Yesterday we decided to take a quick trip up to Moremi Game Reserve (about a two hour drive from Maun). My time in Botswana is quickly coming to an end and we thought one more quick trip up the National Park was in order. We also needed to scout out a location for an upcoming star show on Thursday night.
We stop at South Gate to check into the park and I run into the toilets for a quick pee. Toilet paper in hand (there is never toilet paper in public restrooms in Botswana), I round the corner and see the door wide open. I think, “Ugh! Why do people always leave the doors open? Don’t they know that creatures can walk in?” Having just passed two women, who say nothing to me, I figure the coast is clear and notice a recently swept out dead bat and owl bullous (the hairball like balls of animal hair, bones, mouse skulls, etc. that owls cough up). Someone must have swept the place out this morning.
I chuckle to myself when I round the corner looking to my right and see that one of the three sinks is out of order and another one is dripping non-stop. These “new” arrival gates to the parks and toilets have only been open for the last couple of years and they are already in disrepair. Typical.
As I walk past the first of two toilet stalls on my left I see something on the ground between the toilet and the wall. It looks like a large fur blanket. People sometimes leave things in public restrooms for use later so I don’t think much of it as I enter the second stall (e.g. the night watchman at Paul’s office block often leaves a pair of shoes, hat, a large bag, a blanket under the pedestal sink, tucked between the pedestal and the wall at the toilets at work).
I give the door a good shove and it makes a horrible scrapping noise as it resists closing. It is misaligned and hits the tile floor. I leave it about a third open so I have some natural light coming in to the otherwise pitch black cement cell I’m in. There are no overhead lights so the entire restroom is like a little cave. As I’m squatting my mind goes back to the “blanket” in the next stall and I start this internal conversation with myself.
Me – “Who would leave a blanket here in a public rest room? Maybe it was a dog?”
Myself – “There aren’t any dogs near the national parks, there are too many dangerous wild animals that would eat them. Plus…it had spots. Dogs don’t have spots.”
Me – “Well what kinds of animals have spots?”
Me and Myself – “Crap, I think I’m in a toilet stall next to a spotted hyena!”
Myself – “Now what do I do? When I open the door again it’s going to make that horrible scrapping noise and wake him up!”
Me – “Well you can’t just stay in this stall!!”
So I quickly zip up my pants and yank open the door. I ever so slowly peer around my stall door into his stall at which point he picks up his giant head, which has previously been wrapped around the back of the toilet and looks at me with one of his pitch black soulless eyes of evil and I scramble past him and out the door as fast as I can hoping he doesn’t chase me.
I quickly walk over to the office where Paul is checking in and say, “Excuse me, do you know that you have a spotted hyena in your toilets?” To which the woman replies “eeeh” in a high pitched sqwack – a typical Motswana response. Paul looks at me, at first thinking I might be kidding and then he sees how red my face is (I had no idea my face turned colors so often but apparently it does, particularly when I’m excited, agitated, embarrassed or hot). One of the other park rangers goes in and confirms (as if I don’t know what a spotted hyena looks like when he looks me in the eye!) that there is, in fact, a spotted hyena in the toilets just as several safari vehicles are pulling up with clients. They get wind of what’s going on and a Japanese tourist (no, I’m not kidding) grabs his camera to go in and take a picture. This is an extremely bad idea, as there is only one way in and out, and if the hyena gets agitated and charges, this tourist is sushi!
We don’t hang around to figure out what they are going to do about it. The women from the desk gently taps on the window, but that isn’t going to work! It doesn’t dawn on me until later what danger I was probably in. Not many people can say they’ve peed in a toilet stall next to a hyena! (not many people want to say that, I suppose!) The entire encounter probably took less than two minutes and fortunately I moved faster than him in finishing my business.
The rest of the trip was (relatively) uneventful. It was a nice warm day in the park. We had a quiet picnic lunch near the ever expanding Khwai River. We saw elephants, kudu, impala, wildebeest, zebra, vervet monkeys, etc. Just a couple of weeks left to my adventure here (this time). We’ve got a star show on Thursday night (assuming the skies are clear, it has been quite cloudy lately) and on Saturday we leave for a five night trans-Kalahari safari. From there it’s just a few days to pack and head down to Johannesburg for my international flight on August 17.
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