adjusting to life back in Botswana

It always takes me a bit of time to adjust to life back in Botswana. I’m not sure if it’s watching for snake spores or trying to discern between the different types of black ants to know which are the ones who’s bite hurts like hell (the Matabele ants that bite and make you go numb for hours. They are black and slightly bigger than other ants but otherwise they have no distinguishing features). Today I’m home alone and I’m currently trying to identify the wasp that is circling my head. If it is a mud wasp, he’s fine and is just trying to find a place to build his mud home in a crevice in the house. If it is a red wasp, I need to be worried as his sting hurts like hell, Paul says worse than a scorpion! To me they look the same and so basically I’m leery of both of them. I’ve just managed to let him out the window so…either way I’m covered.

It is the oddness of daily events that throws me off a bit. The other day, for example, we were called over by Happiness, our Zimbabwean neighbor to come see a snake fighting with a chameleon, neither of which is liked by the average African. By the time we got there, the snake had consumed most of the chameleon and only his tail and one of his legs was sticking out of this mouth. Despite the fact that it was simply a harmless mole snake, the Zimbabweans were ready to kill him. Joe informed us that his grandmother had warned him that all snakes were bad. A friend of theirs insisted that, “the Good News Bible even says that all snakes should be killed because there are our enemies.” What kind of church is preaching that? Poor Paul was beside himself trying to educate them about harmful and harmless snakes. I’m not sure how far he got.

As you know we are involuntarily watching our neighbor’s animals who are away for a month. As I mentioned, the parrot met us in the tree outside of our house the day we arrived from the states and the two dogs have basically set up camp on our front stoop. As an animal lover, I like the company although I must admit that the bird worries me a little. The other day, in what must have been a comic scene, he flew from his cage right toward my head. In a panic I covered my head with the news paper I was reading, jumped out of my chair, throwing the red wine in my glass to the wind and ran out of the room. In the chaos the bird flew out the front door off into a tree some distance from the house. Paul, the bird lover that he is, insists that he was simply trying to land on my shoulder. I think he was going for my eyes!

Paul spent the next hour trying to coax him back inside before it got dark and he got eaten by some sort of bird of prey. On his return flight, he thought he’d land for a moment on the roof, which is metal but he slip, slip, slipped until he lost the battle with gravity and landed, phu-whap!, right in the dirt. Poor little thing was winded for quite some time, huffing and puffing for air. We thought he might have cracked a rib or something! He (and I) eventually recovered from the experience but every time I hear wings flapping, I shutter a little. The other day I ducked in to the indentation created in the hall by the side door as he flew from the living room, through the office, down the hall to the kitchen to see what Paul was cooking (he likes snow peas, whole oats and herb crackers).

At times we take the two dogs, Fudge and Taffy, for a walk with us.They love it and run like mad on the dirt roads near our house. Regularly they get thorns stuck in their paws but they continue to run first on only 3 legs, then sometimes on only two. Like athletic amputees competing in the Special Olympics they carry on! Paul will call out, "Taffy has a puncture (which is what they call flat tires here). Front right and back left!" And I'll try to convince him to stop long enough to let me pull the thorns out of his paws.

We had a nice little route for walks around the ostrich farm until the river came up so high there was no path left around the fence. The Thamalakane River is higher than anyone has seen it in years. At night the frogs are so loud, it sounds like we are being invaded!

I’m still struggling with driving. Honestly, I would much rather drive a 25 foot RV through traffic in Atlanta than drive around here. There is too much car to my left and too much road to my right. It just doesn’t feel right. Additionally, taxi drivers are unpredictable…sometimes driving extremely slow, other times only partially pulling off the road to let passengers out, still others making a wide left turn only to cross the road to the right (as if they were driving an 18 wheeler). As if the vehicle traffic isn’t enough to deal with, there are the donkeys, cows, goats and occasional pedestrians to worry about. I’m not sure I’ll ever drive at night as all of those things seem to like to occupy the roads after dark and none of them are easily seen (I have yet to see a pedestrian not wearing black at night).

As I’m continuing to write I hear a crunch, crunch, snap, crunch outside. I can see that a red horn bill has managed to catch a grasshopper about 4 inches long and is trying to eat it. It’s longer than his beak so he’s flipping I up in the air, crunching, flipping again. I don’t know how he’s going to eat that thing. But then again if that snake managed the chameleon, I’m sure he’ll manage too. I think he got it but now he looks like it’s stuck in his throat. Ouch! It’s a tough world out there.

Well, I’d better get back to reading and lecture writing.