Adventures in Africa
Sunset in the Kalahari
Greetings from Jack’s Camp, a lodge in the Kalahari Desert near Maun, Botswana!
For my wife, India, going on safari is like crack cocaine. She literally can not get enough of it. When she is not on safari she is scheming and thinking of ways to go on safari. As far as I know, she has never pawned our TV or jewelry to get money for safari, but it is not inconceivable. Her only comment is “Live your passion!”
Roar!
Our post-Nashville summer holidays have been the safari equivalent of a binge. We were in Cape Town for less than 36 hours, then packed everything to go up to Tswalu, in the Northern Cape. Our days at Tswalu with my sister and her family were magnificent. It had rained a lot, much more than normal, and the desert was coming to life with flowers and insects. Our campout under the stars was invaded by about a billion kamikaze bugs of all varieties, which freaked out all kids and some adults, but was a minor inconvenience. In 2011 I am trying actively to not take for granted the amazing confluence of hard work and good fortune that make anything possible. When I think of it this way, a dinner and campout in the middle of the Kalahari seems nearly miraculous.
After saying goodbye to Su & Dave and kids at the Johannesburg Airport on Friday afternoon, we greeted India’s parents, who arrived from Nashville about an hour later. The next morning, our Air Botswana flight to Maun was cancelled, so we spent another day hanging out in the airport. Zola and I watched an endless series of Barclays Premier League soccer matches on the television at an airport bar, which was fun for both of us.
By the time we reached Maun, it was too late on Saturday evening for a pilot to fly us to Jack’s Camp, which is another hour into the desert. The last time India and I were in Maun (with her parents, coincidentally) was in 1992. What was then a dusty tiny village has grown up into a dusty small city. Boom times in Botswana. Air Botswana put us up in a motel near the river, which we agreed was almost exactly like the motel in Churchill, Manitoba that we stayed in when we went to see polar bears in October 2008. Maun was considerably warmer.
We finally got to Jack’s Camp about 24 hours later than expected. As the lodge manager strode down the path to meet us, I practically heard India’s heart do a back flip. Oliver is a tall, handsome young American, with Johnny Depp hair and a great tan, managing a tented safari camp in the Kalahari. If India has a Platonic ideal of masculinity, Oliver gets pretty close to it. He even went to Vanderbilt, so her parents immediately liked him.
Our guide was named Dabe (pronounced DAH-bay), he was a mix of Herero tribesman and San Bushman. His ancestors have hunted and gathered near the site of Jack’s Camp for the last 35,000 years. Until he was 15 years old, and was sent off to boarding school, Dabe and his family lived as nomads, roaming a huge part of Central Botswana. Dabe’s knowledge of the desert was like nothing I have ever seen. Whenever we stopped, he mimicked bird calls so expertly that birds flew right up and into the open game vehicle. Dabe told us that his six-year-old son recently made his own bow and arrow, shot a bird, and roasted it over an open fire that he had built himself.
With Dabe, we drove out to look for animals. This part of Botswana is famous for its zebra migration, and at one point we were surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands, of zebras as they walked the 400 kilometers from the Makgadikgadi Pan to the Okavango Delta. Zebras as far as the eye could see. In the late afternoon, Dabe took us to the edge of the salt pan, which is the size of Switzerland, where he had laid out a full bar and a camp fire. He placed a map on the desert floor and gave us a lesson on the geology and history of the long-dried inland lake. The sunset over the desert was indescribably beautiful.
Early this morning, Dabe took us to look at a colony of meerkats that lives near the lodge. At Tswalu, we had also gone to observe a colony of meerkats as they woke up and set off to hunt. These little animals stand tall on their back legs, and have mannerisms remarkably like little furry humans.
Unlike at Tswalu, where the scientists studying the colony kept us about 15 discreet feet from the colony, Dabe insisted that we sit in and among the meerkats. His only warning was, “If they run up you, stay calm.”
Meerkats always climb the highest nearby object to scout for their prey (eg, mice and scorpions) and to watch out for their predators (eg, big birds and snakes). Suddenly, Zola was the highest accessible observation point, and he had the alpha female meerkat, heavily pregnant, standing on top of his head to scout the surrounding terrain. He stayed calm, and other meerkats occupied his shoulders. Tallulah had two baby meerkats wrestling in her lap.
After about 20 minutes, the alpha female gave a signal (their chirp sounds a little like a bird call, Dabe could imitate it perfectly), and all 20 members of the colony dropped down onto all fours and took off running in a northeasterly direction. We could see their tails sticking up for about a hundred meters as they scampered off for the day’s hunt.
Dabe drove us to see the biggest tree in Botswana, a 5,000-year-old baobab standing alone in the desert. He told us it would take 17 people holding hands to encircle the trunk. Like big meerkats, we climbed as high as we could, and looked out to the horizon. Finally, Dabe took us to visit a homestead of about 20 people and 400 cattle. The homestead family sells about 100 cattle a year for export into the European Union, supplementing their income of cash crops and illegal beer sales. Even very far from the cities, Botswana is prosperous and organized.
The homestead had one cell phone, which was hung from a tree branch about 10 feet off the ground. The altitude was necessary to get reception from the nearest cell-phone tower, about 40 kilometers away. A hands-free kit dangled down, and the family patriarch demonstrated how he talks on the phone: he stands on his tiptoes and puts the earpiece in his ear. I asked him, “Who calls you, way out here.” He said, “I call every day from my house in Gaborone to make sure the family is OK. I am a soldier in the Botswana Defence Force, stationed in the city (about 600 miles away), and only get out here about once a month.” Wild.
The comic highlight of our time at Jack’s was when they served afternoon tea. One of the rangers put down a big bowl of crunchy, salty snacks that looked like mis-shapen pretzels. They were boiled and sun-dried mopani worms, little tree caterpillars that are considered a bush delicacy. About half of the guests, including a family of young Australian girls, tried the worms. They did not taste like chicken, but were not terrible if you didn’t think too much about what they are.
Zola is by far the pickiest eater in our family, but he eventually succumbed to peer pressure, and put a worm in his mouth. Poor guy crunched down twice, made a horrible face, and barfed all over the table. He is old enough now that the physical discomfort was greatly outweighed by the social embarrassment of throwing up in front of a bunch of cute girls. I felt terrible for helping to pressure him into eating the worm (particularly after just having re-read “Lord of the Flies”), but was proud of him for trying something new. I think he will stick to chicken nuggets. Dabe and the other guides just reached into the bowl and ate the worms by the handful.
So, India is blissful in her safari experience. She and the kids and her parents are going off to the Okavango Delta for the rest of the week to look for lions. I am going back to Johannesburg to work. An action-packed day in Africa.