"Dr. Maher, there’s a baboon in our toilet!"

Furman May X 2016 Botswana in the Atlanta Airport

 There are many things in my career as an academic I felt ill prepared for during graduate school. When I was in graduate school (late 1980s, early 1990s) there was very little advice about teaching classes, grading, advising students, serving on committees, or successfully earning tenure and getting promoted. In the early years of my career at Furman, I often felt like I was “making it up as I went along”. Since then it seems graduate schools have done a better job at preparing their students for their future academic careers. Our new hires seem much better trained than I was to succeed in their academic lives. Since I have been directing study away programs (starting in 2009), there have been many occasions I’ve felt even more ill prepared for what I might face (e.g. snake in a toilet, hyena circling camp while we’re eating dinner, lion meandering behind student tents when one decides to unzip her tent to go out for a nighttime pee!). A call for me announcing, "there's a baboon in the toilet" was another such occasion. 

Baboons in the road at Mokolodi

During our two weeks of travel in Botswana for May X 2016 we camped the whole time. We met on campus for two and half days to learn a bit about the history of Botswana and about the HIV/AIDS epidemic that has dominated health discussions for the last three decades. Our camping progresses from relatively mild (staying in a fenced nature preserve with no intended predators – they may sneak into the area but they are not put there on purpose) to out in the wild of the bush with no fences and no limits as to what we might see in camp. 

The students learn the “rules of camping” in fairly safe surroundings – always zip your tent, check your shoes for uninvited critters before you put them on, don’t keep any food in your tent, scan for eyes in the dark if you need to walk from your tent to the toilet during the night. But even in the “tame tenting” locations you can sometimes have interesting encounters. Scorpions in the sink (illuminated at night with Paul’s “scorpion light” – they glow in UV light – quiet cool!) or in this case, a young baboon who managed to squeeze his way between the brick wall and the thatch roof of the toilet building. When my banging doesn’t dislodge him…I call Paul. Sadly baboons are sometimes sexist and they can be pretty aggressive against women. For example, we were camping in Zimbabwe once and this big alpha male baboon kept coming at me and Paul repeatedly had to “bark” (like baboons do) to prove that he, in fact, was actually THE alpha male – it was quite a display and in the early days of our relationship so,  needless to say, I was impressed.

We can hear the little guy scurrying around in the toilet stall and the only way to get him out seems to be opening the door (which means he could rush at us scared and aggressive). We (the students and I) step back, arm ourselves with rocks in case we’re charged and Paul opens the door. Without incident he frees himself from the toilet stall by slipping back through the crack between the thatch roof and brick wall and scampers off away from us. Crisis averted. Of course, his ability to get in there in the first place negates my “rules” about closing the door to the toilet as reassurance that you will then be safe when you enter. But alas, this is Africa!

The academic program of the trip focuses on cultural factors and HIV/AIDS and the question of why Botswana continues to have a high prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS (18% in the overall population and 25% in the “adult” population) despite their best efforts to ameliorate the problem. In my opinion, if you put a list of “best practices” together to deal with HIV/AIDS, I think Botswana has conscientiously done all of them. For example, a successful PMTCT program (prevention of mother to child transmission) dropped the transmission rate from 40% to less than 2%. Additionally, Botswana was the first African nation (in collaboration with the Gates Foundation and Merck pharmaceuticals) to offer free ARVs (anti-retrovirals) to its citizens thus turning a nearly always fatal disease into a chronic one. 

So our project involves talking to organizations, some US based (like Harvard, Baylor, Center for Disease Control, USAID), some Botswana based to see what has been done and what is/is not working. In Vision 2016 Botswana pledge to have “no new cases of HIV by 2016”. Now that that has failed (who ever really thought that was possible?) they have readjusted their goals towards an “AIDS free generation” and achievement of “epidemic control”. From a sociological perspective, we discuss questions of cultural norms that may be contributing to the spread of the disease that have been largely ignored by funding agencies. While behavioral change is surely difficult, ignoring social practices that lead to the spread of the disease certainly makes prevention challenging. 

Our group visiting ACHAP - African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnership

Our group touring Havard-Botswana Partnership Labs

Our group listening to a presentation at Baylor Center of Excellence

Student presentations during lunch at the National Museum

In any case, in addition to the fascinating academic issues raised on the trip, we also get to see a bit of Botswana as we travel. Our first week is situated in Gaborone, the capital, doing two site visits per day. During our lunch break, where we eat our picnic lunch in the courtyard of the national museum, students do presentations on the organizations we will visit the next day. 


After a long day of academic work we enjoy sundowners at Mokolodi Nature Reserve (where we camp for the first week). 

Our group at Mokolodi Game Reserve, visiting the lake for sundowners

Upon departing from Gaborone we make our way from the south eastern part of Botswana up to the north western section where the students ultimately fly out of Maun back to the States. We stay two nights a Khama Rhino Sanctuary, two nights at Tiaan’s camp outside of Makgadikgadi Pans, and two nights up in the Okavango Delta near Moremi Game Reserve. Our last night is in Maun where the students visit the ostrich farm where we live and Paul does one of his infamous star shows. 

Rhinos at Khama Rhino Sanctuary

Adult Male Kudu in Khama Rhino Sanctuary

Zebras migrating at Makgadikgadi Pans

Elephants at Makgadikgadi Pans

Students are well fed by the staff of Elephant Trails Safaris and even get to try some local delicacies like mopane worms (which you have to try at least once or maybe only once, in my opinion). We have a regular elephant visitor in our camp in the Khwai Community area reminding us that we are most definitely under his favorite acacia trees. We spend a few hours in mokoro boats enjoying the serene bird life and close encounters with elephants (and apparently a hippo with the other group although I’ve only heard stories having not been there myself).

Lunch in camp

Students getting ready to try mopane worms at Khama Rhino Sanctuary

Dried mopane worms

Student trying mopane worms (ick!)

Visiting elephant in camp

Elephants crossing while on our mokoro boat ride

Finally, we have many lucky sightings while up near the delta with one vehicle having an amazing lion sighting and all of us seeing a leopard just as we were about to leave the area on our way back to Maun. We blow her cover as we drive up on her trying to unsuccessfully surprise some waterbuck. When that fails, she pounces at birds like a house cat hoping to catch one for a mid-morning snack but to no avail. 

Lions (photo by Kjersti Kleine)

Leopard on our way out of Khwai

All and all I believe May X Botswana 2016 was a success both from an academic point of view and the perspective of adventure. I hope it will be an experience the students will remember for a lifetime including a better understanding of cultural norms and their role in disease prevention as well as the importance of checking the toilet for baboons before you enter!