'Remember to come back'

Don't wanna.

My brother warned me that Africa has this reputation for getting into one's heart. He was right. If it wasn't for the kitties and my shiny new husband, I might have made it to Jo'burg but no further before buying a ticket right  back to Maun's crunkety little airfield.

Why am I writing this at all? I can't catalogue all the memories, there are too many, and regarding the Bush itself, I don't have the skill to convey its beauty.  So I will try to write the small things that will be lost to time, when images of the most sublime remain.

First thing I must never forget is that should I ever again go on Safari, it is important to check that we're travelling in an open sided vehicle. One of the most magical things was the real proximity of the animals, something that I think would be lost with windows. I don't want to ever travel in a glass cage.  Better to have a boneshaker, with all the dust and dodgy roads, and to be so close, to feel real presence.
View without zoom from my seat on the landcruiser.  This gentleman alarmed our guide somewhat because he seemed to be demonstrating, not exactly a willingness to overturn the vehicle, but no reluctance either.

Second thing I must always remember is that,given this first, sunglasses are very necessary, just to keep grit and dust out of ones eyes, but buy a spare pair. If the hinges snap, elastoplast can only go so far:


Third thing is that little bottles of hand sanitiser gel are really useful, and hygiene is no less effective for being simple.

Stories I may forget:

 Boob Jobs of old Botswana
As we trudged along the Victoria Falls rhino walk to meet its eponymous celebrities, Skinny the guide told us many things, about Dr Livingstone's work with quinine, about the medicinal aspects of elephant dung and about a strange small creature he dug up out of the dust, a wee beast too teeny for my camera. This was an ant-lion larva. These things make traps for ants, but that is not the oddest thing about them. According to Skinny,  adolescent tribesgirls in search of suitors would encourage the development of womanly breasts by attaching an ant-lion larva to each nipple, its clasp/bite supposedly encouraging expeditious mammary expansion.Decorously, he had no comment to make about whether or not it works. I think, if it doesn't, you just keep going until you find co-operative pairs of ant-lions. One is just going to make things weird.


The Twilight Sinisters
Discussion of hyenas happened a lot in our group. Some thought they were hideous, others could not see why, if a Wild African Dog is considered beautiful, Hyenas are not. We had two sightings, one of a lone hyena with a kill, and the other a complete surprise; two hyenas met us on the road. According to our guides,  animals treat each jeep/landcruiser as one single animal that smells of petrol, makes lots of noise, is friendly and does not threaten - as opposed to human beings, which many animals recognise as being very dangerous indeed.But some animals are not fooled and these two characters were among them. Our cameras were no good in the low light; They snuffled around the vehicle and looked at us and at each other very pointedly, lifting their noses, eyes glinting. The light was failing and they went on their way, but I felt an odd kind of feeling in my stomach, a quiet sense of them being trouble.
That night, I had my first ever nose bleed, and  I was aware of being in a tent cubicle in the Bush, the scent of human waste easily detectable to any animal, now coupled with that of blood. I cleaned myself up and went to sleep in our tent.

One of the most wonderful things about camping in the wilds of Botswana was the sound at night: Lions singing, elephants trumpeting, hippos twanging away like some sort of double base...nothing is quiet. It is one of the things I actively miss.  That night I was woken up by a voice outside:

'YEAH! Hehehahaheheheheh!' It jeered, distorted but recogniseably human.
'YEAH!'  Hehehahahahehehehaha!' Another voice replied, again very near.

The voices didn't flutter up and down the scale;they didn't sound like cartoons, but like two very unpleasant hecklers at a live comedy show. My blood ran cold and sleep was hard to come by. Many tales link Hyenas to Shape Changers; I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a courteous stranger outside the tent asking me to let them in, or  to find, in the morning, our camping staff Obi and Ronald standing at the breakfast table with fixed smiles and ever so slightly ill-fitting skins. Later the chill returned to my bones when our guide told us the tale of the tall man who went camping in the bush by himself, and  decided to sleep with his head outside his tent. Humans did not find him before a hyena did.

The fairy-men of the Savuti
We went to Savuti in search of leopards. We didn't find them there. We found a dry high land rustling with wind and leaves and wild dry sage scenting the air so powerfully that each breath seemed to clear one's soul of any old poison. There our vehicle broke down, and we had to tow it over the sand, to the amusement of a breakfasting elephant overhead. There  we met eagle-owls drumming their hearts out with big 'Ouf! Ouf!' sounds at one another. And there also, we found these little creatures almost concealed beneath a bush:
This photo doesn't convey the fay sense of them, the expressiveness of their faces, but I wasn't surprised to learn of old bushman tales of a raiding party defeated by a bat-eared fox who used their own weapons against them and could turn into a man.

Notes From The Bush: Boob Jobs of Old Botswana

As we trudged along the Victoria Falls rhino walk to meet its eponymous celebrities, Skinny the guide told us many things, about Dr Livingstone's work with quinine, about the medicinal aspects of elephant dung and about a strange small creature he dug up out of the dust, a wee beast too teeny for my camera.* This was an ant-lion larva.
These things make traps for ants, but that is not the oddest thing about them. According to Skinny,  adolescent tribesgirls in search of suitors would encourage the development of womanly breasts by attaching an ant-lion larva to each nipple, its clasp/bite supposedly encouraging expeditious mammary expansion.Decorously, he had no comment to make about whether or not it works. I think, if it doesn't, you just keep going until you find co-operative pairs of ant-lions. One is just going to make things weird.

*Hence this photo taken from www.britannica.com

Notes from the Bush: The Twilight Sinisters

Discussion of hyenas happened a lot in our group. Some thought they were hideous, others could not see why, if an African Wild/Painted Dog is considered beautiful, Hyenas are not. The hyena here is not helped by me getting him slightly out of focus.

We had two sightings, one of a lone hyena with a kill (chap above) and the other a complete surprise; two hyenas met us on the road. According to our guides,  animals treat each jeep/landcruiser as one single entity that smells of petrol, makes lots of noise, is friendly and does not threaten - as opposed to human beings, often recognised as being very dangerous indeed.But some are not fooled and these two characters were among them. Our cameras were no good in the low light;our visitors snuffled around the vehicle and looked at us and at each other very pointedly, lifting their noses, eyes glinting. The light was failing and they went on their way, but I felt an odd kind of feeling in my stomach, a quiet sense of them being trouble.

That night, I had my first ever really copious nose bleed, and  I was aware of being in a tent cubicle in the Bush, the scent of human waste easily detectable to any animal, now coupled with that of blood. I cleaned myself up and went to sleep in our tent.

Among the most wonderful things about camping in the wilds of Botswana is  the  night music. It is one of the things I actively miss, lions crooning and roaring, elephants giving it large, hippos twanging away like some sort of double bass/tuba combo...nothing is quiet. That's why early afternoon safaris are pointless; by then most of the beasties are sleeping off last night's  fiesta.That night I was woken up by a voice outside:

'YEAH! Hehehahaheheheheh!' It jeered, distorted but recogniseably human.
'YEAH!'  Hehehahahahehehehaha!' Another voice replied, again very near.

The voices didn't flutter up and down the scale;they didn't sound like cartoons, but like two very unpleasant hecklers at a live comedy show. My blood ran cold and sleep was hard to come by. Many tales link Hyenas to shape changers. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear a courteous stranger outside the tent asking me to let them in, or  to find, in the morning, our camping staff Obi and Ronald standing at the breakfast table with fixed grins and slightly furry skin around the ears and elbows. Later the chill returned to my bones when our guide told us the tale of the tall man who went camping in the bush by himself, and  decided to sleep with his head outside his tent. Humans did not find him before a hyena did.

Notes From The Bush: Fairy Folk of the Savuti

We went to Savuti in search of leopards. We didn't find them there. We found a sandy high land rustling with wind and leaves and wild dry sage scenting the air so powerfully that each breath seemed to clear one's soul of any old poison. There our vehicle broke down, and we had to tow it over the sand, to the amusement of a breakfasting elephant overhead. There  we met eagle-owls drumming their hearts out with big 'Ouf! Ouf!' sounds at one another. And there also, we found these little creatures almost concealed beneath a bush:
This photo doesn't convey the fay sense of them, the expressiveness of their faces, but I wasn't surprised to learn of old bushman tales of a raiding party defeated by a bat-eared fox who used their own weapons against them and could turn into a man.