trips to observatories, but to look into this relatively small device was something completely different. There's a sense of removal when you go into a big observatory, with a Real Astronomer in a lab coat, and peer into a gigantic apparatus whose full extent you can't even see. There's too much incomprehensible technology in the way. It seems possible that those sneaky "astronomers" could plug a television into the eyepiece of their "telescope," and you'd never know the difference.

When you aim the telescope yourself, it's different. When you can hold the entire thing and pick it up, see the spindly metal arms of the adjustors and the gleam of the lenses - then it seems real. H found Saturn and I sat on a kitchen chair, knees on either side of the telescope's tripod, one eye screwed shut and the other intently focused on that tiny, glowing white dot - Saturn! Saturn is about 1.2 BILLION kilometers away from Earth, and it takes light bouncing off of Saturn about an hour and 15 minutes to reach the Earth. So far! The dot visible in the telescope was tiny, an infinitesimal dust mote - yet with H's encouragement, when I looked very closely, what I had previously thought to be just a blur was in fact the incredibly thin but incredibly precise thread of Saturn's rings. It was more exciting than I can explain without sounding like a doofus - just a tiny, barely-visible line on a tiny, barely-visible dot. Exciting? YES! When I realized that I was actually seeing the rings in perfect definition, I almost jumped out of my socks. It's real.

And then we looked at the moon, which was also crazy (it's so close!), but more about that later. I'm going to go back to H's house and look at the moon again when it is about half-full, to see the shadows.

cheep cheep

Baby blacksmith plovers, found on Kanana.

This nest was precariously balanced between two dead acacia branches, out in the open, the wind blowing on the poor unformed feathers of these two babies. It seemed like an awfully risky place to have a nest - but on the other hand, the babies are remarkably well camouflaged, aren't they?

Sticks and stones may break my...

See previous entry "water or paper?"

Last week we were holding kgotla meetings in Qabo and Grootlaagte. On Thursday night I stayed at J’s house in Grootlaagte, along with a young man from the Ghanzi Department of Wildlife and National Parks. We made supper and then talked as we sat in the dim candle light eating our goat meat, phaletshe (stiff maize meal porridge) and merogo (spinach).

The conversation turned, as it so often does, to comparisons of life in Botswana and North America. This topic is impossible to exhaust; there is always another cultural quirk that can be brought up for consideration. This evening I revealed that I had spent a year living in India, and they pounced on the opportunity to question about a new country. After a few rounds of fairly innocent questions, the guy from DWNP started looking a bit crafty. “So,” he began, already stifling a giggle behind his hand, clearly uncomfortable. “So I heard that… Over there… People, um, when they are going to the toilet, they… they don’t use T.P.” He paused, and J looked confused.

“No T.P.?” she asked.

“No T.P.,” he confirmed. He turned back to me. “I heard that they use… that they use water! And their hand!”

He burst out laughing and J joined in.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, they do. I did too, when I was living there.”

Shocked silence. Then more uproarious laughter. Spluttered bits of commentary, between guffaws: “Ahaha! Disgusting!” “But then their pants must be all wet!” “No T.P.!” “How do they eat!?” “I can’t believe it!” “WET PANTS!” “Where do they get the water?” “Everyone?”

After they had calmed down a bit, I explained how everything works; that I’d found it to be no problem at all; and that for India – a country of a billion, with extreme poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and no history of using T.P. – water actually made more sense. However, my audience was not convinced.

“But it’s not clean!”

“Well, you do splash the water a bit, and you only use your left hand… and then the left hand isn’t used for anything else, it’s considered the unclean hand, your right and is used for everything.”

J held up her left hand and turned her face from it, miming disgust. The man from DWNP burst out laughing.

“And the pants!” he said, “the pants! After you went to the toilet, you’d be – with the splashing – it would be -“ he gestured at his crotch and then started laughing so hard he couldn’t continue.

“All wet!” J filled in. “It would look like you – like you – AHAHAHAHAH!”

“Well, come on!” I reasoned, “What else can they do? There’s not enough T.P. for everyone! Even in Botswana some people can’t afford T.P. , and in India nobody is accustomed to using it. They’ve always used water. Surely you must have used something else in Botswana, in the past.”

They were silent for a moment, and then chimed in with answers.

“People in the village! You will find them even now – going out into the bush, squatting and then just rubbing their bums in the sand afterwards!”

It was my turn to be shocked. “In the sand?”

“In the sand! Just like that.” J used her hand to illustrate the motion of someone in a squatting position swinging their butt back and forth on the ground.

“Or some people will use rocks,” the DWNP man contributed.

“Or sticks!”

“But the sand, it can be a problem. Sometimes there are those sticky things – burrs – or thorns! - hiding in the sand – and then, OUCH!”

Both began to laugh again.

“What about leaves?” I asked, thinking this would have been top of the list.

“Yes,” J said, after some thought, “people also use leaves. But sometimes the leaves are not there.” She was silent for a moment, and then something occurred to her which brought upon even more uncontrollable laughter.

“What?” I asked, wondering what could be better than stones and sand.

“Well,” she said, “when I was in primary school, back in Gweta, we got those flush toilets for the first time. We - the children - had never seen them before, and suddenly the school gets these Western flush toilets. We thought they were amazing but we didn't really understand them.

"Soon, of course, they became blocked, and my friends and I got assigned to unblock them. So we had to reach in and find what was blocking, just pull out all the stuff and unblock those flush toilets. And we found that people were just treating it like the bush - we found everything in there! Sand! Soil! Stones! Sticks, twigs, grasses... Leaves! Even the old maize cobs! Pages from books, empty packets of chips, more sand... Everything you can think of! Nobody understood how these things worked and they had just been using anything to clean themselves, just like the bush... It took a long time for all of us to know how they worked, and every time they would block, just like that... full of sticks and stones!"

It was my turn to become incoherent with laughter.

After this discussion, J and the DWNP man conceded that there might be something to the water idea, after all.

"It is better than sand," the DWNP man admitted.

"Better than a maize cob!" J agreed, choking on giggles.

TRUE. Maybe this really IS my calling in Botswana.

Photos - Huiku & Kanana

Flower at Gam Xho (Huiku camp site)

Two posts in quick succession! What's going on here? Well! As I wrote at the bottom of the last entry, the internet here has been an absolute disaster, and in the past 2 weeks when it's come on, blog-updating has been a low priority. Now it seems to be back, so I'm going to start madly posting to make up for lost time.

View from the top of the rocky outcropping, Huiku camp site

Two weeks ago, we took the Huiku board members out to Gam Xho to look around and make some decisions about how we want to situate the camp site. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the area is still lush and green from the rains. Too many rains, actually - it's unusual for the rainy season to last this long, and though it's good for the animals, it's starting to drive me crazy. Despite coming from one of the rainiest places in the world, this grey weather is wearing on my nerves. I'm in Botswana! The weather shouldn't be like this! It's pouring rain as I type this, and it's been dreary and grey continuously since Saturday. Even in the height of the rainy season, that would be strange; generally the rain will pour for a few hours in the afternoon, and the sun will be out the rest of the time. This has been steady cloud and rain for almost three days straight. It doesn't bode well for winter.

Board members sitting on Gam Xho

Fossil river bed, Huiku camp site

Typical camping set-up; this is in Grootlaagte, at the Huiku office

Luckily, it was quite dry two weeks ago when the above picture was taken - though we didn't have such good luck last week, when torrential rains struck at 3:30 a.m. and soaked through the board members' tents!

The above is a fairly typical camping scene - tent in the background, heating water for a bath, stirring or morning activity. Let me go through it, item by item:
(1) The yellow container in the front is full of water; there isn't a tap on the Huiku office plot yet, so we get water from the tap outside the kgosi's office, and carry it over in a plastic jerrycan.
(2) The sheet of corrugated tin on the left acts as a windbreak. I have no idea where it came from, but it shelters the fire.
(3) Next to the metal sheet, a small 3-legged iron pot, used for cooking EVERYTHING. It just sits in the fire on its little legs. These things are very heavy and do a good job of cooking most foods.
(4) To the right of the 3-legged pot, a fire-blackened Ricoffy instant coffee tin. This tin is being used to heat water for a bath. Once heated, the water will be poured into a big plastic bathtub, topped up with cold water, and a bath will be had!
(5) Really long log. Also typical; nobody has an axe, so long logs are just fed into the fire a bit at a time. It's generally so dry in the Kalahari that this works very well - there's no need to construct heat-conserving teepees or criss-crossed towers.
(6) Man drinking tea. He is sitting on a stone, I think.

Motswiri Lodge, Kanana

The other reason for my break in blog posts is that I've been spending most of my weekends away from D'Kar. Why? Because I've been beg-borrow-and-stealing lifts up to Kanana, to spend time with my boyfriend, A. He works on Kanana, which is a game farm on the way to Grootlaagte.

I waded out into the pan to take this picture; it is a shallow, temporary natural pan, and never becomes more than 2 feet deep.

Sunset view. I'm going to miss these Kalahari colours.

That's all for now, folks!

Wedding Weekend III - River Cruise

It was a beautiful Maun afternoon. The air was warm, the breeze sweet, the sun declining in the sky. The water birds were calling to each other across the calm surface of the river and swimming between the reeds. We boarded the pontoon – Sir Rosis of the River (get it? Say it out loud..) – after a hearty round of group photos, and then pushed off into the river. The point of these boat rides is simply to float around getting drunk and having a good time; there are speakers and an ipod jack, and a cooler full of drinks. This particular boat ride was a peculiar mix of A’s family and A&L’s friends… The family members were mostly sober and extremely nervous. I think most of them had seen rivers before, but none of them had ever ventured into one, much less floated down one for hours on a boat, and they were filled with apprehension at the prospect of boarding Sir Rosis and casting off into the stream. However, they all sat down with brave faces and accepted cans of coke or juice. A&L’s friends, on the other hand, were tipsy and looking to get more so, and perfectly happy to be floating down the river on a pontoon.

We cruised down the river with music blasting from the speakers. Floating down the river in Maun is always a lovely experience; what could be better than sitting down in the sun with a bottle of beer, watching the long stretches of overgrown riverbank drift by you? The idyllic scenes of river life reel past as though they were a film screened especially for you: villagers fishing with wooden rods, families hastily bathing in the shallows, children playing with abandoned mokoros, gape-mouthed tourists speeding past in hotel motorboats. Ibises, herons, African darters, jicanas, kingfishers, fish eagles, swifts and even a marabou stork flapped overhead or perched on dead trees as we drifted by. It was the first opportunity for real conversation between the bride and the family; between glasses of champagne A&L spoke with each family member and delivered on their familial responsibilities. Later in the trip there was dancing and singing, toasts and jokes and laughter until we finally returned to shore just after dark, around 7:30.

We drove back to the wedding party in a tipsy convoy of cars. Here I again enter controversial territory by admitting that YES, there were people driving in a less-than-perfect state of sobriety. I believe that in most rural locations in the world, you will find people driving under the influence. If buses, subways, and taxis are not readily available – or if the distances involved, over rough country roads, make the price of taxis prohibitive – people will drive after drinking. In Maun, a considerable number of my friends live in places that taxis simply cannot go; especially in the rainy season, their homes require a 4WD to access. Education and police vigilance certainly make a difference, and I’m sure that due to the strict laws and frequent checks in the USA or Canada, there are probably fewer people driving drunk. However, particularly in rural areas, where checks are less common, distances greater, and alternative transport less available, people drive under the influence. It happens.

Ideally the least-drunk person is selected to drive; when I refer to driving under the influence, I’m not talking about slurring, staggering, vomiting drunkards getting behind the wheel of a car. I’m talking about the buddy who had a few beers in the course of an evening, is mildly buzzed, and drives back with a high degree of caution. It’s still not a great idea; a mild buzz will undeniably slow your reflexes, and if your friends are raucous and distracting they can add to the danger. But many people, in many places, consider this to be an acceptable risk.

Botswana is a terrible place for drunk driving. There is no part of the country that does not involve large distances over rough roads, and the police are not particularly vigilant about checking for drunk drivers. The risk of accidents is decreased because there isn’t much traffic, but vastly increased by the number of animals – wild and domestic – that are on the road. Before I came here, I was warned that driving at night was the most risky activity (well... second, perhaps, to unprotected sex…) that one could undertake in Botswana. I think that’s true; between the animals and the other drivers, it’s a truly hazardous activity. People regularly go 120 km/hr on the Trans-Kalahari at night, even though they can’t see cows on the road until they’re almost upon them, and a rogue kudu could jump out at any moment. Drunk driving is rampant. Apparently the police, in a vain attempt to crack down on drunk drivers, did some nighttime road-blocks in high-traffic areas; they found that over 50% of the drivers were drunk. Oops.

At any rate, we made it back to the wedding without mishap. The party was in full swing, and the beleaguered organizers had already had to turn away a variety of uninvited guests, ranging from completely random people to (uninvited) casual acquaintances, to the local councillor. This is another common feature of parties in Botswana; if a person is wandering down the road and hears music, they feel free to walk into the party, grab a plate of food, and ask the host where the nearest cooler-box is. The councillor in particular felt entitled to a large plate, a bottomless glass of champagne, and other hospitalities. L kicked him out without further ado.


NOTE: I am not endorsing drunk driving; the death toll is high, it’s a stupid idea, etc., etc. I try to avoid getting into vehicles with people that have been drinking to ANY degree, and I have never gotten into a vehicle with someone that was clearly out-of-control. However, it is a bald fact that people drive drunk all the time. I’ve tried to explain a few of the reasons why. Of course a major reason is simply that people are stupid, all the moreso when they've had a few drinks.

FURTHER NOTE: Sorry for the long hiatus. Our internet connection has been an absolute disaster since I last posted.

wedding weekend II

Continued from wedding weekend.

The champagne toast brought with it a certain sense of relief; it marked the beginning of the party. For myself and the other friends-cum-caterers, we'd been on a frantic high of cooking and decorating, and felt that we had just barely made it. With that first glass of champagne we moved from work to play. For L and A, they had been out late the night before and struggled through hours of tedious officialdom in the kgotla, pandering to the Botswana authorities and A’s traditional family. The first glass of champagne for them marked the moment that the wedding changed over to their style – all of the T’s dotted and I’s crossed, all of the family obligations fulfilled (at least for the day), time to relax and start the party with friends.

For a couple of hours we popped champagne corks like there was no tomorrow. The rain had stopped, the music was blasting, and J was cooking up a storm on the braai. At about 2PM, it was time for the first costume change of the day.

At this point let me say that the wedding costumes were carefully coordinated – the first outfit of the day was, for L, a bright turquoise knee-length bubble dress with a halter top that her mother had made and sent from America. L also wore a wreath of white roses, baby’s breath and leaves, which she kept on all day. L’s mother sent extra turquoise fabric, and a matching dress shirt was tailored for A. He wore it with black tuxedo pants, a vest, and a bow tie. The best man and maid of honor also matched – they wore a dress shirt and a knee-length sleeveless dress, made of a rust-red crinkly fabric, designed and sewn by a friend in Gaborone.

The second costume was spectacular. L had been dreaming of a dress made of ostrich feathers but couldn’t find a way to make it a reality until running into her friend T a fortnight before the wedding. T is an up-and-coming young designer in Gabs, and he mentioned that his father owns an ostrich farm. Serendipitous in the extreme! L immediately described what she wanted, and a week before the wedding T began sewing. He brought the finished dress to the wedding with him, praying that he wouldn’t have to do significant alterations – and when L put it on, it was perfect. The dress had a strapless white bodice and a short skirt made of many layers of black tulle. The front was a frothy fan of ostrich feathers held with a black sash. Paired with extremely high black stiletto sandals, L was breathtaking. The maid of honor kept her red dress. A and the best man wore matching brightly-colored tunics from Ghana, courtesy of a friend.

Following the costume change, we drove to River Lodge to get on the party boat – L and A, trying to provide a special activity for the out-of-town guests, had rented a pontoon for an afternoon river cruise.

Oops... I meant to write more, but at the office we're in the middle of a small crisis related to financial reporting, and I can't find the time to continue... I'm off to Qabo and Grootlaagte till Monday!

spit-braai; not-braai

Do I seem obsessed with dead animals?

Possibly.

There's a blog in itself! Unfortunately, I am up late typing up 40 hand-written pages of minutes from an exceptionally horrendous board meeting, and I do not have time to muse about food, death, and Our Animal Nature.

a few wedding photos

Like I said, I don't really feel comfortable posting photos from the wedding, but I couldn't resist sharing a few...

The traditional dancers leading everyone in.

More of the traditional dancers. It's hard for me to express in words how... joyful this was.

Just before we left for the boat cruise.

Boarding the boat.

Woo-hoo! Wedding! (This is actually from Saturday night.)

wedding weekend

So. Last weekend was WEDDING WEEKEND.

My friends L and A got married in Maun.

L is an American woman, 28, and has been living in Botswana for the past 6-7 years. A is a Motswana man, also about 28, who met L many years ago.

It was a beautiful wedding. Boldly non-traditional, while cherry-picking some of the best aspects of tradition from the various cultures involved.

I wish I could post photos but it really doesn't seem appropriate - a wedding, after all, is one of the most personal events of your life.

The wedding events - for those who were thoroughly involved, like myself - lasted from wednesday till monday. Wednesday we arrived and began cooking/cleaning/setting up - there was no hired help. Thursday was the wedding. Friday was hangover and half-hearted cleanup. Saturday was serious cleanup, and then major afterparty. Sunday was hangover and half-hearted cleanup round two. Monday was final cleanup, dreadlock day (for me), and drive home.

The wedding day:

We woke up at 6:30 in the morning so that we could get to the kgotla by 7:30 when the ceremony began. When you get officially married in Botswana, you must start the process with investigations and announcements several weeks before; then the day before the wedding, you go to the District Commissioner with your witnesses and fill out a bunch of paperwork. The day of the wedding you go to the kgotla along with whoever else is getting married that day, and the marriage officiator gives speeches, hears your vows, and seals the deal. I went along because I was supposed to be the "official" wedding photographer; it was long and boring and it started to POUR with rain. I left early to go back and help the "caterers" (i.e. a handful of friends) who were starting to panic because the ceremony would be over soon, guests would be arriving, and the food was nowhere near ready.

Back at Wedding HQ - R's house, a big beautiful ramshackle place on a big riverfront plot - there was a boiling anthill of activity. We struggled to cook food, put up decorations, and at the last minute move EVERYTHING into the covered kitchen area because the rain was torrential and unrelenting. Amazingly, it all came together just in time and everything looked beautiful when the wedding party arrived.

This was the most beautiful part. M from D'Kar and her small troupe of traditional dancers had come to the wedding to perform, and as the wedding party pulled up the drive and got out of their cars, M and her dancers - in traditional costume - greeted them, singing and clapping and dancing the guests down the drive and into the festivities while we showered them with rice. It was so beautiful to hear the throaty, birdlike singing of the San drawing L and A into the wedding, with L in her brilliant turquoise dress that her mother made and sent from the States, and A's family in their traditional Setswana clothes trailing behind, grinning. At this point I started crying, and kept tearing up intermmitently until the traditional dancers stopped.

We made it to the main patio - it had finally stopped raining - and the wedding party filed in past the trailing rainbow peace flags hanging from the trees, the vases full of peacock feathers and birds-of-paradise, the strings of balloons and colourful tablecloths and dripping trees. Once we were all assembled, the San dancers gave a proper performance, cavorting one by one with the bride and groom, singing and stamping their seed ankle rattles, bringing a piece of D'Kar and a sense of unbridled joy to the celebration.

When they had finished, A's family got up and burst into song - apparently this is part of a traditional Setswana wedding - and began dancing in a circle with the bride and groom at the head of the line. For over half an hour they sang and danced in this endless conga line, harmonizing perfectly on traditional songs, singing about cows and lobola (bride price), relatives travelling long distances, and so on.

Then there were speeches, then a champagne toast, and then the braai!

.. That's all for now, to be continued ..