Food Runs, She tells me

My wife, Ellen, has set up most of our itinerary for our two weeks in Botswana. The first week we will spend in Dia's village of Sephofe, which to me is the most interesting part of the trip. And then we head off into some very remote territory, all in the hope of seeing elephants, lions, giraffes, meerkats, and perhaps, with a bit of luck, a random rhinoceros.

I will be driving a truck. We will be sleeping in a tent. And the animals, we are told, will be right nearby. In regards to the lions, I confess to a certain ambivalence. Seeing a family of lions up close, with nothing but nylon between you and their teeth, like this British couple did, has got to be a cool experience. (Would you have the presence of mind to film the experience? - not sure that I would).

I suspect that it's probably one of those experiences you enjoy more in the retelling than in the present. Ellen has read a lot of blogs about the places we are going, and has lots of helpful hints about people who have encountered lions in the wild. All of these posts, I remind her, were written by people who were not eaten by the lions.

The main rule to remember is this - "food runs". Meaning that if you do encounter a lion, you should remain where you are. If you try to run away, the lion is likely to perceive you as a wildebeest or some other delicious mammal and treat you the way her brain has evolved to treat you - as dinner. So, presuming we can remember this rule in real time, I am trying to picture just how this would play out. Dia, Ellen, and I sitting in the tent. The lion outside, maybe pacing, maybe growling, maybe licking a few dewdrops from the tent.

And here's the only thing I know for sure: I'm some point, I'm going to have to pee.

The truth? If we have any super animal close ups, I'm praying it's with a meerkat.

Meerkats eat bugs.

Just Lion Around

If you liked the elephant video, you might enjoy this short video taken by a British couple camping in Botswana earlier this year. They were in a tent in a park where we will be camping in just three weeks, and they woke up to find a family of lions licking the water from the screen. I'm not sure I would have the presence of mind to actually film this interaction.

Is it safe?

Is it safe?

Most of the time when we tell people we are going to Botswana, they appear worried for our safety.

So I thought I would publish this link to a story I wrote last fall comparing life in the US with life in Botswana. Since that time we have seen dozens of tragic and violent attacks in our own country. In Botswana, Dia reports that life is, for the most part, pretty mellow. Guns are rarely seen. This is a girl who spent most of the past few years living on college campuses. For entertainment she liked to go out dancing, frequently at gay nightclubs. And her career choice was likely to land her a job at Planned Parenthood. So yeah, I don't worry about her being "over there".

Speaking of southern Africa, my sister Kathy leaves tomorrow morning for Lesotho, where she will be visiting her son Walter, also a Peace Corps volunteer. They will be touring Victoria Falls and then heading across northern Botswana hoping to see some big game. There is a pretty good chance that Dia may catch up with them for part of the trip.

And we will be there - 20 days from today.  Can't wait!

Grandma Smiling as Southern African Cousins Unite

In a continent in which ancestors matter a lot, two grandchildren of a woman from New York whose own grandmother immigrated from Donegal on the northwest coast of Ireland 130 years ago met up at a music festival in Swaziland. It might seem like a coincidence that Walter Bayer, shown here looking very happy in a funny hat, and our own Dia Marie are both Peace Corps volunteers in southern Africa. Then again coincidences are not always what they seem. Walter is the son of my sister Kathleen Bayer. Both Walter and Dia grew up as part of a tight group of cousins fiercely loyal to one another, their grandmother, and Don McLean's American Pie.

Both are motivated by a desire to serve. Both are adventurous and generous in spirit. And they both like music, enough to travel for hours and hours over bumpy roads to attend the BushFire festival. After the music died, Dia and Walter traveled together to Lesotho, where he teaches at a school in Butha-Buthe, a village at least three and a half hours from the capital, Maseru. Dia helped him teach a Life Skills class, then made for the mountains (they don't call Lesotho the mountain kingdom for nothing) and after a 9,000 foot climb in the Sani Pass, last we heard she is on the road back to Sefphofe.

Walter keeps a pretty cool blog on his life there, which you can find https://wbayer21.wordpress.com/ . Cool kids doing cool things. And in just 44 days we'll be there, flies on the wall, peeking in on how a new generation takes on the challenge of building a new world. My Uncle Bob told me long before I was a parent that if you're smart and patient you'll learn a lot from your kids. How right he was.

Bring Your Fire

When last we heard from Dia she was riding in a "combi", a small bus, with a few dozen other people, some of them fellow Peace Corps volunteers, crossing the border from Botswana into South Africa, en route to Swaziland. Swaziland is an independent kingdom of barely one million people. This weekend tens of thousands of music lovers will gather there to camp and dance and sing at the tenth annual Bush Fire Mountain Music Festival. 

More than 30 musical acts will perform including "Blitz the Ambassador", "Bomb Shelter Beast", and, my personal favorite, the "Correctional Services Choir". This is not the type of story we usually hear about Africa on the news. Yet, there is this. Last year CNN said that Bush Fire was one of the seven African music  festivals you have to see. Seven.

Among the music lovers joining Dia will be her cousin, Walter Bayer. Walter teaches in a school in Lesotho, and this is the first time the two will be able to get together since they started their assignments last year. The two of them grew up around Adirondack campfires on summer trips that my parents would organize for the whole family. So this weekend, while we sit around our Memorial Day bonfire, I will get a very large smile thinking about two global adventurers from the same family, far across the ocean, hopping and bopping at the Bush Fire Mountain Festival. 

Swaziland Music Festival

For a country as little known in the US as Botswana, it is impressive that there are now 15 novels written in English about the country. I refer to the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, a series by the British author Alexander McCall Smith. It features Mma. Precious Ramotswe, an entrepreneurial minded woman who sets up a series of businesses in Gabarone, beginning with her own private eye agency. She has a series of cleverly laid out adventures, and the Handsome Man's DeLuxe Cafe is the most recent of them, published in 2015.

By reading the novels (they've also been adapted for film - not so good), we have gotten some flavor for daily life in Botswana. I'm always cautious, however, when a Westerner takes on the job of characterizing another society. So I started to look up native writers, and it turns out that there are a good number of Batswana novelists. The most prominent among them is D.P. Semakaleng Monyaise, whose masterwork Go Sa Baori was published in 1999.

Unfortunately for me, all of his work is written in Setswana, and as far as I can tell none of it has been translated into English. So for now, the First Ladies Detective Agency is the best we can do. I'll let you know how realistic it seems once we get there.

If you'd like us to bring you back a souvenir, we'll be happy to do so. But it won't be ivory.

When we arrive in Botswana, at Seretse Khama International Airport, this is what we will see.

It's a life size elephant statue dedicated in 2015. It weighs 5,000 pounds, is composed of the tusks of elephants that died of natural causes, and was created by a group of young artists in Gaborone, Thapong Visual Arts. (I think Ellen would get a kick out of knowing that student artists participated in this project:).

Why create this sculpture? Why place it in the airport? It sounds as if Botswana's leaders see their future as tied to tourism, and their tourism tied to preserving the nation's wildlife. Currently a third of Africa's elephants live in Botswana, and they are protected with the fury of a lion defending her cubs. It is illegal to kill an elephant in Botswana, but poachers can be killed with impunity.

The continuing threat to the elephant herd, and thus to Botswana's economy and people, comes from illegal trafficking in ivory. Even though an international treaty signed in 1989 outlawed ivory sales, growing demand from the new consumer societies in Asia have caused an increase in slaughter of the majestic beasts.

When he dedicated the elephant statue, Botswana's President Ian Khama said that he wanted it in the airport because most of the ivory that leaves his country illegally does so in the suitcases of visiting tourists. It's an awareness thing - I guess they do want us talking about the elephant in the room.

So - if you'd like us to bring you back a souvenir, we'll be happy to do so. But it won't be ivory.