CARROTS! What life is really like in a village on the edge of the Okavango Delta.

We’re having a meeting to discuss details for our upcoming Furman alumni safaris when one of the people we’re talking to, looking over my left shoulder shouts, “CARROTS!” Others in the restaurant cheer at the lucky find of the kitchen staff. Their enthusiasm derives from the current ban on imported carrots from South Africa. Of course, I didn’t know this when we searched four different grocery stores for this crunchy orange staple food. There must also be a ban on red peppers because they have been equally elusive. Last week there were onions, this week none. I think the goal is “citizen empowerment” (if Botswana doesn’t allow importation of items from South Africa, then the Batswana can sell their own goods), but in reality, it means a diet without carrots (or red peppers or onions) for the foreseeable future. (The worst is a ban on Helman’s Mayonnaise and Heinze Ketchup…subpar condiments bring a tear to my eye).

 

While I’m sure most of the readers of this blog are used to stories from the bush (here I’ll put some pictures of lions and a leopard from our last bush outing with international journalists to keep you reading), today I want to talk about what it’s really like to live in a village on the edge of the Okavango Delta.

 

Our morning typically begins when the hornbills start clucking for their breakfast. While we no longer have the inquisitive pair who we called “Koko” and “Tsena” (which is equivalent to “knock, knock” and “who’s there?”) that used to fly to the window sill, violently banging their large bills on the window in order to peer in one eye at a time (can’t really look straight in a window when you have a bill that large) to see if we’re up yet, we now have a flock of 20+ red, yellow, and gray hornbills that descend on our “yard” at the crack of dawn (when I say “yard” think sand box). Paul is very loyal to his birds, whether in Botswana or the USA, and his first course of action is throwing them some seed (often before he even puts pants on!).

 

Once the small birds (hornbills, doves, gray lorries, starlings, etc.) and large birds (ostriches) are fed, it’s time to make coffee. While I had several bags of decent coffee from our March trip to Costa Rica put aside for my three-month stay here, they got left behind when a friend from Botswana asked Paul if I could bring over “a couple of books” which ended up being three very LARGE books (weighing in at 7 pounds). Since the migration over here includes a “smaller” international flight from South Africa to Botswana on Airlink with a 20 kg (44 pound) bag limit, something had to go. Fortunately, some friends who own a safari camp just ground us up an ice cream tub worth of decent coffee (otherwise I might still be trying to drag myself out of bed).

 

With coffee on board, we head off for our morning walk with Spike (the dog that’s not our dog). No one can really knows how old Spike is but his face is definitely more white than brown these days (maybe he came to the ostrich farm in 2009??) but he has no shortage of enthusiasm for our morning walks. Jumping up to nip you in the butt cheek if you’re not moving early enough, he bounds off down the dirt driveway to the gate that leads outside the ostrich farm. His eternal enthusiasm for walks made it especially concerning the other day when, after walking through the opened gate, he promptly sat down and refused to move. “Come on Spike! Time for a walk” Nope. He was not going anywhere. Trusting that he smelled or heard something that we didn’t smell or hear, we headed back into the farm for a shorter walk (as opposed to the ~2 mile walk around the outside of the farm’s perimeter).

 

We immediately came upon elephant spoor (tracks) throughout the farm. While we hadn’t seen them in a while, they were back in search of food and/or water. Perhaps that’s what Spike was worried about (or the hyena that is rumored to be wandering around the Boro area). While I’m pretty used to having an ostrich catch the corner of my eye out a window as I’m brushing my teeth (the fences that used to separate us and them are all destroyed so they are “free range” these days) and I’m getting more used to the plethora of cows with their ding-ding-ding bells around their necks searching for water, I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to “checking for elephants” before you walk outside.

 

While the ostriches live on the farm (although currently there are only three and when I left last July there were 17), the cows and elephants are in search of food and water. It was a particularly bad rainy season this year and things are very very dry. Botswana has a dry season (May-October) and a rainy season (November-April). The rains in the rainy season water the grasses and trees and create pools of standing water that get everything (animals and people alike) through the dry season. With poor rains, there’s little grass, dried out leaves and no standing water. The animals are quite frankly desperate (already). Joe, the Zimbabwean farm manager, even saw a cow jump over the wire fence he had secured back in place after an elephant crushed it down the night before. While nothing short of an electrified fence stops an elephant from coming in (and the landlords are not about to spring for that), cows are now regular visitors (which is not typical). This morning one was even on the brick walkway right next to our house drinking the water out of the dog bowl!

 

Poor Joe has a Sisyphean task (you know the story of Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down) of chasing the cows out and re-securing the fences back up. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. To add to this is our precarious water supply. While Paul was in the USA for six months, thieves stole the pump out of the borehole (well) that is used to supply water to our house. Fortunately, there is another borehole and pump on the property that we’ve hooked up to in order to have running water in the house for washing (it is not drinkable, for that we have to regularly purchase large containers of potable water). But on the day of the Spike-sit down-strike where he wouldn’t leave the gate to go for his walk, our walk on the farm revealed that the elephants had pulled up the plastic piping the takes the water from the borehole to our house. Elephants can smell the water even when buried in pipes underground and poor Joe spent the entire next day digging and burying the pipes again. Did I mention Sisyphus already?

 

We’ve already taken several trips to the store to purchase t-joints, elbows, clamps, more piping, etc. When you brush your teeth tonight before bed, be thankful that you have potable running water at you finger tips. This is what it’s like to live on the edge of the Okavango Delta.

 

And, quite frankly, we have it easy. On our 20-minute drive from town (half on paved roads, half on dirt roads), we pass several mud-dung huts (that’s right, houses made of mud and poop) with occupants that rely on the river that comes down during the dry season for their water. I don’t know what they are doing to survive. I’m sure praying that the flood waters that come down from Angola and fill the dry river bed near our house will make it to Maun this year. Things are so dry and it is still unseasonably hot (at times in the 90s), it is possible the flood waters will dry up before they make it to Maun.

 

Having been in country for just two and half weeks so far, much of my time has been spent cleaning up the house (a herculean task after sitting empty for 6 months), getting over jet lag, spending five days with 3 international travel writers (more on that later), reading (some for pleasure, some for work), catching up with friends and doing typical hunting and gathering that it takes to feed oneself in Maun. Neither Paul nor I are superior cooks and I think what it would take to thrive here is to be like someone on the “Iron Chef” TV show where you get 5 ingredients and whip up something fabulous. If you head to the store with a list of ingredients for a recipe you want to try, you might be lucky if you can find half of what you need!

 

I’ve often said that part of what Paul struggles with in the USA is how “easy” and “predictable” things are on a daily basis. Need a new trash can for the bathroom…order it on Amazon, it will be on your front porch tomorrow. Everyday in Botswana is unpredictable and at times hard. Two days ago, for example, I was reading out in the sun on our patio and I was bitten by an ant and injected with formic acid! Paul came running when I screamed out in shock and pain at the stinging/burning sensation in my toe! He thought it might have been a poisonous snake bite (which is also a possibility).

 

Earlier in the week I was working on answering some emails when a bird flew through the front door (no screen doors or screens on windows here). Paul scooped him up and put him outside on the table where he proceeded to poop (after just pooping on the inside table). I watched him through the window for a long time (so as not to scare him by going outside, Paul is always worried about how I might scare things, not how they might scare me!). He eventually (thankfully) flew away once he caught his breath (he was panting like crazy) and got over the fright.

 

Last weekend we had a major clean up to do when a suicidal gecko managed to get himself eviscerated by crawling into the running air conditioning unit (don’t think about it too much, it was really gross). Gecko parts, old gecko poop and lots and lots of dust was everywhere after that clean up job. I can’t get the sound of the air conditioner grinding to a halt out of my head! Yuck!

 

So, while what you normally see on this blog are exciting tales from the bush, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what it is really like to live here. Botswana is certainly an amazing country when it comes to wildlife viewing. It is truly magic to feel that you are the visitor in their space. But day-to-day life can be a challenge, much more for the local people than me. I have the advantage of resources that make my experiences here amusing and perspective shaping. When I think of water or climate change, it is in light of my experiences in Africa. And the next time I’m in Trader Joe’s and I see carrots I’ll be sure to enthusiastically shout, “CARROTS!” remembering how lucky I am to find them.