Jessie Goes….

Driving into Botswana from Namibia is long long and boring.  The landscape is unvaried and by and large hardscrabble desert.   I listened to an entire book on my ipod during the drive, and I’m going to have 10 of these blog entries written in my notebook before I actually get to post them, as all potential internet connections actually don’t work when called upon.   Today we arrived in Maun at a reasonable hotel which had an INTERNET CAFE!  I was so excited.  However, the cafe closed at 4pm, so of course, all safari groups would never get a chance to use it, as everyone gets in around 5 and leaves around 8!  ah well.    Boy this is Africa.  I might have to resort to posting mail too.

The one interesting thing that did happen today was the foot and mouth plague official safety stops.   The official, who wasn’t in a very good mood and didn’t like our tour leader (no surprise there), made us unpack the entire bus and go through the luggage looking for shoes.    Once all shoes were acquired, we were all required to go and walk through a little puddle of foot and mouth disease solution, which was barely there, but then we were allowed to step just where are disease ridden selves had just walked to get to the puddle.    It didn’t seem effective in the slightest!   But it made the official happy.   An exercise in bureaucratic ridiculousness – which given shoddy controls is more than likely spreading the disease as all shoes with or without the disease are trodding around these pathetic container of solution.  My flipflops looked a little queasy this afternoon as a matter of fact.  No, seriously I am worried about them.

Maun, self titled the ‘adventure capital of Botswana’ is an outpost town near the Okavango Delta.   Tomorrow we are headed out into the Delta in our mokoro canoes…. I’d like to say that if you don’t hear from me its because the hippos got me (or foot and mouth disease)… but more likely its just because I can’t text/email/call out of here.    We are going to be camping out in pitch tents for the next couple of nights, which will hopefully be a good time ‘away from it all.’  And I’m also hoping that varied stories of wildlife joining in by the campfire are greatly exaggerated.

I am in the Middle Eastern part of Namibia, in a one horse town where the horse is long dead.   My hopes for internet dashed immediately, and I still have items to attend to in the personal life.    Lesson learned… get all your crap done before you leave for Africa.     My worldphone (that hot phone sold in the US by CDMA providers) which allows “world” access, doesn’t work at all – neither their sim card or any other international card provided.  GRRRRRR.  Not terrible except for every other non-american phone is working just fine.   We have the worst phone service in the world, I’ll conclude, again.

Anyhow, my impressions thus far are mixed, our guide, a native South African, I’d say about 60 years old, has rubbed the entire group the wrong way, and you now how much a good guide can make or break a trip.    Fortunately, the highlights of Africa should still conquer this.

We are headed generally towards the Kalahari Desert and are staying the night in Gogobis (that dead horse town I mentioned).  The town itself offers nothing, minus a slightly menacing feel, but just outside the town we visit a large ranch, to meet some Kalahari Bushman (San Tribe).

The government at one point used to subsidize the Bushman, similar to Native American lands in the US, but that is now no longer the case.    The San bushman have lived in these environs for about 10,000 years, but are now in the situation where they make deals with large ranches so they can continue their traditional ways undisturbed as much as possible from the outside world as  since 2006 the government refused to allow the Bushmen to hunt (it is considered illegal game killing in Namibia).  The Namibian government is now under global critism for this and other actions which has threatened their existance.

Anyhow, I’m not exactly sure how these agreements work with these large landowners and the Bushmen, but I suspect the deal is “if you let us live here and do our own thing we will talk to tourists every so often and you charge them”…   aside from these tourists visits they are trying their best to maintain their old ways, which are hunter/gatherer in nature.  They live in simple made huts for the coldest nights only, and keep a fire always burning.

Generally they hunt with bows and arrows for native game, with exception of the ostriches, who can see the hunters coming from a mile (literally) away. Since the osterich is a primary staple to the Bushmen (they use the hide for clothing, bones for arrows, feathers for bedding and eat the meat), they have devised this great hunting method.     Ostriches, first of all, can’t digest for themselves and must eat stones and bones to do so.  The Bushmen create a neck noose held down from a bent tree which is baited with a really ‘desirable’ piece of rock.  I kid you not.  It is apparently near to 100% irresistible to them  and once noosed around the neck it tends to really freak out and choke itself to death.  Occasionally it pulls its head off.

Some other cool facts:  They speak in a clicking language varietal which is specific to the Kalahari Bushmen only.  They cannot communicate effectively with other bushmen tribes which could clearly be one of the issues with their currently plight, along with the fact most speak no English, nor join modern society to represent themselves.

Laurens van der Post wrote a famous book The Lost World of the Kalahari, which is a good account of their plight.

I woke up at 2am yesterday morning Capetown time…which will be 1am Windhoek time. Jetttt Laggggg.

So for my first night in South Africa, I was chilling out in my room, my overhead reading light (a disk light on the wall, what you might normally find on a ceiling) is on and I’m reading, watching soccer, doing my thing when I just happen to look back at the wall behind my bed, to discover that in the past hour, not one, not two, but I would estimate something on the order of 10k ants have swarmed the light. It looked like 2 or three anthills of tiny ants swarming over the thing. It was crazy. So I went to the front desk and asked for some bug spray which they promptly gave me, and I sprayed those ants with gusto. They basically blew up or melted on impact sending thousands of ants, in clumps all over the floor, the bed, the night stand. I then went on to spray the walls and windows. I have surely shorted my life by several years.

I left every light in the room on and went to take a shower and when I got back…NO ants.
At 2am, still no ants. I have killed an entire colony of ants.

The flight to Windhoek was super easy, and waiting for the shuttle for 20minutes (africa time), took about an hour and a half where a native women, super tan and reminding me of the Namibian version of Crocodile Dundee, kept me entertained with her stories of growing up in Namibia, her ideas on what would help fix africa, and of course, her opinions of US politics. Finally a few more joined us on the shuttle and we were off.

The landscape around Windhoek is super dry and arid, not quite desert, but not plains either. Its a beautiful sunny day with zero humidity. The mountains are craggy and dusty surrounding us on all sides. Namibia itself has only been a independant nation since 1990 or so, having been both a British Protectorate and a South Africa annex during various parts of the last 100 years. It has high rates of aids, and unfortuately a very wide gap between the poor and the rich. Today however, it’s not noticable, as the city looks very well off indeed.

Later yesterday evening I met with the safari group I will be with for the next week, and we all went to Joe’s Beerhouse, which was very african style upscale bar restaurant. Under the warmth of heatlamps and outdoor fires we ate meat. and more meat. My springbok was super good, and the rest of the gang partook in everything from zebra to crocodile, oryx, and some other ‘bok’ type animals. I think I’ve now eaten enough meat for the next month. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the menu is going to change all that much for the rest of the trip.