When professors do come, and power point is in working condition, all of my classes have been really interesting and I feel engaged in what I am doing and learning. My professor for Economics of Botswana and Southern Africa lectured on a of linking Africa’s economic problems to the disregard for time. This was fascinating, and maybe true, but perhaps sad for the Batswana pace of life. I think a lot about my need to slow down versus their need, here, to speed up.
I read in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (a book for my African lit class) the line “you have not done what everybody is doing...and in this world, here, that is one of the crimes...” I am seeing that being different is either idolized and craved or viewed as entirely awful.
Batsi has got us in contact with Ditshwanelo: The Centre for Human Rights in Botswana and the LEGABIBO which "advocates rights for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual" people in Botswana. Since it's illegal this is an "underground" organization. I am really looking forward to this.
Emang Basadi is still a process but I am not (entirely) discouraged yet.
The amount of hot water (or any water) available and the level of bureaucratic stress and just general difficulty have not changed, but I was told if I stop using my “yardstick” I will feel better. Mostly meaning stop comparing Gabs, school, everything here to what I know. I think that is helpful, but also something I have to constantly remind myself of.
Week two of attending UB poetry society proved even more exciting and thought provoking than before. Fun fact of the day: I was asked, then proceeded to recite a poem, not one I wrote myself but one I very much like about ‘the resting place of the soul.’**** I don’t think I have been so nervous in quite sometime. But in Africa we do hard things (a pact with myself (and rachel.)) And, admittedly, I felt pretty cool. Rachel wrote a rap about “White-girl in Bots”. It started out silly but turned out (maybe by accident) to be a pretty rad commentary on gender inequality here, it was well received. We spent some time with people from poetry at a bar called The Room. It feels good to be making friends.
All woes not mended by new friends and poetry were curbed by the weekend trip to the north.
Our journey began at 4 am on Friday morning.
It was a relatively easy 5 hour trip, with the exception of the bus driver blaring a Setswana reggae-esc album for the entirety and Rachel vomiting out the window*****. The best part of African mix cd’s is that often they have the same song two or three times in a row. My theory is this, rather than press repeat for the songs you love, why not save yourself the effort and conveniently burn it multiple times in a row. So despite the fact that it was a full 80 minute album, it consisted of maybe 8 tracks.
It was very exciting to arrive in Francistown, a whole new city before us. Looking for a local, really authentic sort of endeavor (of course) it felt natural to start inquiring to anyone around what we should do. Very quickly and post asking, what felt like all employee’s of the Francistown Galo Mall (which is just Riverwalk 6 hours away) what is interesting to see or do, our options were to drink or go on a tour of the Botswana Meat Commission (the butchery (vetoed)).
A little craziness: when I asked what was the best restaurant to eat at in Francistown, a woman at the pharmacy exclaimed “Well there is a KFC next door!”- this is what I mean by seeing which elements of western culture are adopted, it is constantly shocking.
Someone finally recommended (to Adam) a cool spot called Waterfalls where we could eat, drink and play pool. A night of hanging out with the Francistownies sounded great- at the very least we would feel cool shooting pool (which is called snicker here-but maybe snicker is a different game? I am unclear).
Arriving where we thought we were supposed to be our eager hearts were disappointed by a lack of pool tables. After clarification we realized, we were not in fact in the Waterfalls, but in a pub called O’Hanagan’s, a very nice and quiet waitress told us it was just around the corner.
It was not around the corner, or any corner, subsequent to many stops for directions it was decided that this place was not real. (which was not necessarily surprising.)
But then it was spotted waterHOLES! Waterholes was an uber dive bar (not in a really charming way) and everyone was using the pool table as a dinning table. Fortunately, you can walk the whole of Francistown in about 40 minutes. We chalked it up to a Swedish-Setswana miscomm and went back to O’Hanagans-The great Africa-Irish Pub.
It looked fine enough, known for 25 international beers and 9 on tap, they had a multi paged menu with everything from bangers and mash to spinach lasagna (maybe a risky order in Southern Africa). We ordered drinks and meals alike, then our nice and quiet waitress explained there are only 3 beers, none international and none on tap. So good ol’ St.Louis (brewed in Gabs) for all.
Adam ordered first, he wanted a tramazzini - which I also wanted, it is sort of a Gyro. Our waitress, nodded said “ok but that’s the last one.” No bigs, I would pick something new. Going around the table, everything any of us wanted to order was “out” with the exception of the 1 trazzamini, chicken strips and Jalepeno Burger. “Oh but no Jalepenos.”
1 trazzamini, 1 chicken strip basket and 4 jalepeno burgers, no jalepenos.
Our burgers were good and only Adam got sick.
Though Francistown was not such a happening place, we had a delightful stay at the Town Lodge and experienced the site of Southern Africa’s first gold rush which was neat (maybe). Finding out the gold rush fact, Axel exclaimed “Ah I knew there was something special about Francistown!”
Also they had a Milky Lane the ice cream-coffee-‘donut’ shop we all like.
(sort of a DairyQueen minus the hot eats and anticipate a 12 minute wait for a spinner-the African McFlurry),
We woke up at 4:30 and trudged through the dark of Francistown to make it to our bus to Gweta. The bus ride was three hours, fairly standard, no music. I slept only to wake up to eat a snack and then again to be dropped off quite literally in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of the heat.
But alas there was a sign on a GIANT (probs 15 foot tall) aardvark (A.A.R.D.V.A.R.K.) leading us to Planet Baobab, where we would meet our guide for the Makgadikgadi.
Planet Baobab is just outside of Gweta, a very small but very happy village. Here we met our guide, had lunch, spent the morning leisurely exploring the Baobabs. A wedding party was there, so we got to watch them dance and sing the traditional songs, it all felt very festive. It is quite the lodge.
The Makgadikgadi (MA cod (like the fish) E cod E) is the largest salt pan in the world. Its surface is 12,000 square kilometers of completely barren flat land- roughly the size of Portugal. (If that is not an easy reference point for you, as it was not for me, it converts to 7500 sq miles.(!)) We camped in the Ntwetwe (IN tway tway) pan.
We learned that there are still remote parts of the pans that are yet to be discovered because it is so disorienting to travel through them. I thought that was super cool (I also thought in that moment that it was super cool that we hired a guide- as a prior to leaving a conversation most definitely occurred in which Rachel and I assured one another that “if we had a compass and a map we could FOR SURE be fine to drive ourselves.”) Our guides were Kgotla and Bayani.
In the wet time it is covered with about five inches of water and looks like a big lake, people go then to see the mass migration of animals who use it as a giant water hole.
Now it is dry time. There is no water, no vegetation, no life. I felt like I was on Tatooine.**
It is so beautiful. It is a new favorite place.
It took an hour and a half of off road driving through trees and rocks- no path-cows and goats and elephants popping out at any moment (we didn’t see any elephants, only droppings) to get to the edge of the pans. Here we got ATV’s to drive to camp through the pans. After about an hour going crazy fast in crazy dust we stopped, and hiked to meet the meerkats!
There is a huge meerkat colony south of the salt pans. At first you will only see one, he is the watcher, standing guard, then little puffs of dirt start jumping out every where and the meerkats surround you. They are very social and will carrying on digging for bugs or come inquisitively examine you. At one point I was sitting by the entrance to there hole and they were all called in by the watcher, so about thirty meerkats just started running at me. It was equally frightening and cute.* They are really funny creatures and seemingly very smart.
We drove through the pans, while the sun set to arrive at a campfire in the middle of the abyss. Endless white.
Kgotla and Bayani made us dinner, on the fire. Without a doubt the best meal in Botswana so far. Baked sweet potatoes, tomato and feta salad, beer bread and monstrous steaks. We drank beer and exchanged African and American horror stories, it of course should not have been surprising but African campfire stories are very different; a little less silly a little more horrifying (and true).
Stepping into the pans for the first time is somewhat mind blowing, I feel my descriptions are very insufficient. The salt is like and icy desert that crunches under your feet. I walked, ran, rolled through the pans never seeing any end, only having the fire as a way back to anything.
We slept in the pans out under the stars, we were there to watch sunset, the rising and setting of venus and jupiter and the sunrise. The moon was almost full, it was so bright reflecting off the white pans it was like day; so for most of the night you could only see the brightest stars.
A really neat thing is how none of the constellations are the same, I have loved that no matter how little interest you have or lack of familiarity with the cosmos, stars, space etcetera you can’t not notice that they are entirely different simply because you have grown up looking at a northern sky. It is pretty amazing, like being able to find your way home without thinking about it.
The moon set at around 4:30 am, but the sun didn’t rise until 6:00 am, so for that window of time you could see every star. I have never seen so many stars (and satellites and falling stars). It was so crazy to fall asleep and wake up periodically and be lying there in this insane vastness.
Kgotla and Bayani made sure we were awake for sunrise and already had prepared hot chocolate, coffee and muffins. We sat at the fire drinking our cozy beverages waiting for the sun.
It was a quiet and cold ride back to the lodge. It felt really nice, almost like fall, all of the leaves in the forest are very different but brown and gold, and little bits of green are coming in.
A lovely woman, named Boethele (I can’t make the sounds for this one yet) welcomed us back and took us to hot showers (!) to clean all the salt off before breakfast. The morning and early afternoon was spent eating delicious EGGS(!) (among other breakfast treats) and hamocking under the Baobabs while we waited for our 1:30 bus back to Francistown.
By the time it came to leave Planet Baobab it was in-arguably the hottest day yet, making the 1 kilometer hike to the road with all of our stuff feel jarring after the breezing afternoon beneath the Baobabs.
Determined to catch the bus (even though everything in this nation is late) we arrive 15 minutes early, waiting, again in the middle of nowhere kept company only by our giant aardvark friend. Finally, forever down the road the bus appears, it is imperative to catch this bus because it is a 3 (roughly) hour ride to F-Town and the last bus to Gabs leaves at 6. The 6 of us stand bewildered in the road (still flailing every extremity-because here you flag down the bus and you tell it when to stop) as the bus proceeds to fly by, everyone inside motioning like an umpire signaling safe to tell us it is too full.
After a very very warm hour and a half, several rides paid for in cans of coke, and only a few instances of panic and frustration, a kind gentleman from Maun offered a ride in the back of his (small) pick up all the way to Francistown.
It seemed to me the 190 kilometers (120 miles ish), squatting on our backpacks, wind blown and ridiculously sweaty, in the back of a truck, could be the only way to end the little adventure.
We made the 6 o’clock bus*** within minutes somehow managing to acquire a bag of bananas and 10 fat cakes (Batswana fry bread).
I am growing to appreciate, to embrace, the absurdities.
My heart misses home and all of you.
Love love love
Jackie
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| Africa. Time in Botswana |
more photos.
*MeerCUTE.
*Tatooine is a desert planet in a binary star system. It once had large oceans and a world-spanning jungle, but this biosphere was destroyed when the myopic Rakata razed the planet, drying up its riverbeds and boiling away its oceans. It is a fictional planet and setting for many key scenes in the Star Wars saga, appearing in every Star Wars film except The Empire Strikes Back, although it is mentioned at the end of the movie. Comparing it to standing on the moon might be an easier comparison for some (?). It looks exactly like Tatooine though.
*** The bus was infested with cockroaches HA!
****Proper credit to the author was acknowledged.
***** Maybe because of motion sickness, maybe to time spent at The Room the night prior.
I will get better about being a kook with the footnotes.
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