Festive Greetings!

Festive Greetings 2009 from Botswana!
First, my apologies for not getting out proper Christmas cards before I left the country. While I usually try to “do it all” something had to give between grading, packing, and planning for the spring Africa Study Away program. It is one thing to pack for a couple of weeks vacation and quite another to pack for a 3 ½ month hiatus which involves coordinated travel for 20 students for two of those months. In any case, I hope this holiday greeting finds you happy and healthy!

2009 was a travel fill year as Paul and I rang in the New Year on a three week overland trip to Tanzania. We drove from Botswana through Zambia where the pot holes were the size of kiddy pools up to Tanzania where busses drove at death defying speeds. We visited some of the best known sights of East Africa including Mount Kilimanjaro, Serengeti National Park, Ngorogoro Crater and the island of Zanzibar. The trip was culturally rich, especially when we stayed with a Masi warrior and his family, and amazingly beautiful as we ate dinner with our toes in the sand on the beaches of Zanzibar. Our drive back traversed through Malawi which was lovely and undeveloped and is definitely on our list of places to go back to and explore further. This is especially true given that a bout of malaria while driving through meant I don’t remember much of it!

In late January I joined my study away group of twenty students in Namibia for ten weeks of travel around Southern Africa. As the Director of the program, I was with them the whole time while the other three faculty members involved from the departments History, English and Religion rotated in for two weeks at a time. My course on Global Health Inequalities examined HIV/AIDS, Malaria and TB as well as the many organizations in Namibia, South Africa and Botswana focused on trying to deal with these health issues.

Returning in April, I finished off the term, did four presentations (someone remind me not to do THAT again!) and prepared for a cross-country trip with Paul, his son Nikolaj and daughter-in-law Trine out to Colorado to see his sister Connie. We rented an RV and visited some very cool places in the south western region of the US including: Santa Fe, Taos, 4-corners, Mesa Verde, Carlsbad Caverns, Monument Valley, etc. We also rented Harley’s for a couple of days and cruised through the Rockies stopping for a brief snowball fight…in May. Paul is convinced he wants to buy an RV and trailer for the motorcycle and head west!

The summer brought me back to Botswana for two and a half months and, for the first time, I finally felt like I was actually “living” here, instead of just visiting. Paul offered many star shows in Nxai Pan, where we bring his 10” telescope out to one of the very flat areas of Botswana for the most stunning views of the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. We also did a trans-Kalahari safari with a group of Spaniards that culminated with a lion in camp. Very scary but very cool!

By mid-August I was back to the states for the Fall semester. I had the opportunity to teach my First Year Seminar on Global Health for a second time and I had a nice group of twelve students who were also part of an “Engaged Living” program where they lived in the same dorm and we did several out of class activities together (e.g. a poverty tour of Greenville, an evening lecture and demonstration by a Japanese massage therapist accompanied by Chinese take-out, a popcorn and movie night in their dorm, etc.). It was fun but all the grading of their papers (it was a writing seminar) kept me very busy. When Paul visited from mid-October to mid-November he affectionately called me “the grader.”

I also taught my Medical Sociology class for the first time in the semester system. We used to teach it in the winter term when students only took two courses. Now in the semester system our ten credit hour program that combines medical sociology with medical ethics and incorporates ten weeks of field observations at a local hospital takes up most of the Tuesday/Thursdays for the 20 handpicked students (they have to apply for the program). Sadly, we often saw the firsthand realities of what it means to be uninsured in America and had some very timely discussions of the proposed health care reform currently being debated.

We’re finishing off the year with me back in Botswana. On Christmas Eve day we’ll take a day trip to Moremi and on Christmas day we’ll head down to Meno a Kwena (tooth of the crocodile) where we’ll camp for the night. In January we plan to take a trip over to Mozambique for a couple of weeks before my study away students arrive in early February.

We hope you and yours have a joyous festive season.
Peace,
Kristy and Paul

getting my bearings

Within minutes of driving out of the parking lot of the Johannesburg airport we are waved over to the side of the road by a neon-vested police officer. “What is it?” I ask Paul. “Who knows,” he replies. The interchange that follows leaves me baffled. The officer asks Paul what he can give him for Christmas? Continues by inquiring how much he (Paul) will bring Santa for not wearing his seat belt. I wish I wrote down exactly what he said because it made no sense. The pronouns were confused, Santa was involved, and in the end…it was really about a 200 Rand bribe for the police officer. Paul unfazed says he’ll pull over so the officer can write him a citation and the guy waves him off. You see, you can’t really write a citation for an illegal bribe. Welcome to Africa!

The drive back to Botswana is long and hot. About seventeen hours of driving and the temps are comparable to what we were having in Greenville when I left – about 40 degrees except there it was in Fahrenheit and here it is Celsius (or about 104 degrees). I’m pretty tired from the cumulative effect of the end of the term, packing to leave for 3 ½ months and traveling. At one point I’m dozing when Paul slows to avoid something in the road. I open my eyes assuming it is a donkey, cow, goat or horse and catch a fleeting glance of a rather large male ostrich making his way across a very hot tarmac (paved) road. It pays to have hooves in this climate.

On day two of driving we are stopped at a police check point. Guessing that it is a spontaneous veterinary control stop (checking for uncooked red meat to avoid the spread of hoof and mouth disease between districts), I’m surprised when they ask Paul to step out of the car and go into the tent to receive some driver safety information. The sign outside the tent reads “Kill These and Save Lives.” It takes me a while to even make sense of the sign. Kill what? Paul returns with a handful of pamphlets some of them only in Setswana (very helpful to the English speaking driver). I learn that the “these” refers to “over speeding,” “negligence” and “cell phones.” I guess if we “kill” these, driving will be safer…

Botswana has a notoriously high motor vehicle accident rate. In 2007, for example, there were 66.3 accidents/1,000 vehicles (compared to 43.1 accidents/1,000 in the US) and 28.3 fatalities/100,000 population (compared to 13.6 fatalities/100,000 population – don’t you love what you can find on line from the US Census Bureau?). I learned from one of the brochures that Botswana has a Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) Fund to provide compensation for people in motor vehicle accidents. The fund, started in 1986 provides automatic third party coverage through the payment of a fuel tax. It pays for things like loss of income, loss of support to dependents, payment for medical and rehabilitative expenses, etc. All sounds good right? It seems there was some new change to the fund as of this August but what I found most interesting was that you would only get 50% of the benefits if you were found to be drunk or negligent in the accident. That’s right…even if your drunk driving caused a motor vehicle accident, you’d get some sort of compensation from the government for the accident. You’ve got to love Botswana. Of course, the larger issue contributing to motor vehicle accidents is the animals in the road but there doesn’t seem to be any move to solve that problem. Donkey dodging can be hazardous to your health.

PS: There is the most beautiful bird outside my window today at the office. It’s one I’ve not seen before, a paradise fly catcher. It has a chestnut colored body and blackish blue head kind of spiked into a Mohawk of feathers. What is most fascinating is that it has two long tail streamers that are probably double the length of his body and his beak is almost turquoise blue in color as is the ring around his eye. I’ll try to bring my camera in and get a picture of him if I can.

Southern Cross

She stands tall, authoritative yet unassuming. She is gentle in her manner, always curious, never threatening. Her feet are firmly anchored over the Southern pole as she travels among the stars. She appears just when the Sun of the day has slipped away. She’s with us all night, rotating ever so slightly until practically standing on her head. Travelers of the Southern hemisphere use her to find true South. Four stars make up her kite shaped head and two her long neck. An imaginary line from the back of her head to the tip of her nose intersects with one that runs perpendicular to the middle of her long neck dropping unabashedly to the earth at precisely true South. No matter what time of the night or angle of her head and neck, it never fails.

The bushmen of the Kalahari say that she was placed there as a reward for her selfless good deed. During the time when man and animals talked, the Sun behaved in such erratic and unpredictable ways. He would rise sometimes in the East, other times in the West. He would set North or South with a force from a gust wind. There was no pattern. No plan. He would stay up at times for minutes and others for days. The uncertainty of it caused great chaos. All living things were bewildered. That is, until, Giraffe offered to stand up and show Sun the way.

She pointed to her height as the key to the dilemma. With confidence she claimed that she would guide Sun to rise in the East and set in the West. Tall, helpful, with the patience of a guiding parent, she invited Sun to join her in her journey across the sky. She reached with her long neck to show Sun the way. Smooth. Well paced. Predictable. The world rejoiced. All living things benefitted from her diligence. Day after day until Sun understood.

With the routine in place, Sun rising and setting daily with utter certainty, Giraffe’s job was finished. And for her efforts she was placed in the sky to guide others who might need help finding their way. She was quite pleased.

home safely

Just a quick note to let you know that I have arrived safely back in Greenville. 3 flights, a 9 hour lay over in the Johannesburg airport, 4 movies, and NO flight problems! Maybe my travel curse has finally lifted. The good news is that the Johannesburg to Atlanta Delta flight is now nonstop - 16 1/2 hours straight! Quite relieved not to have to stop in Dakar and refuel mid-way through. Paul is somewhere in the central Kalahari. Hoping to hear from him soon via satellite phone. For now, I'm unpacking and trying to stay awake (and trying not to miss him too much).
Hope to talk to you all soon.
Kristy

PS: this amazing photo was taken by Dave Lawrence, one of Paul's co-owners of Kalahari Skies Safari company (www.kalahari-skies.com). He is a wonderful photographer and more of his work can be found at www.wisemonkeys.com. Thanks Dave!

coming to an end

Sadly, this entry finds my time for this trip to Botswana rapidly drawing to an end. We made one final venture out to Nxai Pan for another star show Thursday night. Spring has sprung so we didn’t freeze our butts off and, with the moon rising so late, we had a perfect dark sky filled with an uncountable number of stars. We saw the beautiful blue and yellow of Albrio, the binary star and Saturn has titled at such an angle that there are no rings. Quite unique!

You’ll be happy to hear the Mazoe, the parrot, has returned to Paul (he’s decided to keep her) and she and I are coming to terms with each other. Here is a picture of her on my shoulder (I'm admittedly looking kind of tentative). I’m wearing Paul’s shirt so, if she poops, it is not on me! Dave and Vikky, Paul’s partners in the safari business visiting from England, insist that she speaks…saying “hello” and attempting to get to “good morning.” We hear nothing but what I call “cricket bird noises.” Perhaps she doesn’t like our accents. I’ve been trying to sound more like Mary Poppins the past couple of days, but it’s still not working. At least she’ll be around to keep Paul company when I’m not here. Fortunately, Paul’s other safari business partners, Eddy and Mano, have agreed to watch her when he’s not in town.

In other good news, the ostriches that have survived the lack of routine feeding (ten total out of the original twenty) are now being fed again and are starting to thrive. We even had one lay an egg near our fence…perhaps a token of appreciation after all the corn we have fed them (I'm giving it a little shake. Is anybody in there?).

Today we are packing, tying up loose ends, and getting ready for our departure tomorrow morning. We’ll drive to Gaborone, spend Sunday night, and then Paul will put me on the plane Monday morning to Johannesburg and he will head off to Khutse Game Reserve for a second trans-Kalahari safari with more Spaniards. While most of the trip is long and uneventful (the company that has hired him set the route and booked the campsites and it involves some really long days driving in the endless nothingness of the Southern Kalahari), the day or so in the Northern Kalahari makes it well worth it. I sure wish I was doing that instead of heading back to the States where they’ll be Board meetings, faculty meetings, department meetings, etc. Not quite as exciting as lions in camp!

I should be back in the States by Tuesday morning.

PS: In the middle of all of this Paul has been changing his office location in his office block. The new arrangement will give him three offices, one for the safari company, one for Ngami Data Services (his map making company) and one for a production room (laminator, large plotter/printer, copier, etc.- all to assist in the map making). I have a new view out the office window. Yesterday there was a goat attempting to sneak under the fence!

Kalahari lion in our camp!

We had just finished dinner. Fifteen clients from Spain sitting around the fire chatting in Spanish when one of them, looking over my shoulder says, “que es eso?” Meaning “what is that?” in Spanish. In the light of an almost full moon, I turn to see a large female lion walking around behind us, her sister following in short order as they circle around to where we are seated at the fire.

Paul calmly says, everyone stand up and get closer to the fire. Somehow I recall a variety of Spanish commands, “be calm,” “come over here,” “be quiet,” “be careful,” etc. I’m not sure what it says about my personality that I remember the commands best?! But they do come in handy when a lion approaches your camp when you’re on a five-day trans-Kalahari safari with Spaniards. Who knew I’d ever need my Spanish for that scenario?

We all quietly draw closer to the fire and Paul instructs one of the other guides to start the car so as to intimidate them out of camp. We had suspected they might be coming to visit when we saw them just at dusk as we were driving to our campsite. One male and two females strolled down the road in front of us settling in at the junction of two dirt tracks to make their long guttural moans marking this territory as clearly theirs. If only I had had the presence of mind to audio tape their call but I was so awestruck by the depth of the tones and the vibration of my own chest that all I could do was manage to involuntarily get the hair to stand up on the back of my neck.

Unfortunately, the younger of the two sisters is looking a bit “cheeky” – kind of like my mother’s old cat Delilah used to look right before she pounced out from underneath a chair to attack your leg as you walked by. My niece Becca described her as “cute but fresh,” and that’s one thing in an 8 pound house cat and quite another in a full grown female lion. Her tail flicking a bit, eyes staring right through you, head down, ears slightly back…she seemed to be sizing us up as a potential appetizer.

Paul instructs, “Slowly make your way to the vehicles. Nobody run. Just back away.” We move as fast as “slowly” will allow and pile into the vehicle. It seems like an eternity as we wait for Paul to join us and I’m thinking, “Damn, I should have driven this vehicle more often and learned how to use the satellite phone.” My brain going to “worst case scenario” if, heaven forbid, something were to happen to him. Fortunately, Paul joins us in short order and we are on the move to “push” the lions out of camp. While one vehicle has already gone out to do this, when they turned back towards camp the lions just followed them back. We decide we need to “drive” them off farther.

It is believed that animals see a vehicle as a large object (not a vessel carrying small objects that can be eaten) so the idea is that we will “intimidate them” by approaching them and flashing our high beams at them. The male lion seems uninterested and makes his way off down the road not even looking back. The younger of the two sisters, the cheeky one that came within three feet of the circle of chairs around the fire, is undeterred. She strays off into the grass hiding behind a bush until her more responsible older sister waits for her in the road, spots her, then crouched down like a house cat and springs on her. She grudgingly gets back on the dirt track and starts walking.

When we’ve hit a stalemate and they won’t go any further, we turn back. Later we notice the vehicle lights of the next campsite up near where we’ve driven the lions on high beams and we fear they’ve had uninvited guests too. We decide to see if they are OK and fear that they might get in their vehicles and “push” them back down our way.

When we arrive at the campsite the place is a shambles and the father of the family informs us that they lions just came through and ransacked the place, tipping over chairs, tearing down hammocks, stealing his daughter’s shoes. They’ve now gone past their campsite, away from us and we decide to push them on a bit further. At one point the cheeky one walks off the road into the nearby grass and plops down. Paul goes up into the grass, probably two feet from her, flashes the high beams and she barely blinks. She’s got a look on her face that says, “Bring it!” We decide to go past them hoping they will follow us even further away from camp.

As you might imagine the excitement and tension among the group is palatable. We’ve made a bunker with our vehicles and trailers and the clients have managed to squeeze all seven of their tents in a rather small area, tent corner to tent corner. The women make “pee pots” out of large used water jugs by cutting them in half so as not to have to leave their tents at night. Unfortunately they use them all before I get one. Drat!

I spend most of the night lying awake listening for their return. Paul sleeps like a baby and snores away. I fear he’ll sleep through whatever might happen in the night so, between and lack of pee pot (which inevitably makes me have to go the bathroom) and fear that they may return…I don’t get much sleep that night.

Fortunately, they don’t return to camp and when the sun comes up in the morning we all have an amazing story to tell our friends that they will find unbelievable. Not many people can say they had three full grown lions come into camp in the Kalahari!

small plane ride, site visit, my scarf saves the day again!

7:30 AM Saturday morning and we are at the airport waiting to board a tiny plane to fly up to the Khwai Community, north of Moremi, for a site visit of NG18. By 8 AM we’ve boarded the 6 seat-er and we are in the air with great views of the ever expanding flood waters throughout the Ngamiland district of Botswana. Paul has been asked by a wealthy entrepreneur to represent him at a mandatory site visit of a concession area that is up for tender (bid). The short 30-minute flight delivers us to a dirt air strip on the edge of Moremi Game Reserve.

From here we are picked up by an open air safari vehicle and whisked to the kgotla of the Khwai community for the start of what ends up being a full day of touring the concession area. Fifteen bidders are represented at the meeting and my scarf saves the day again, by doubling as a skirt over my jeans so that I can be seated in the kgotla (I had forgotten about this – women are not allowed in this space without their butt and legs covered -- but fortunately I had my trusty scarf on for warmth). You may recall the kgotla is the sacred space of the community where all important decisions and events take place. We got married in the main Maun kgotla last year.

Land in Botswana is not privately owned but rather controlled by a “land board” that “leases” the land out to designated people for a certain amount of time. In this case, the Khwai Community Trust, has control over this concession (parcel of land) called NG18 (NG for Ngamiland – the name of this region of the country). They are requesting “tenders” (bids) from interested parties (mostly safari companies) for an 8-year lease of the land. Currently the land is occupied by a company that has set up 2 hunting camps and 1 photographic camp. Our day is spent touring the area.

It is a bit of an odd set up in that, basically all the people who will be competing with each other, spend the day with each other. There’s lots of whispering behind truck bumpers and speculating on how serious the other bidders might be. Paul, being his quiet shy self, makes no qualms about stating his dislike of the conditions of the tender. Most importantly, the price is 3.5 million pula (7 pula to the dollar) is too high. When he asks the women in charge how they arrived at this figure, she responds that, “they considered various factors.” When I try to prompt for more by asking, “For example?” she simple laughs and says nothing else.

Sadly we see almost no wild life in the 7-8 hours of driving through the area. The roads are in good condition but the mopane brush is quite dense with very few open areas for game viewing or water front drives. We see a maybe a dozen impala, perhaps 3 hippos, a couple ground horn bills but not much else all day. Not a particularly good selling point for the bidders.

We stop for lunch at one of the camps which has a lovely view of a watering hole but there is still no game in sight. The buffet is a meat lover’s dream with – two types of chicken, kudu, meatballs…meat with a side of meat. The only starch offered is rolls with butter and if you were vegetarian, that and the minimal cheese tray with 2 types of cheese would be your only options. No a veggies in sight! The Batswana love their meat!

As with other areas of Botswana this dry season there is lots of water and we go through some pretty wet spots. At one point, the group that has decide to take their mini-van instead of getting in one of the larger safari vehicles gets stuck in the water and has to be towed out. Note to soccer moms: your mini-van is not designed for deep muddy waters!

Sadly only a few weeks left until I return to the states (I fly out August 17). This Friday we head out for a 5 day trans-Kalahari trip. It is a bit out of the ordinary as we are only providing transport and guiding through the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Fourteen clients from Spain along with three of their staff and five of us for transport and guiding. We are meeting them in Khutse (a park just south of the central Kalahari game reserve - CKGR) that I have not been to yet. We are transiting them through the game reserve and delivering them to Rakops (on the northern side of the park). I’ve been trying to resurrect my Spanish language skills in case they don’t know English! Should be interesting!
I’ll tell you about it when we get back.

PS: On a sad note, Taffy and Fudge, my foster dogs for the last two months, have moved back to Namibia with their owners. I was secretly hoping that Taffy would be left behind so that he could stay with us. They reportedly had to come get him from our house when it was time to go. I think he might have been hoping to stay behind too!

celebrating our first and the moon landing’s 40th anniversary

We had a nice President’s Day Holiday (Monday and Tuesday) starting with our star show trip to Nxai Pan on Friday night. Arriving just in time to see the most spectacular sunset, Paul set up his telescope for star viewing with a grandmother currently residing in Pretoria, South Africa, and her teenage grandson and two of his friends from the Netherlands. They had just finished a week of working at a community project the grandmother founded (painting a clinic, etc.) and were on a two-week trip traveling through Botswana. They were a pleasant and enthusiastic group of star gazers and we endured the high winds on the pan for several hours viewing the stars.

On Saturday, our one-year anniversary, we spent the day driving around Nxai Pan. With the late rain in June, the animal populations have dispersed so we didn’t see too much. We did watch a determined honey badger for some time and saw a good number of springbok and gemsbok. We also had a nice picnic lunch at an elevated point in the park overlooking the pan. The drive back was riddled with cows in the road as usual. I took a picture so you’d see what we have to contend with.

Unfortunately, Paul’s business obligations prevented us from taking the entire long weekend off as he had to spend the next few days working on tax issues and trying to get forms together for his renewal of his “C” license (mobile operator’s license). Botswana is an odd country which is heavily ladened with bureaucracy but doesn’t seem to have the wear with all to keep up with the requirements they actually put in place. For example, in order to get the license a tax clearance certificate must be obtained and it appears that the tax office has misrecorded information for the last several years (recorded 2008 tax records as 2007, etc). Anyway, it is the "irrationality of rationality" at its best and no one seems to know how to fix it. Of course, these were issues present before Paul purchased the company and no one seems to know how the previous owners were able to get their license renewed since this seems to have been going on for several years.

Anyway, we did properly celebrate the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing by inviting a dozen people over for some star gazing on Monday night. Paul set up his telescope and his friend Lee brought his and we had amazing views of Saturn (which is currently tilted in such a way to resemble an olive with a tooth pick through it) and Jupiter with its bans and moons. I made the popcorn with my secrete ingredient, Aromat, that makes it oh so delicious!

The rest of the holiday break I spent reading and hanging out with Taffy, the neighbor’s dog, who has become like a little shadow to me. Every time I get up and move, he follows me. I actually tried walking through the office and down the hall and back to the living room to see if he'd make the loop with me and...he did! I walked around singing “me and my shadow” most of the weekend. He’s very sweet and I’ll be sad to see him go (his owner is suppose to be moving back to Namibia this weekend). Both he and his “sister”, Fudge, seem very happy here.