Assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Gaborone Botswana in 1994, Janie and I departed Washington with a sigh of relief. Foreign service officers hate assignments in Washington and we serve them more like a sentence handed down for a crime we didn't commit. Knowing full well that this could be my last Diplomatic Assignment since I was then 58 years old, we planned to make the best of it. As it turned out, it was not my last assignment, but that's not part of this story.
Our house was not quite ready when we arrived, workers were still there, but the Embassy Chauffeur delivered us to the house anyway, and after a 14-hour flight from London, the workers didn't interfere much with our catching up on our sleep. The following day, I was taken to the Government Center to present my credentials to the Head of State. This is a routine courtesy call to advise the President that I would be representing the United States at the U.S. Embassy in his country for the next 2 years. The local government, at that time, grants you diplomatic immunity for the duration of your assignment, and presents you with what insiders call, "Your get out of jail free card".
The embassy gave me the keys to a Toyota 4-runner, a 4 wheel drive pick-up truck. This one had the high-rise option, meaning that the truck body sat up very high above the wheels for desert running. Gaborone sits on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. We would make good use of that truck over the next 2 years...also suffer at least one embarrassing moment. There was a national game park (Mokolodi) less than 10 miles from the Embassy. Janie loved that 4-runner and when we would go to the park, I would drive to the park's main entrance, but soon as we entered, I would shift the 4-runner to low range and engage the 4-wheel drive and turn it over to her. This is not a park as you know parks. You can drive for 50 or 60 miles, no roads, just sand, scrub brush and ruts and never see any other living thing...other than that is, Rhino's, giraffe's, baboon's, kudu and a number of other species...no elephants or lions though. Anyway, Janie loved that truck and I must tell you there are, in fact, a few mud holes in the desert, and none escaped her...if she spotted one she headed straight for it. The Kalahari is not like the Sahara, strictly sand. It is a mixture of scrub growth, sand, and water (mud) holes. I could tell you lots of interesting stories about this place, but I want to, in this blog, tell you about the Okavango. So I'll be satisfied to tell you that one day after Janie had chased several rhinos, and splashed dry every mud hole she could find, we decided to have lunch at the park before we left. She loved their ostrich kebab.
We pulled into the parking area of the lodge, which was a graveled area and the truck was parked with its nose downhill. No problem because the 4-wheel drive was still engaged. We walked down the walkway and entered the beautiful open air lodge, built of field stones, with beams rising up to maybe 25 feet to a thatched roof.
There was a barn owl sitting on one of the beams, maybe 20 feet above the bar.
The bar was beautifully appointed, built of bamboo, with colored lights and Various African handcrafts behind the bar, including a tiki canoe...very rustic. We had our lunch, along with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Upon leaving, Janie started the Truck and commenced to back out of the parking space but the wheels began to spin in the loose gravel. She tried a couple of times and I said, Let me do it! I tried, same results. I tried my old Kentucky Skills of rocking it back and forth, still stuck. It was embarrassing. Here I was with my desert shorts, bush hat with one side held upward by a snap fastener, looking very much like a local, a real desert professional, but appearing to be a gringo. A man with a very thick British Accent walked up to my truck and asked, "Du ya wont me to lok yer ubs sir? I mustered as much dignity as I could and replied, "They're already locked". He said, "No sir ther not". He stepped to each front wheel and turned the hub, which he could clearly see were not locked, then said, "Now tri er sir, ye won ave any mor truble". I let the clutch out and it rolled back up the hill without moving a single loose gravel! I had no idea that the hubs ad to be locked at the wheels AND ALL THAT TIME POOR JANIE HAD FELT SO CONFIDENT AND COCKY AS SHE DOVE INTO EVERY MUD HOLE SHE COULD FIND AND CHASED RHINOS ACROSS THE ROUGH TERRAIN WITH COMPLETE ABANDON.
On to the Okavango however. We took a couple of weeks leave and flew northward to Moun, the staging area for entering the Okavango. The Okavango sits at the top/north side of the Kalahari Desert, near the Northern Border of Botswana, about 100 miles due east of Victoria Falls which splits Zimbabwe and Zambia. At Moun, I chartered a bush plane to fly us into the Okavango. After making pictures of Janie standing by the small plane as the pilot stuffed our luggage aboard, we rattled down the runway and were soon airborne. First I must tell you about DESERT THERMALS. As the plane flies over first white sand of the desert, then over patches of jungle, you will suddenly feel the plane fall perhaps a thousand feet, straight down, in just seconds. It'll take your breath away. What has just happened is that the plane had been flying over the hot sand with the thermal rising, and hit a patch of jungle with it's lush vegetation and the thermal abruptly ended, hence a violent downdraft. HOLD ONTO YOUR DRINK, YOUR HAT AND YOUR UNDERWEAR. Sorry about the underwear, but there will be laundry facilities, of some sort at Kamp Okuti..our destination.
Let me tell you that the Okavango river, coming southeasterly out of Namibia, empties into the Kalahari desert. There is no where for the water to go, so it creates the worlds largest delta (Swamp). After about 45 minutes of flight, the plane suddenly hits another thermal...but no..he is heading steeply downward toward that small gash in the jungle where a small dusty dirt strip sits. He touches down with dust swirling around the plane. As the dust clears, I can make out a jeep just emerging from the jungle canopy, and behind the wheel is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen with long black hair. She pulled up to the plane introduced herself as Jill and starts loading our luggage into the jeep. We climb aboard and before we can make the cover of the jungle, the plane is already kicking up dust as it roars down the strip and becomes airborne. Jill says, "It's about a 10 minute ride to the camp, would you like a drink. She produced a couple of martini's, complete with olive. Even in that 10 minute ride, we saw wild animals everywhere. One species in particular, we saw by the hundreds...looking somewhat like the deer family but smaller. I asked Jill what they were and she chuckled and said "Lion Food mostly".
Kamp Okuti was beautiful. Very rustic. All built with thatched roofs. No electricity. The open air dining room had beautiful chandeliers, albeit fired by kerosene. I could tell you many stories, about how we photographed lions from a distance of about 20 feet. You see the lion believes that as long as you are standing in the jeep, that you and the jeep are one and the same...THINK BIG! But then Rogers, our driver, did have a 30-30 beside him. There's no time or space in this blog to talk about these things however. I want to share with you an interesting event from our last night in the Okavango.
The camp has no electricity, of course, but they do have a small generator. They run it during the early hours of the evening, and charge batteries. That permits a small night light in each bungalow overnight. Janie and I were the only guests. After the host gave us a beautiful dinner, cooked over an open fire, where he baked bread in an iron pot. It had a iron lid and he piled hot coals on top to bake it. The fire was on a circular, sunken concrete slab about 15 feet in diameter. It was surrounded by rustic benches carved from split logs. The entire setup resembled a very small amphitheater with the large campfire in the center. Outside the circle of benches the next circle is made of cooking/serving tables built between and attached to trees. After the lovely dinner, we sat by the campfire and enjoyed the company of our hosts as we swapped stories and enjoyed the view of the beautiful African Sky. You see, the African Sky is completely unimpaired by pollution. We here in north America have, for example, not seen the milky way since we were kids because the pollution has long since obscured it. Not so in Africa. Eventually we headed to our bungalow. Janie carried a kerosene lantern and set it down on the small concrete slab just outside our door...left it there...burning. At 3:10 AM..I looked at my watch to mark the time because I was awakened by feeling our building shaking. In the darkness, I could hear Janie trying to hold her breath, as was I. She whispered, "What is it"? I said, "I don't know". She said.."GO SEE". I never moved! She tiptoed over to the door which had a small screened window. The lantern, still burning on the concrete slab, was shining up on the underbelly of the largest bull elephant we had ever seen. (Janie says not to even ask how she knew it was a bull)But whatever it was that convinced her would have been no more than 4 feet from her window. He was eating the vines which grew in the thatch of our roof. He made his way completely around our bungalow, snorting, ripping and each time he moved, our bungalow moved also. We were afraid to breathe because he could have knocked our bungalow down with one swipe. He eventually left and we went back to sleep.
The following morning, about 30 yards from our bungalow, the elephant had taken a Rest Stop. When an elephant takes the pause which refreshes, you need 4-wheel drive to get through it. What was interesting however is that he had been eating some kind of small apples. The apples had passed completely unharmed through his system. One could have picked them up, washed them off and eaten them...BETTER...MAKE THAT "COULD HAVE GIVEN THEM TO SOMEONE ELSE TO EAT", and they would have never known the difference.
The next morning, Jill drove us to the air strip where we had scheduled a pick-up by the same plane. I told Janie, "That's one beautiful girl...all that would be needed is a little green mist blowing around her feet, and I would have looked around for Tattoo...BECAUSE I WOULD BE CONVINCED THAT WE HAD JUST VISITED FANTASY ISLAND. On your next trip to Southern Africa, on the way to Walmart..you should consider making a side trip to the Okavango...take in Victoria Falls while you are there. It's in the vicinity...BY AFRICAN STANDARDS/Juan
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