Big Safari Game in the Okavango Swamp, Kalahari Desert Travel August 30, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Botswana, Travel Clinic, Travelling Bag , trackbackStranded in the Kalahari desert we had no water and half a packet of Marie biscuits. The bus from Francistown had broken down again and the passengers disembarked, squatting in the cumbersome shade of a baobab tree. They, like us, were shifty-eyed; there had been no rain in Botswana for four years and the lions of the Kalahari were getting hungry. In Gaborone, a week before, we had watched the mauled body of a German girl carried into the hospital. Her death reminded us of the dangers of complacency in Africa. In the shadow of the bus, a vulture wheeling overhead, I kept my eyes fixed on the bush behind us.
The driver and friend tinkered with the engine which had burst into flames twice, and been push-started once by the passengers. Nobody seemed in any great hurry. Perched on the step of the bus, circa, an old man in a military coat fished a handful of polished knucklebones out of his pocket. He rattled them between cupped hands and threw them into the dust. He stared hard at the pattern, gathered them up, threw them down again. He raised his eyes from the pattern and stared a long time at my friend and I — the only two white people on the journey. The wings of the vulture rustled over our heads. Feeling uneasy, we turned to our Africa on a Shoestring handbook, learning that the Kalahari consists of some of the most arid and remote land in the world. We realised that only two cars had passed us all morning. By midday we realised we had finished our water and were sweating profusely.
The driver whistled through his teeth. Nuts, bolts, a broken fan belt dropped from the engine. It was 40°C in the shade and so quiet that all we heard was dust settling, the rattle of bones and the rustle of wings. A spring fell out of the engine. But it coughed, wheezed, and shrieked into life. The driver cavorted round the bus, beaming — no less surprised and pleased than we were.
After 100 miraculous kilometres we met the other bus returning to Francistown. Discretion erring, our driver announced we would swap buses. There followed much confusion. Passengers were still climbing off while the second load of passengers were scrambling on. Rugs, clothing, mielies, were tossed on top of the buses while the first load of passengers were still trying to reach their luggage. Finally, each bus made a three-point turn in a cloud of dusty exhaust, and off we went; 300km to Maun, on the very edge of the Okavango Swamps.
I woke, cold and stiff, at 4am as the bus lurched into Maun. The heat of the day had been replaced by searing cold and the bus was nearly empty. I dimly remembered having watched the sun set, copper orange over a colourless world. Then I had slept and awoken as the bus stopped amongst a scatter of mud huts. Somebody told me we were halfway to Maun and gave me some water which I was too thirsty to sterilise.
Sitting up in the cold morning light we could have been sprayed by a fine grey snow as we slept — dust from the Kalahari which I can still smell in my clothes.
The Okavango river flows across the desert to form a huge swampland, a watery jungle where animals roam; a fascinating, dangerous place. With a friend we visited the local hospital and saw victims of crocodile, hippo, and lion attacks, and a man blinded by a spitting cobra. The patient with the hippo bite told me that hippos have become the most dangerous animals in Africa.
`Once they were shy,’ he told me, ‘but now they attack because the white man . . .’ he pointed an imaginary rifle at the window and pulled the trigger. Using exceptionally sharp teeth, the hippos can crunch up both dugout canoes and their occupants. Indeed, the injured man did not even know he had been bitten until the water turned red as he swam to shore. I found this vaguely reassuring; a short, sharp death seemed preferable to a long, slow chewing underwater. However, as if this excitement were not enough, we were warned against malaria, bilharzia, and tsetse fly, all of which flourish in the swamps.
The following day we flew into the swamps in a six-seater plane. Dry desert gave way to blue lagoons full of water lilies, palm trees, islands and deep blue lakes. Herds of giraffe and waterbuck raced across the swamps in our shadow as we swooped on to the sandy airstrip.
A 15-foot canoe waited along with our poler for the week, Matata. As he pushed away from shore, the reeds of the swamp parting before us, I asked him what his name meant in Setswanan. ‘Problem, ‘ he translated with a very disarming smile. Did it mean he was a problem, or could he solve problems? We did not dwell on it.
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