Charge

The flight from camp Kalahari to camp Khwai reveals a completely different scene. The Kalahari is a desert; the landscape below stark and vast. Everything is a shade of brown.  It’s a difficult place for most animals to survive. Zebras and wildebeest appear in droves in the wet season, having migrated for greener grass to eat as their more permanent residence regrows. Any other animal is more of a mission to seek out. Guides in the Kalahari have to be even more knowledgeable, treating every sound, every dropping, every track, and every plant as a clue.

Khwai, on the other hand, gets plenty of rain. The land is rich with plant life. Here, our guide tells us, branches are the most dangerous thing. Before we even hit the Moremi park, our destination for the first drive, we see a dozen hippos cooling off in the water. A moment into the park and we see a baboon scurrying up a tree, it’s baby wrapped with all fours around its stomach.  Impalas, antelopes, giraffes, buffalo, waterbuck, zebras, wildebeest, and warthogs are next, many with their young. Driving along a burnt patch, we see wild dogs. We know this is a great spot when our guide whips out his camera and starts shooting. There are only 3,000 left in the world, he tells us, and they’re very rare to see.

As we’re leaving, we come across elephants. They’re so massive and enchanting; gentle giants at the watering hole. Two male elephants start to play, or so it seems. They lock tusks and start rearing each other, yelling, throwing their trunks. It’s an act of dominance, and they push back behind the brush. Testosterone is flowing when one elephant reemerges, spotting our truck. He’s not going to let any animal, alive or diesel-fueled, get in his way. Our driver revs the engine to warn the other elephants to stop moving. If this elephant starts to charge, they’d be directly in our path of escape and we’d be trapped.  The elephant roars and mock charges the truck. We stand our ground, it turns, and we drive away unscathed. Branches are not the most dangerous thing in Khwai.

A view into a not so distant past

The bushmen are the indigenous people of Africa. They are hunters and gatherers, wandering the bush and avoiding lions to survive.

About 30 years ago, the government mandated that all citizens get an education. The bushmen were given the choice to stay living where they were in the national parks and forgo an education, or move into government subsidized settlements near the schools to participate. They chose the latter and so, everyone under the age of 30 speaks English in addition to their native language.

The native language of the bushmen is as varied as their tribes. Literally every tribe, of which there are hundreds, has its own language. All include a variety of clicking sounds, most of which occur mid-word. It’s very difficult to replicate.

As the rest of the community are non-English speakers now living in settlements, money has become problematic. Cattle herders is generally the best bet. Alcoholism is a threat. One tribe had the idea of offering walking tours as a way to share their culture with others, and so for three months a year, the bushmen move in to the Kalahari to make extra money.

We meet a group of about a dozen bushmen: men, women and children. They show us the plants they use to make poison for their arrows, how to start a fire using zebra dung, and how to dig up scorpions for entertainment value. We end the night watching the men play a game while the women chant a cheer.

It’s easy in this moment to be struck by the significant differences between the bushmen and ourselves. The adults are dressed in animal hides, but we must remember that this is a representation of how the Bushmen used to live. When they get back to their temporary settlement, they’ll put on Western clothing, not wanting to overwear their leather as these items are irreplaceable during the hunting ban. (The only exception to the ban is small game for bushmen only, as hunting is so core to who they are.) Every place has its indigenous population, and these people are often grossly mistreated. From our Western point of view, it seems that the government and people of Botswana have given the bushmen freedom to own the choices made about their future. The transition though, is new and only time will tell how it all unfolds.

An unexpected guest

Camp Kalahari is situated along the Makgadikgadi salt pans. It’s oppressively hot in the afternoons and even though we’ve come during the wet season, its seen no water for some time. In years past, the watering holes had run dry. This had forced the animals to travel further to survive. They’d come upon cattle, anger farmers by snacking, and get shot. Wanting to protect the wildlife, Botswana enacted a strict 6-yr ban on killing any wild animal. Farmers were at a loss, as government compensation for each cow eaten was not enough to cover the cost of a new cow. Man-made watering holes were the semi-successful solution to keeping the animals close.

Our camp has a small swimming pool, understandably mistaken for a watering hole by thirsty passerbys. We were told that animals would often wander in, but the combination of lions, overeager tourists, and the ban on firearms proved to be too much. An electric fence was installed around the camp a few years ago. Only the elephants have been smart enough to realize a little shock won’t actually kill. (In the defense of other animals, elephants are huge and for all we know, may barely feel the deterrent.)

The fence though, does not stop smaller animals from wandering in. On our last night in camp Kalahari, after our guide had safely walked us to our tent and we’d fallen asleep, I woke up to the sounds of an animal trying to get into our tent. Reasonably, I woke Andrew who just as reasonably told me to go back to sleep. He got up to use the bathroom, putting on his headlamp to navigate the zippers between our sleeping tent and the bathroom tent. “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” he says and comes back to me. “It’s actually in the tent.” I’m a bit panicked. “What? Is it a mouse?” “No, it’s a little bit bigger than a mouse.” The tent had been zipped and the hole between the ground and the end of the zipper couldn’t have been more than an inch or two of clearance. “So, like a squirrel?” I ask. “Yeah, maybe, if a squirrel was a little bit bigger.” For the rest of the night we hear this poor thing trying to escape, not sure how it got in, thrashing against the side of the tent.  We’d been given a box containing insect repellent and a bull horn to cry for help, but Andrew assured me it wasn’t necessary, so I instead used the box to barricade the opening to our tent.  I heard his little body slam against that too. Just before dawn, it found it’s way out. At breakfast Andrew described the critter to our guide. “Totally harmless,” he says. “It was a genet cat.” He pulls up a picture he had saved on his phone. Next time, we’re using the bullhorn.