Paul, there's a parrot in the living room

Well the first week back in Maun has been characteristically interesting. First, as I mentioned earlier, one of our neighbors has left town for a month leaving his 2 dogs and parrot behind. They are to be cared for by some local “kids”, who are to feed the dogs every other day (and I feel guilty leaving my dog behind with a full time pet sitter who lives in my house). You can imagine how well that goes over with the dogs. So they have taken up residency on our porch and the bird, which had flown the coop (literally managed to push the wires apart to get out of his cage) found us perched in a tree near our house. After Paul coaxed him out of the tree, we relocated his cage into our living room and he’s now living with us (hence the title of this e-mail). Since he gets out of the cage anyway we just let him come and go as he wishes. He likes to sit on Paul’s shoulder and nip at his glasses a bit (and sometimes his ear). He looks at me suspiciously cocking his head left to right (and I think, hey buddy…I’m letting you live in my living room…be nice!).

This weekend we went out to Nxai pan for our friends’, Kelley and Thoralf, wedding. You may recall that this is the couple that served as our witnesses at our wedding last July. Kelley is American (teaches at UT, Austin) and Thoralf is German and has been in Maun for years. They met when she came to do some research a couple of years ago. Oddly, she was married when they met to a man with the same last name as Thoralf, which she dropped when they divorced. Wonder if she’s going to take it back again now that she’s married to a new man with the same last name? Life in its natural state is…odd.

We actually only realized it was a wedding a few days before (we were informed of their engagement in January and told they were getting married in Germany in November, so when we got an invitation we thought it was just a party). We also were told it was “casual” only to have the bride show up in an elegant evening gown and most women in dresses (the bride told me “jeans are fine” so I had to make a scarf into a skirt and go with that…I “made a plan” as they say in Africa). The night was beautiful… sun setting in the West while full moon rising in the East over Baines baobabs…absolutely lovely. About 27 of us ate dinner under the full moon in the middle of the pan (a flat surface with a small rise at the edge (like a pan) that fills with rain during the rainy season and crusts up into a crunchy type of surface that sounds like the ice crust of fresh snow when you step on it). An odd mix of dated American music played through the night (the Germans really love that). Paul brought his telescope and we looked at craters of the moon. We retreated to our own campus site later in the night (almost couldn’t find it as it is difficult to find your way in the bush in the dark). We like the peacefulness of camping in the bush without music blaring or people partying.

The next morning we did a short game drive through the pan. We saw quite a bit of wildlife: giraffe, impala, springbok, wildebeest, kori busters (big birds that look like prehistoric creatures), steenbok, a couple of jackals and some bat ear foxes (pretty cool. I hadn’t seen these before. They are slightly larger than raccoons with big ears that squish down to look like Yoda when they do their routine territorial markings – squat, pee, flatten your ears to look like Yoda, move 6 feet, assume position again to mark new area).

Oddly, we got home last night just before it started to rain. It’s odd because this is the dry season and should not be raining. It has been “pissing down with rain” (that means it’s coming down hard) and looks like it will be for the next few days. Silly me…I didn’t even travel with a rain jacket or umbrella…after all it’s the dry season. It never rains.
Signing off a bit soggy,
Kristy

PS: Learned some new phrases at the party…we were instructed to “charge” our classes before toasts were given (I only thought batteries were “charged”).