December 2007

Sunday, December 9, 2007 – squinting through bug guts looking for cows
Dear friends/family,
Well I’ve finally made it back to Maun but not without a little travel trauma, of course (didn’t I get stuck in an airport for 12 hours last time?). There I was Thursday morning innocently packing, debating a couple of B+ grades in stats that were teetering on A-, preparing to write my post-sabbatical project report (due the week before) when I get a call from the airlines saying my 2:30 PM flight to DC has been canceled but they booked me on a 10:30 AM one. Not a problem except… it’s 9:30 AM and impossible for me to be to the airport on time! Yikes!

The world spins into a frenzy… I’m hands free on the cell phone, shoving things in a suitcase, trapped in endless voice automated “assistances” (right!) trying to find another way north to catch my 5 PM departure to Johannesburg. Apparently, the “voice recognition system” doesn’t recognize a crazed mad woman on the other end because it (finally) boots me to a human who I am rude to (unreasonably rude…I apologize in the end) who ultimately re-books me with a different airline through another city only to first get disconnected (no I am not kidding) and second tell me that she cannot re-book me because her airline doesn’t “own” my ticket (I really don’t care who owns it…just FIX it!). So I skid into the a short term parking lot at the airport with 35 minutes until take off, throw a $20 bill in my glove compartment to (hopefully) cover the fee until me saintly landlords can come and retrieve my car later and I am on my way! Phew! That was close. Anyone out there ever end up leaving several hours BEFORE their scheduled flight?? This is a first for me.

So I fly from GSP to Charlotte to DC with plenty of time to spare but still wondering what I might have overlooked in the frantic packing frenzy. I guess I’ll just live without it.

There are many words you never want to hear a pilot say some of which include, “this is the second longest flight in the world.” Sixteen hours later, 3 movies, half an ambien, a few hours of cramped sleep, way too many screaming kids to count and I am finally there…Johannesburg. Paul is waiting in the masses of people and he whisks me off to the hotel where I promptly collapse.

We spend the night in Joburg before heading out for the 14 hour drive to Maun. Quick stop in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, where Paul picks up a car full of equipment for the internet company he’s started up and we’re on the road again. Unfortunately, I’m too buggered to drive so poor Paul has to do it himself (I simply couldn’t be trusted on the wrong side of the road, with a 4x4 full of computer equipment, and animals to dodge…too much responsibility, not enough sleep).

I did, however, do my copilot job of squinting through the squashed bug guts trying to spot cows to avoid hitting them once it got dark. This sounds like a simple task but don’t be fooled. I have never, in all my life, seen so many bugs smashed on a windshield as I did last night. Seriously, if you took every bug I had ever seen squashed on a windshield and multiplied by 1000, it still wouldn’t have equaled the carnage we saw last night. So I squinted through one marginally clear opening looking for cows (and donkeys) that might decide to walk across the pitch dark road. Donkey to your left. Cows crossing ahead. I felt like we were navigating a nuclear submarine around explosive (yet cheeky) whales. And you wouldn’t think it would matter if it was a donkey or a cow but it does. Donkeys typically stand still while cows (especially young ones) potentially jump out into on coming traffic…don’t know why…maybe it’s a death wish.

Fortunately, we made it. It took me 45 minutes to scrape the bugs off the front of the vehicle this morning while Paul packed the other vehicle for our trip to the Kalahari for the next couple of days. I’m really looking forward to getting back out into the bush. I’ll write more when I get back.
Kristy

Friday, December 14, 2007 – Kristy the cat woman
We’ve just returned from our three day camping trip in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR is about the size of Ireland!). This is Paul’s favorite area of Botswana, where he has spent many years of his life, a place that feels like home to him. In some ways it is not at all what I imagined it to be. When one thinks of the Kalahari you envision miles and miles of endless sand and what we actually encountered is a series of pans (flat areas with a small rise encircling it) filled with scrub brush and bright green new grass from the recent rains.

Our first camp site is unbelievably beautiful and peaceful. Situated on the edge of Tau Pan (meaning “lion’s pan”) we can see clear across it observing grazing herds of all types of animals: gemsbok (massive antelope like creatures with amazing black and white face markings and long 3-4 foot straight horns), springbok, wildebeest, and giraffes. On our early morning and later afternoon game drives we encounter curious jackals that have the sweetest slanty little eyes and the light footed trots of a long distance runner. They run a bit away from us then stop to turn around and give us a closer look. One of them stays with our vehicle for quite some time, running ahead a bit, then stopping in the middle of the road head cocked like a household dog as if to ask for a treat. At night they make the strangest haunting howl/cry that sounds like nothing I’ve heard before and would be very eerie and creepy if I hadn’t seen how cute they are in the daylight…the famous “cry of the Kalahari.” On our third night, one is even so cheeky as to walk right through camp (within 3 feet of us)! It was a little frightening to see movement out of the corner of my eye coming up from behind the tent in the pitch black but he just trotted right through not missing a step, glancing over at us as he went by.

On our second morning there, while squatting under an acacia tree (OK, how much detail do you really need?) I look across the way and think “hey, that kind of looks like a cheetah.” Trying to focus as much as I could (no binoculars, just toilet paper and matches) I think “no, no, must be a stump.” I continue to squat and watch “it” until it lies down and at which point I promptly pull myself together and quietly make my way back to the tent whispering “Paul, cheetah” which of course he doesn’t hear. Now that’s a first…I’ve never seen a cheetah 100 yards away while doing my morning business.

Paul has come to call me “Kristy the cat woman” as this was not my only big cat spotting on the trip. Still suffering a bit from jet lag I dozed off a little on our drive between the two camp sites we stayed at. Upon waking I immediately look off to an “island” of acacia trees about 500 yards away and say, “hey, are those lions?” Sure enough we drive over to get a closer look and there are six lions trying to escape the bloody hot Kalahari heat. The two adolescent cubs take one look at us and decide to “gap it” (run away in the other direction). Their poor overheated parents lethargically look at us, look at the cubs, look back at us and only after some consternation does the mom decide she better go and see where they ran off to (damn kids!). The other three yawn a bit and rest their heads back down exhausted from the heat.

The other animal highlight of the trip was seeing a meerkat colony. Paul knew of a place where, if you parked the vehicle and walked a ways out from the road and just waited, the cute little critters would start popping up their heads. Once they realized we were not a threat, they just resumed going about their normal activities: sentinel up watching, pups out playing, others digging out new holes. It was our own “Meerkat Manor” (just like on the Discovery Channel). Very cool!

Camping in the Kalahari is not for the uninitiated. To call it “remote” is an understatement. In three days we only saw two other vehicles. It is one of the few areas in the world where you can be sure you’re the only human being for a hundred miles in any direction. You must pack in all your necessary supplies including water and fuel. One afternoon it got up around 40 degrees Celsius (well over 100 degrees). One night the wind picks up so strong from an oncoming storm that I lie awake fearing we’ll be blown away and no one will know! Thunder booming, tent stakes holding on for dear life, side of the tent compressing up against my body and Paul snoring away like a baby! At night, with our one light on to see for cooking we attract a world of beetles and flying bugs. At dusk you can hear this low buzz off in the distance of millions and millions of bugs just humming away seemingly threatening to swarm at any minute. Despite my best attempts to acclimate, I occasionally let out a little squeal as rather large flying objects fly into me…aahh! While the camp sites we stayed at had a bucket shower and pit latrine, the latter was so infested with spiders that to squat under a tree was a better option. But it is beautiful, pristine, silent, untouched by many humans…the real Africa. It is worth the effort!

We return to Maun on Thursday to make an afternoon appointment for me with the regional AIDS coordinator (lest you think I am doing no work here at all!). While he is not there, despite the fact that Paul has set this meeting up weeks ago (welcome to Africa), we speak to the office staff about the possibility of assisting them in their efforts to combat the spread of this deadly disease. While appearing to me to be somewhat unenthusiastic, Paul’s read is that they are keen on having us help them with data collection, management and analysis. I find it so hard to read the differing cultural cues here but Paul felt it went very well and we were asked to come back on Monday to meet the director to discuss a possible pilot project for this summer. I was given a bunch of literature that is quite interesting regarding their efforts to encourage behavior change to reduce the spread of AIDS. I’ve spent most of Friday reading through the materials in preparation for Monday’s meeting. One interesting finding from a 2004 survey, for example, found that 28% of the population believed that witchcraft was a factor in HIV/AIDS. Fascinating!

More later,
Kristy

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 – my days in Maun
My days in Maun this visit are filled with reading, updating lectures and preparing for the Medicine class in the winter term. It is the rainy season here which means the glorious Botswana blue sky that I came to know and love this past summer is often riddled with white fluffy clouds and sometimes ominous looking storm clouds. We have had several “African rains” which means an unbelievable down pour which turns our sandy plot outside the house into “water front” property.

Since we now have internet at home, sometimes I stay there to work in the company of the ostriches, other days I come into the office to partake in the chaos that is Paul’s office block (e.g. someone at the desk next to me just shouted, “I don’t give a damn about F&*%ing dragon flies!!” – hate when conservationists get pissed off!). At home the bird population has shifted a bit. Not as many hornbills this time of year. My new favorites are the tiny little blue wax bills (slightly larger than my thumb with a bright blue underbelly). A small group of ostriches visit daily (about five of them) hoping for seed. One is very loyal and we’ve come to call her “Olivia”. Recently she seems to have hurt her right wing as it hangs down sadly as she walks. She still puts up a good fight, however, if the others hone in on her eats…opening her mouth and giving the others a blast of ostrich breathe (must be bad because they back away) and a good kick with her backwards bending leg (like a karate chop – “HUH! Step away from the bird seed”).

Much of Paul’s business life currently consists of trying to get his month old internet company up and functioning. Now, I would guess that most of you wouldn’t imagine that starting up an internet company requires climbing up 90 foot satellite towers to change out antennas and cards, etc. It is terrifying (for me to watch anyway!). Last night he was up there for about an hour swaying back and forth in the wind after hours so as not to disrupt anyone’s internet access. I could barely watch. My hands sweating, stomach feeling nauseous, wondering what the heck I would do if he fell in a town with no 911 service or a fire department with a truck ladder to retrieve his body from the tower! I’ve come to refer to it as “the tower of terror” and have insisted on some sort of safety rope so that he wouldn’t splatter on the ground if he fell (he has recently acquired a harness to “hook” himself in at the top while he works but it’s a free ascend and descend as he makes his way up and down like King Kong). Am I tough enough to live in this country?

Friday night we went to Audi Camp (the lodge/campground/restaurant that Paul used to co-own/run) to see a show. The current owner (a former dancer) and a local author had collaborated with “street kids” (teenagers who are not in school or employed) to put on a dance event. It took the story line of the author’s new book (“Patterns in the Sky” in which a young boy who wants to be an artist is forced to go into the wild and hunt to prove his manhood to his father) and choreographed dances to it. It was quite well done with creative costuming and local music. The event was followed by a buffet (all for a whopping 100 Pula…about $16).

Well, I’d better send this off. Paul has returned safely back from another trip up the tower of terror. I did get a bit of a fright when I heard a BANG while he was up there (I really can’t watch, I had to stay in the office). Fortunately it was just one of the safari guides from another office yelling at his wife (and co-worker) and slamming the door. Never a dull moment in Maun!


Friday, December 21, 2007 – nothing is easy here
Living in Africa surely makes you appreciate how “easy” everything is in the States. Here, every day something isn’t working and even the simplest tasks take on a whole new level of complexity. While I had achieved some comfort level over the summer with driving on the wrong side of the road and managing sand, I now have mud to contend with which is a whole new challenge! The trick now is picking between divergent spore (tracks in the sand paths) hoping the mud puddle up ahead (that you can’t see yet) is not as deep on the path you’ve chosen. Once upon it a quick assessment as to whether “through it” or “around it” is the wiser choice (sometimes around it is worse as you sink in the soft mud on the edges). All the while mud is splashing, the vehicle is gosling left and right, bucking through ruts and avoiding stumps (so as not to pop tires) and branches as you go.

The internet business continues to cause stress for Paul and his co-workers. It seems that the large amount of “static electricity” in the air from the weather is wreaking havoc on the system. Apparently Maun is one of the lightening capitals of the world, so the people Paul is coordinating with in Gabarone (the capital of Botswana) have not seen this type of problem before. One of their co-investors flew up yesterday to see if he could fix it. In true African fashion, however, his flight was canceled, then rescheduled, then delayed so he arrived several hours later than expected. When he got here, the new power source he thought had been loaded on the plane, hadn’t been, and to complicate things even more, when they went to go back up the tower at sunlight this morning at 5:30 AM (to work all morning before he departed at noon) it was “pissing down rain” so not much could be accomplished. He did manage to place, just before the sun set last night, a frayed copper wire at the top of the pole that kind of looked like an oversized chia head having a really bad hair day to “distract” the lightening. Their next task is to “earth” (read “ground”) the tower which is problematic as well since sand is impossible to “earth” in (they’ve developed some plan to dig trenches, bury things, wrap the bottom of the tower in matting…I don’t really know).

Today was even more challenging. Paul had to borrow a truck (“bakkie”) to borrow a ladder to remove a system (which he installed only 3 weeks ago but the people have decided to move to Australia…didn’t they know that 3 weeks ago??). When we picked up the bakkie it had a flat tire. We pumped it up. Loaded it up with poles, ladder, equipment, etc. Headed to the site for the next installation only to run out of gas (this vehicle is a real piece of work…among other things, it doesn’t have a functioning gas gauge or passenger side door handle for that matter). Once we found a jerry can, made our way back to the petrol station, refueled the vehicle with I siphon we were on our way again only to accidentally hit a branch with the poles to mount the satellite receiver and they promptly snapped in half! OK, I give up! How many things can go wrong in a day? We finally make it to the house for the installation. Get greeted by the requisite pack of dogs (most Maun residents own at least 4+ dogs), the workers climb up on the roof and after several hours of trying to pick up the signal realize the repairs Paul made to the antenna this morning at the office block may have slightly sent the signal in a different direction making it impossible to receive the signal from this location. So it’s close to 6 PM and he’s back up the tower of terror at the office block and I’m ready to collapse.

My attempt to make contacts with HIV/AIDS coordinators is comparably frustrating. After a failed attempt at the director with the meeting last week, we showed up Monday, when he was supposed to be in the office, but he wasn’t there. We got a phone number and called to schedule a meeting the next day, which he was late for and then politely asked us to come back later in the afternoon because he had missed a deadline in submitting his final yearly report and couldn’t talk to us then. When we did meet him, he have a very different story about the nature of data collection and analysis (his staff at the office last week said they needed lots of help with data collection, analysis, etc while he indicated that his office doesn’t do any of that but it comes from someone else??). Obviously someone is confused here. We have another appointment scheduled this afternoon with a different individual. We’ll see how that goes.

Monday, December 24, 2007 – happy festive season
Just a quick note to wish you all a happy “festive season” (that’s what they call the holiday season here…remember “holiday” means “vacation” so that wouldn’t work). It is a refreshingly non-commercialized Christmas here. No malls, no inundations of ads of the latest toys/products to buy, no rushing around to wrap a ton of gifts or mail out cards, and most employees get 2 ½ weeks of paid holiday leave for the festive season (pretty nice, huh?).

We’ve decided to forgo any big Christmas gift exchange between us and are giving what we might have spent on gifts for each other to the Zimbabwean refugees that live on the ostrich farm with us. We have purchases some small gifts for the 3 children of Joe’s who have come to visit him from Zimbabwe for the holiday (we didn’t even know he had kids!) and plan to give them cash for food, etc.

The “roll” of wrapping paper I purchased to wrap the gifts is a blatant reminder of the differences in our Christmases. It is the size of scrap paper most of us would simple discard as leftover paper. Being here at Christmas is a stark remind of how much we really have (and how little we really need).
Hope you all find some peace in the hustle and bustle.
Kristy

PS: I’ve written a modified Christmas song to suite Botswana (try singing it to jingle bells, I think I might have a hit here!)…
“trudging through the mud, in a 4x4 vehicle, on the spore we go, sliding all the way… bells on donkeys ring, making my nerves fray, what fun it is to buck and sway and in a muddy mess today – oh, donkeys here, stray dogs there, goats are in the way…”

Friday, December 28, 2007 – ex-pats, crime watch and dump(ed) kids
I hope you are having an enjoyable “festive season” (I actually think it is still going on up through New Year’s until about January 7…so keep enjoying!). We had a nice dinner with about 20 other ex-pats on Christmas eve and then spent a quiet Christmas day at home working on some projects around the house (Paul build a structure to fit in the back of the 4x4 that allows us to lay out the bedroll and sleep on top of it and store all of our camping equipment (tent, food, fridge, etc.) underneath it. It has been a rather wet rainy season here and we wanted to be self contained if we go out and get caught in a down pour (much of Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique are flooded limiting any travel plans we might have had to the north and east of us). We also built a nice outdoor shower...does one ever get used to showering and having ostriches parade by?

Christmas Eve dinner was quite an interesting experience. As I mentioned before, the ex-pat community is a fascinating group of people (all risk takers in some way). We included several Germans, a couple of Batswana, an Irish man, a couple of South Africans and of course me as the only real American (Paul is American by passport only in my opinion). The festivities began at about 1 PM and we didn’t eat until 7:30 PM (I should have had lunch before we arrived. I was so hungry even the chicken liver pate looked appetizing!). The meal, when it finally arrived, was delicious (turkey, gammon (which is ham), German potato salad, grilled vegetables, and tomato and feta salad). The only thing that was missing was stuffing and pumpkin pie (and my friends and family, of course).

Many conversations these days have turned to the rash of burglaries at homes and businesses in Maun. In the last week alone we have spoken to a liquor store owner, restaurant owner and several home owners who have been broken into. The consensus seems to be that the police are inept allowing the crooks to go on stealing with little recourse. We have installed a heat sensing voice activated system at the house which announces any type of “activity” at the front door or bedroom window, etc. So far we’ve tracked the late night activities of a pole cat, but nothing else.

The ex-pats have set up their own citizen crime watch group. Some have purchased short wave radio/walkie talkie type things that they report any suspicious activity on and other ex-pats come running (I believe they pay some sort of fee to be part of this). With police ineptitude at the level it is here, I guess it makes sense to pull together and protect oneself but it sadly invokes a feeling of “us against them” that just feels colonial or racist in some way.

Given weather constraints and work demands we decided to forgo our short camping trip north over Christmas for a longer trip south on the way back to Joburg to drop me at the airport. One of the projects we worked on over the last couple of days was cleaning out a storage container (literally the trailer of an 18 wheeler) at Paul’s office block to shift some things around and make some more room in his physical office. While not a particularly interesting job, the trip to the dump was eye opening.

After loading the pull behind camping trailer with discarded items (it was an historical journey through technological development with old versions of software dating back to the 1980s in there!), we headed to the dump. As we approached the site you could smell the burning trash. Unlike American dumps which tend to be massive heaps of garbage, without appropriate equipment to make a heap, Maun’s dump is a sprawling field of discarded items (about the size of 10 football fields). The first sign of life we see in the distance are giant storks picking through the rubble (the probably stand 4 feet tall!). Next comes the dogs… TWD or Third World Dogs as we call them, they all look quite similar…short haired, thin, with hungry eyes. Then I see them…the dozen or so kids that will soon descend on our trailer, climbing in to get first dibs on what ever is inside. They swarm like flies. They are filthy, most of them shoeless. They range in age from approximately 8 to 18. Most appear to be boys but with short hair cuts and pre-pubescent bodies it is hard to tell for sure. They dive in throwing trash here and there, occasionally snatching something that looks like it could be interesting (a colorful CD, which is part of a software package, but there is no way for them to know this). The first item snatched is a broken office chair. Others grab old plastic floppy disc containers. I can’t quite imagine what they will do with them. Although we are only there for a brief amount of time, there is clearly a pecking order here. The oldest kid arrives last, no need to hurry when you can simply take things from the younger ones. Paul asks the littlest one in Setswana if it is hard living here to which he replies, yes, sometimes it is rough. He openly stares at me. I can only imagine what he is thinking as he stares…white, pink, clean, privileged…

The memory of these kids haunts me a bit. Who are they? AIDS orphans? Do they live at the dump or are they just there to see what they might get? When is the last time they’ve eaten? Do they go to school? How many of them are HIV positive? What are their life chances? Can anything be done to help them?

Sometimes the inequities in the world are so stark and obvious it keeps you up at night.
Kristy

Saturday, December 29, 2007 – Kalahari dreaming
Well today is my last day in Maun for this trip. We delayed leaving until tomorrow and have spent the day shopping, packing and visiting people. The plan as it currently stands (things keep changing, perhaps there’s a lesson in here for me about letting go of the details and just going with it…I’m trying my best to embrace the African way) is to head south to the Transfrontier Park between Botswana and South Africa. We’ll spend several days camping and ultimately we’ll drive to Joburg to put me on the plane in a week (my flight leaves Saturday, January 5). The weather forecast looks clear so we’re hoping to avoid the rain and deep mud.

Just now the ostrich chicks have made their way up to our house and I can only imagine how big they will be the next time I visit. Currently they are chicken sized creatures with speckled feathers and slightly longer necks than an average bird (they look more like chickens than ostriches!) Sadly, I did not catch a glimpse of the monitor lizard reported to live under the storage container in the yard. I’ve seen the pattern of his tail in the sand but never seen him (rats!).

Fearing that my last email may have depressed you a bit, I’ve included a few pictures from our earlier trip to the Kalahari. Africa is stunning in both its poverty and its beauty. Hope you enjoy the attached.

I’m not sure when/if I’ll have internet access again so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me. I’ll be off camping somewhere. If I don’t contact you before then, I’ll let you know of my safe arrival back on American soil around January 6.
Cheers,
Kristy

PS: We’re hoping for a final attempt at a star show tonight using Paul’s new telescope. We’ve only had it out one other time due to the over cast skies but so far it is looking clear tonight so we are hopeful. If it stays clear we have a bunch of eager star gazers just a phone call away hoping to stop by. It would be a nice way to end my visit if the weather holds out.