A boy of about eighteen mans the bar here at Backpackers during the afternoon. His name is Gosiame, which means "alright" in Setswana. It's a chill name, which makes sense because Gosiame is a laid back kid. His body is tall as if he'd been stretched from his head and his feat when he was younger. He's interested in the world but says he never wants to leave Maun. I wonder how that mixes in his head. Maybe he does want to see the rest of the world but lack of opportunity and prospects have convinced him that he is only interested in learning about it. This has lead him to reading, though. Avidly, apparently- he finished the Eragon series in a month. Well, almost finished. A German girl left him the first four books and now he wants to get his hands on the fifth. The fantasy aspect of those books appealed to him. A painter by trade, imagination will be useful to him.
He wants to start his own business. Aspirations. He reaches high. That's evident in the literary challenge he is submitting to his broken English at the moment- Anna Karenina. Heavy. He says he's enjoying it, though.
Gosiame isn't the only Maun native who enjoys reading. Old Bridge Backpacker's Lodge is named after the decades old timber and mud bridge that, fifty years ago, was the only entrance to Maun. Under the bridge, there is a small plate of debris from the crumbling of the structure where a young boy has sat for the past five days, from the middle morning to the late afternoon, devouring book after book. I would be hard pressed to keep pace with his voracious literary appetite. Though, I am attempting to quickly relieve myself of the heavy Sherlock Holmes volume which I brought with me. Gosiame says that he will take it off of my hands when I'm done.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Music Trippin'
I have decided that there will be an award and I will call it the Music Trippin' Award. This will be a song or sound that I come across in my travels that deserves, in my opinion, recognition. Here is the first ever Music Trippin' Award. It goes to the exceedingly neat music video for the song Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye. Check it out below.
The Zoos Are Alive!
Africa has contextualized the zoo for me. It's cool to go to the zoo and see a hippopotamus swimming around in the cement pool that has been constructed for it. Afterward, read the little sign filled with trivia on the animal and a little map of Africa with red shading over the parts where hippos live. Even cooler is seeing these large African mammals in a zoo like the one in Jacksonville, Fl., where the African Mammal's "cages" are a huge expanse of simulated savannah. All of the lions, zebras, giraffes, buffalo, everything, lives in the same enclosure, interacting as normally as possible. I think it's a smart model and the last I heard they don't have to dope the animals to make them happy. Coolest yet is standing on the bank of a river in Africa and not ten feet from you rises out of the calm water a massive, grey head with its mouth open, showing four swords sticking out of its gums and a neck that could fit four of me in the skin around it. Hippos are nothing like what you see in cartoons when you're a child.
Once I was sure that I was not in any danger, I smiled broadly. I couldn't stop smiling. Even if the people here were not friendly, even if the weather were not as beautiful as it has been, a sight like that could make up for it. That is world trippin'.
I arrived in Maun last Tuesday. Internet access is spotty so I have not been able to write but this country is amazing. The native people, the Batswana, are very friendly to me. Kina tells me that it is because I am white. That they treat her differently because when she speaks English, they assume that she (a black woman) is being rude by not speaking Setswana. There is a large community of ex-pats here in Maun. They are, for the most part, useless. No group escapes their condescension; not the foreigners passing through because these ex-pats label themselves "local," nor the natives for, when it is convenient, the ex-pats will cite their country of origin. They lounge about all day, supplied for booze from the money they "earn" from owning lodges or managing lodges owned by friends. I hazard to call a living like this "earning" as there is such a disparity between what a white will make and what a black will make. Often the native working as a maid or bell boy in the lodges around Maun will make something akin to $10 US a day. Of course no foreigner would move to Maun in order to work as a part of the service staff so I will turn to a more educated position, such as accountant for a lodge, for a comparison. Kina has a friend who makes $20,000 US a year in one of the wealthiest lodges in Gaborone. I was talking with a woman from South Africa who works at a comparable lodge in Maun for $100,000 US a year. Hmmm...
Anyway, serious stuff aside, I'm having a blast. The day I arrived, I was taken to the Old Bridge Backpackers Lodge where I was greeted with a boat ride. Sure, why not. It was pretty along the river. The boat was full and so I sat near the bow. There was a Belgian sitting close to me and I began to chat with him. His name was Nicholas and we've
Been hanging out for the past week. One of the guys from Backpackers jumped in the river :-/ The next day, a guy who lives on the bank next to where this guy jumped in said that he'd seen the biggest crocodile he'd ever seen in that river right there just a day before...better to be lucky than good, I suppose.
After I had a chance to get settled in, I started to meet an endless stream of travelers. A couple traveling from Switzerland, an American just out of the peace corps and doing one final tour of Africa on his motorcycle before returning to The States for the first time since 2009, a Norwegian on holiday, another American traveling with his sister, two French fellows passing through and the list goes on and on. Finally, I met two Italian guys named Mattieu and Peeter. They were from the North of Italy, near the alps. Nice guys. They were chartering a plane for a scenic tour of the Okavango Delta and had an unfilled seat. Uh...yes.
Once we left Maun, there was a buffer of about thirty kilometers where we didn't see anything. After that buffer, I began to notice that there were tiny objects moving about the landscape. Like toy figurines, the wildlife moved below us. Hippos dotted the streams and rivers, never more than four together. Herds of antelope and zebra cooled themselves under short trees. Buffalo did the same but with huge births given to their herds. All escaping the afternoon heat.
Only the elephants and the giraffes seemed to be moving about. "Elephant!" cried a girl in the back and we looked down and saw a big bull elephant trotting along a path, grabbing tufts of leaves from the trees on either side of him and stuffing them in his mouth. A little further we saw two mother elephants herding a line of young elephants. One mother was a the front and the other was at the back. They moved a steady clip and I wondered if they were running from something or if maybe they were just late for an elephant engagement. Whenever one of the young would step out of line, the mother in the back would raise her trunk and the young one would hop back. If you're thinking this had to be the cutest thing in the world, you are right. At least, it was cute enough to keep us cooing until we saw the giraffes.
What I first thought was a branch among a group of trees started bobbling about in a very un-treelike fashion. I realized that it was giraffe youth kicking and bucking. I looked for a lion or hyena because I thought the violent behavior must indicate an attack of some sort. No such thing, the kid stopped bucking and started jumping about in lanky, sloppy circles. Soon, I saw the second giraffe youth and a group of taller animals to the side. Both of the youths began to bobble around in this goofy fashion. They were dancing, I suppose.
That's the news from Africa, adventurers.
Once I was sure that I was not in any danger, I smiled broadly. I couldn't stop smiling. Even if the people here were not friendly, even if the weather were not as beautiful as it has been, a sight like that could make up for it. That is world trippin'.
I arrived in Maun last Tuesday. Internet access is spotty so I have not been able to write but this country is amazing. The native people, the Batswana, are very friendly to me. Kina tells me that it is because I am white. That they treat her differently because when she speaks English, they assume that she (a black woman) is being rude by not speaking Setswana. There is a large community of ex-pats here in Maun. They are, for the most part, useless. No group escapes their condescension; not the foreigners passing through because these ex-pats label themselves "local," nor the natives for, when it is convenient, the ex-pats will cite their country of origin. They lounge about all day, supplied for booze from the money they "earn" from owning lodges or managing lodges owned by friends. I hazard to call a living like this "earning" as there is such a disparity between what a white will make and what a black will make. Often the native working as a maid or bell boy in the lodges around Maun will make something akin to $10 US a day. Of course no foreigner would move to Maun in order to work as a part of the service staff so I will turn to a more educated position, such as accountant for a lodge, for a comparison. Kina has a friend who makes $20,000 US a year in one of the wealthiest lodges in Gaborone. I was talking with a woman from South Africa who works at a comparable lodge in Maun for $100,000 US a year. Hmmm...
Anyway, serious stuff aside, I'm having a blast. The day I arrived, I was taken to the Old Bridge Backpackers Lodge where I was greeted with a boat ride. Sure, why not. It was pretty along the river. The boat was full and so I sat near the bow. There was a Belgian sitting close to me and I began to chat with him. His name was Nicholas and we've
Been hanging out for the past week. One of the guys from Backpackers jumped in the river :-/ The next day, a guy who lives on the bank next to where this guy jumped in said that he'd seen the biggest crocodile he'd ever seen in that river right there just a day before...better to be lucky than good, I suppose.
After I had a chance to get settled in, I started to meet an endless stream of travelers. A couple traveling from Switzerland, an American just out of the peace corps and doing one final tour of Africa on his motorcycle before returning to The States for the first time since 2009, a Norwegian on holiday, another American traveling with his sister, two French fellows passing through and the list goes on and on. Finally, I met two Italian guys named Mattieu and Peeter. They were from the North of Italy, near the alps. Nice guys. They were chartering a plane for a scenic tour of the Okavango Delta and had an unfilled seat. Uh...yes.
Once we left Maun, there was a buffer of about thirty kilometers where we didn't see anything. After that buffer, I began to notice that there were tiny objects moving about the landscape. Like toy figurines, the wildlife moved below us. Hippos dotted the streams and rivers, never more than four together. Herds of antelope and zebra cooled themselves under short trees. Buffalo did the same but with huge births given to their herds. All escaping the afternoon heat.
Only the elephants and the giraffes seemed to be moving about. "Elephant!" cried a girl in the back and we looked down and saw a big bull elephant trotting along a path, grabbing tufts of leaves from the trees on either side of him and stuffing them in his mouth. A little further we saw two mother elephants herding a line of young elephants. One mother was a the front and the other was at the back. They moved a steady clip and I wondered if they were running from something or if maybe they were just late for an elephant engagement. Whenever one of the young would step out of line, the mother in the back would raise her trunk and the young one would hop back. If you're thinking this had to be the cutest thing in the world, you are right. At least, it was cute enough to keep us cooing until we saw the giraffes.
What I first thought was a branch among a group of trees started bobbling about in a very un-treelike fashion. I realized that it was giraffe youth kicking and bucking. I looked for a lion or hyena because I thought the violent behavior must indicate an attack of some sort. No such thing, the kid stopped bucking and started jumping about in lanky, sloppy circles. Soon, I saw the second giraffe youth and a group of taller animals to the side. Both of the youths began to bobble around in this goofy fashion. They were dancing, I suppose.
That's the news from Africa, adventurers.
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