Spring Break: Kasane to Francistown

While waiting for the sun to wake up in northern Botswana, we stood outside a small bakery in Kasane huddled in a crowd of people. All of us had lined up our luggage in a line, attempting to secure a position on the bus. Unusual for Botswana, the bus arrived punctually at 5:55 am, and we left shortly after six. The bus, or better yet, shuttle, was of the retirement home variety: seating for 22, small, and a short cab.

The three hour journey back to Nata was quite uneventful, if not a bit cramped. But that's what we came to Africa for, right? If I wanted comfort, I would have stayed home and cruised in Lola, my beloved white Malibu.

After a short lunch break, we continued on to our next destination: Francistown. This second largest city of Botswana is significantly different from Gaborone in one major respect: street layout. Whereas the capital is spread out and can feel like a gigantic suburb instead of Botswana's metropole, there is no mistaking the certain Western influence in Francistown: street grids are the rule. The central shopping district centered around Blue Jacket Street is a well-defined, bargain hunter's paradise.

Francistown came into being because of gold discoveries in the mid-19th century, and the consequent influx of European prospectors turned the area into a boom town. This was among many things we learned at our visit to Supa-Ngwao Museum. Also, we gained insight into the relationship between Botswana and Zimbabwe, as the Kalanga people are a minority-majority group. That is, they are a small percentage of the nation's population, but are the majority in town.

Many Zimbabweans have come for decades to get food and supplies in this border town, a human flow which has only increased under Mugabe's onerous treatment of the Kalanga's counterparts in western Zimbabwe. Not all are welcomed with open arms, however. It is a bit of a strained relationship, as many of the newcomers are stereotyped as criminals and thieves.

To be perfectly honest, there is not much to do for visitors in Francistown. As much as I like to disbelieve the dismal description in Lonely Planet's guidebook, they nailed the lack of entertainment on the head. Even the lone movie theater (Cine 2000) was closed and converted into an evangelical church. In a city of over 100,000, imagine! Due to its perfect walkability, Francistown can be covered on foot within a day and thus our second day was spent retracing our steps and cooling off at O'Hagan's Irish Pub. Around 7 pm we picked up our luggage from the hotel and made our way to the train station for our first ever African train ride, the subject of my next blog.

Spring Break: Kasane for now

As you might have gathered from the last few posts, traveling in this Texas-sized country requires a bit of time, especially if by land. After our long journey, we finally arrived at Thebe River Camping and got ourselves a few permanent tents. They included such modern luxuries as floors, a rug, and a futuristic lamp which got brighter the more you tapped its base.

The Chobe River, which runs next to the campsite, makes up the border between Namibia and Botswana and runs into the eponymous Chobe National Park. We spent the day walking around Kasane, which is a fairly spread out town, nothing more than a block or so from the main road. Our guidebooks pointed us to an ancient baobab tree from days of yore (below left), whose gargantuan interior was used as a prison by the local chief. One of the local men started talking to us, re-explaining the history of the tree and then pointing us to an even larger, living specimen located around back.

Made famous by Saint-Exupery's children's book, "Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince)", and perhaps Regina Spektor's "Baobabs", the baobab, native to Madagascar, Australia and southern Africa, can reach diameters of 36 feet and heights of nearly a nine-story building. Their enormous trunks can store 32,000 gallons of water in times of drought. African mythology tells of every animal being given a plant; the hyena characteristically took his, planted upside, leaving the roots (or so the baobab's branches appear) in the air.

In the late afternoon we boarded a boat (or embarked, if you will) and trolled into Chobe National Park, home of the largest elephant herds in Africa. Despite the almost painstakingly slow pace, the ultimate close-ups of elephants and bloats of hippos were worth the wait. As words are insufficient to describe the grace of these animals, I will just end the blog here and give you a sample of Botswana's unique flora and fauna. Until next time, "Be well, do good work and keep in touch."

Spring Break: Maun to Kasane

While Lonely Planet contends there are buses from Maun to Nata and then Nata to Kasane, our safari guide told us not to hold our breath on getting a seat. As we were six and my travel protocol is never to leave a stranded American tourist behind, we had to come up with a way of ensuring all six of us arrived in Kasane safely.

Enter good cop (Alex), bad cop (Max).

Near the vending stalls, in the unofficial bus station, we started chit-chatting with some combi drivers; asking them the best way for us to get to Kasane.

Stage left, Alex, perhaps one of the most affable people I've ever met. He butters up the combi drivers with the bait. Six "clueless" Americans looking for the easiest way to another tourist trap. They're thinking gold mine. After some of the craziest calculations on a cell phone, I've seen, they offered us a one-way to Nata for 1700 pula ($25o).

Spot light suddenly turns to Max, stage right. An unassuming stand-up comedian in the making, from Harvard. Unexpectedly, Max clears his throat and says with the straightest of smiles, "1200 pula."

Long story short, the ploy worked, but we wound up getting a combi all the way to Kasane from another driver for about $65 per person. A bit steep by Botswana standards, but as my friend Tlotlo says, "You Americans will do anything to get anywhere."

The three hour journey was fairly uneventful. I underwent my first foot-and-mouth clearance: a simple check of my bags for meat products and then a gentle cleaning of the shoes. Almost more symbolic than practical. Crossing nearly the whole of Botswana from east to west, our combi ride took us through the Kalahari, a mixture of scrub and tall grasses. A bit off in the distance we could see the beginning of some of the largest salt pans in the world, the Makgadikgadi and Nxai Pans.

*Before we get to the pans, I simply have to say that no road trip is complete without a gigantic fibreglass statue of an animal. See my previous writings.

As for the pans (right), when we drove past them, the terrain turned incredibly arid with occasional white expanses and several seasonal ponds.

Our mid-way point was the tiny but vital transportation hub of Nata. After a quick lunch, we jumped back in the combi for the equidistant stretch to Kasane. Our ultimate aim was to go to Chobe National Park to see its earth-shattering (literally) elephant herds which can reach upwards of 100,000 in the dry season.

But as many of travel guides and websites warned, we may see that many simply on the way to Kasane. And moreover, see that many simply crossing the road in front of our vehicles.

Which is precisely what happened.

Aside from potholes as wide as the road and nearly a foot and a half deep, the most dangerous part of the only road crossing the northeastern part of Botswana was the foot traffic. Namely, elephants and giraffes. One particular elephant came a bit too close as it stepped out from the bushes twenty meters in front of our combi and I nearly got whiplash as we went from 120 km/h to a dead stop, then reverse.

Some of the on-lookers looked unfazed, though (left). Despite lumbering elephants we made it safely to Kasane just in time for the electricity to go out and go to bed.

You'll just have to wait until the next blog to hear about my stay in Kasane and enjoy this sunset over the only cultivated land I have seen in Botswana. Until next time, ciao chicas!

Just some Delta pics

Sunset in the Delta . . .

. . . and the concomitant moonrise

The beautiful waters of the Okavango Delta

Some national soccer stars (Botswana Zebras) and impala (the white-tailed deer of Southern Africa)

A cute little monkey

Spring Break: Okavango Delta

Happy Valentine's Day from Gaborone! A few minutes before 6 am local time, my train rolled into Gaborone and before 7 am I was on my bed catching up on emails and the news. Because of the extensive nature of my spring break sojourn, the next few blogs will be chronologically break up and tell the story of the last week and a half. Thus, this first blog will be about the CIEE group trip to the Okavango Delta, to which my last blog post alluded.

Here goes.

At 2:30 pm on February 6th, the CIEE students boarded an AirBotswana flight to the safari mecca of Botswana: Maun. This small town (pop. 30,000) is the starting point for foreign tourists heading for the Okavango Delta and the Moremi Game Reserve, our destination, which occupies the northeastern section of the delta.

Our four-day, three-night trek into the bush consisted mainly of early morning, i.e. waking up on the wrong side of 6 am, and late afternoon game drives. Despite the near arid conditions we experienced all week long, it is still the rainy season. For a reason which escapes me, this translates into sparse sightings of the animals. But considering many of us had never seen many of these creatures in their native environs, we were overwhelmed, to say the least, by our African ungulate encounters.

Crossed off my checklist were: elephant, zebra, giraffe, baboon, monkey, impala, crocodile, hippo, wildebeest (to the left) and even leopard.

While we apparently couldn't see them, there were lions nestled amongst the shoulder-high grasses.

As Joe, our indispensable guide, said, "You people from the towns see with your eyes, but we from the bush see with our ears." An irrefutable statement if I ever heard one.

Another highlight from our trip was the simultaneously touristy and traditional ride on a makoro. While normally made from hollowed out trees, ours were of the modern variety: fibreglass. Essentially a flat bottomed, African gondola propelled by a poler, the makoro acted as the major form of transportation in the delta and one can see why after an hour long ride. The towering swamp ferns create a verdant tunnel, with only the hollow croaks of frogs disrupting the silence.

On Monday, we did a short morning drive and then headed back to Maun, where our group split up. My group stayed in Maun for the night and explored the very cultural town. Stands upon stands selling clothes, candies, bananas, mangos, cell phone airtime, and everything in between. Packed in alleys, crowding the bus rank, the stands were the closest thing to an authentic bazaar I've experienced thus far in Botswana.

Next Post: From Maun to Kasane.

On Hiatus

At about 9:00 am this morning, Batsi (our CIEE director here in Botswana) informed us that we were booked for a 2:30 pm flight this afternoon for a trip to the Okavango Delta in the north of Botswana. Our trip will take us deep inside Moremi game reserve for four days of camping.

After that, I will be traveling around northern Botswana (Maun, Nata, Kasane, and Francistown) until my return on February 15th. A brave band of warriors is joining me, six of us in all I believe. A fellowship of sorts.

Because we will be without internet for quite a while, I would suggest not checking this blog for a couple weeks. Take care and can't wait to share the pictures!

Student Demonstration Update

As I only have an hour on campus before I leave to our off-campus lodging, I will keep this brief.

Starting on Friday, students upset about their failure to receive their student allowances from their sponsors began a student demonstration. It remained quite peaceful until their court case was dismissed against the Ministry of Education. After the decision, students marched off campus, which is where they ran into resistance from police.

I must emphasize two things: I am perfectly safe AND the information I have is only second-hand.

What is actually happening is not entirely known to me, except from what I can glean in newspaper accounts and student rumors. While we were still on campus the library closed and evacuated students when protesters neared the building; several classrooms of students were forced out by demonstrating students; and hundreds of students were chanting and marching around campus.

Beyond this, I am not quite sure about all of the details. Thank you all for your concerns, and I just want to reassure that CIEE (my program) has taken every precaution, including housing off-campus, until things are resolved on campus.

The possible outcomes are two: a settlement is reached and classes resume in the next two days OR more likely, the university will close and send all students (except us) home. This is only a temporary closure and will last an indefinite amount of time.

My thoughts on this are mixed, although as you will see, we have used the free time to see more of Gaborone.

Till I can write more, "Go a siame!" (Good-bye)