'Rocking Botswana' -- Mosetsana style

The tale of Romeo and Juliet is far from a unique one and even in a little town called Otse, an hour South of Gaborone, there is a similar storey of tragic romance.  It is said that there were once two lovers from warring tribes who fell in love and, forbidden from being together, ran away to the village hill and were never seen again. It is rumoured that their spirits/ghosts inhabit the hill and that the laughter of their children can be heard at night – additionally, it is believed that if locals were to venture there that, they too, would disappear.

You can probably already guess that I, together with two friends: Audrey and Jenipher, decided it would be a great place to explore and climb new rocks – doing so as an overnight trip from Gabs. The going was undoubtedly much tougher than at Kgale hill with our efforts hampered by large packs containing sufficient water supplies, tents, sleeping gear, cooking gear and food. 

More challenging, the hill was structured in a series of ‘step’ like blocks that would involve reasonably easy rock scrambles across/upwards only to be followed by much more vertical approaches. At some stages we had no choice but to pass our bags along to each other in a chain so that we could manage pressure climbs forward and upward without compromising our hold and centre of gravity. After all, this wasn’t exactly a proper rock-climbing expedition with ropes or harnesses.

Our intention had been originally to get to the top of the hill and pitch a tent, but night approached during our climb. With no idea how far we actually were from the top, we weren’t too certain about precariously climbing and scrambling with our packs in such low light. We popped our bags down and I scouted ahead. I avoided going too far as I didn’t want to lose the others in the dark, which proved to be a good decision --  even in the small distance I went, the way back was difficult to find in darkness and in the reverse direction. But the scouting wasn’t all for nothing; I found a small but adequate ledge for us to sleep on, albeit not appropriate for setting up tents.

So that night we slept wedged between some rocks on the side of the hill with a great view of the small town below us and the starry sky above us. Sometimes nothing beats sleeping under the stars with fresh, breezy air.

The next day we strategically began our descent, continually weaving our way downwards based on the most manageable routes. One of these was chosen by Audrey’s sleeping bag when it went flying off her bag and into the shrub below – lucky enough it was just accessible. We knew we hit civilization again when we heard the sounds of cows greeting us at the base of the hill. On the bus trip back, however, we were probably the least civilized creatures around with hair teased up by sharp thorns and branches, twigs sticking out of our clothes and hair and covered in dirt from head to toe. This still didn’t stop us stylishly rocking up at Mugg and Bean for pancakes and coffee for breakfast.

Of course, in hindsight there were several things we could’ve done a lot more intelligently. We should’ve started the climb much earlier, avoiding doing it into night, carried better lighting and perhaps not have been so determined to keep going past certain points. We were also somewhat lucky it didn’t rain. On the plus side, we did carry first-aid kits, sufficient supplies of water, and mobiles with reception, told people where we went and kept a decent ‘team-work’ ethic.
Audrey, Jen and I might pretty bad influences on each other though..

Malaka and Phaphatha
Otse hill only seemed to whet our appetite for climbing rocks; in a country with no water to go ‘down’ in, the next best thing is to go up. A few weekends later, we thus headed to a small, obscure village called Malaka in the Tswapong hills – Eastern Botswana. On route we stopped via the transit town of Palaypye where we gobbled down giant chunks of watermelon, face-in-watermelon style, whilst awaiting our next bus to Malaka in the blistering heat.  Watermelon juice dribbling down our chin and clothes in the most inelegant way possible, we copped a few bemused looks by the locals.

Once at Malaka, we ended up making our own way to Old Palapye – a historical area that had previously been occupied during times of Livingstone’s mission where he had established a church.
The day was intensely hot, the track was sandy and our packs heavy, but we slogged onwards to the old church ruins where we established camp for the night. Nearby the church, and extremely rare for Botswana, was a tiny Gorge where a little stream of water trickled from a natural underground spring, supplying us with our cooking and drinking needs. With a feast of cous-cous, popcorn, hot chocolates and mochas, we hung out in the silhouette of the ruined church walls, watching the stars and chatting.

     

The next day we returned to the Gorge early in the morning before our guide was due to arrive and repeated our newly-developing rock scrambling obsession. It was Jen, Audrey and I once more, but this time we had also roped Kaylee into our mischief. From the top of the gorge we could see the green tops of trees all around, quite a contrast to the rest of Botswana and a consequence of both the recent rains and ground spring-water.

A local guide, Cisco, met us at the church ruins to show us around the rest of the old settlement area and concluded with an even more beautiful gorge and spring. We were stunned to see green grass lining these small gorges where the streams trickled by, creating the feeling that we really had stepped out of Botswana and into a fertile paradise where literally hundreds of butterflies flew by. As simple as it was, we got a huge pleasure from just flopping onto soft green grass without having a plethora of different types, sizes and shapes of prickles embedding themselves somewhere.  We could understand how, in such a somewhat ‘barren’ country, such a beautiful gorge has religious and sacred values to the local people. Finally back in Palaype we rewarded our sore, stiff, bruised selves with cold delicious ice-cream before shuffling back on the bus for another ride back to Gabs.

Diving, Desert and Delta

Breaking the dive drought

So what do you do when you're an addicted diver living in a land-locked country? With an almost 2 month gap since your last dive? Why, you run away to South Africa during semester break for 8 days of pure solid diving of course.

Two days in Umkomaas -- diving Aliwal Shoal

Umkomaas is a small town south of Durban on the East Coast of South Africa, where electric/barbed wire fences are refreshingly minimal compared to other parts of the country. The key draw card of the town is Aliwal Shoal; an extensively long reef home to a plethora of marine life. During a South African long weekend, it was busy with divers indeed.

My first backwards roll off the boat and descent into the water after my dive-drought was undoubtedly therapeutic, sending those instant waves of calm through me. Although the weather might not have been ideal, (realistically it was typical Melbourne diving with an overcast day, some rougher waves, cooler weather and 10m vis) I felt right at home. Some of the other divers, however, were not quite accustomed to such conditions and didn't quite love it the same. So I found myself missing MONUC (my dive club back home) where everyone would get up at freezing-o'clock in the middle of true winter and bare through horrid weather in the rougher conditions of Bass strait.

The marine life was great; Grey Nurse Sharks, White reef sharks, giant eels, huge potato bass, the odd ray, some giant turtles, rainbow wrasses and swim-throughs curtained by fish. But fish could only entertain me for so long; after 4 dives at Aliwal I was off to my next destination; Komati Springs.

Advanced Nitrox and Cave Diving Course -- Komati Springs

I had been informed on good authority that when in South Africa I should take advantage of courses offered by "Technical Diving Africa" run by Don and Andre Shirley and decided to do just that. In truth, I hadn't intended to be doing my Cave course so soon after Deep Cavern in Australia, but both courses worked out to be a perfect match and SO worth it.

Komati Springs is located in the Eastern countryside of South Africa in a beautiful landscape of valleys, rocky outcrops, bright meadows and dry grasslands juxtaposed together. The dive site is a stunning green and blue open waterhole that extends to a depth of 53m with a cave system (once an old asbestos mine) that commences in about 13-18m of that hole. The cave system is quite extensive with various cave floor levels extending past 100m in depth and interlinked by a shaft that starts at the end of the 18m deep 1st floor. I saw 3 floors in total; the 18m deep 1st floor, the 26m deep 2nd floor and the 36m deep 3rd floor. Going down the shaft between those floors is a surreal experience in itself -- the water is so clear as you move down that the only thing limiting your vision down the 100m+ shaft is the lumens of your torch and its almost as though you're falling weightlessly through 'nothingness.’ The only source of light in the cave is your torches (you have one primary and two back-up) which only serves to add atmosphere to exploring the systems with the light forming amazing patterns in the way it hits the walls and rock.

Of course, doing a cave course is more than just fun, games and exploration. Cave diving itself has a huge stigma attached to it due to the percentage of deaths compared to other 'sports' but the reality is the majority of the statistics come from inexperienced, untrained divers and/or times when equipment was less reliable and when training systems weren't in place (ie the early days). The course, therefore, is designed to help you deal with the stressful emergency situations and instill automatic-reactions to these 'worst case' scenarios. Drills include light failure, line loss (it is a MUST to have a continuous line in a cave so you can always find your way back to the entrance), gas sharing (with a long hose), lost-diver searches, reeling practice, lost masks, finning technique (as clear as the way may be, all it takes is incorrect finning to raise the silt and reduce the visibility to nothing) and the use of direction markers etc.

 

The advanced nitrox side of things has more of a mathematical focus. Advanced nitrox is simply oxygen enriched air (ie oxygen percentages over the normal 21%) and is largely beneficial because it reduces your absorption of nitrogen which is one of the main hazards associated with diving. However, oxygen itself becomes toxic over a certain partial pressure, so depending on how much you 'enrich' the air with oxygen, you will be limited with the depth you dive. Therefore, you are often looking at optimizing your dive time and safety by investigating these in relation to the dive parameters. Part of the course also included decompression procedures with different oxygen mixtures; but I won't go into the detail as its quite complicated and probably boring to most non-divers.

The courses were surprisingly intensive, so my time at Komati primarily consisted of calculations, course  readings, 2 dives per day (mainly between 60-90 minutes in length) climbing in and out of large ladders with 50kg + (ie pretty much my bodyweight) of gear, for 6 days solid. One of our dives was a night dive on the full moon, which was a uniquely stunning experience in itself. Any spare time I spent cooking, eating, drinking coffee, chatting all things dive-related and reading the dive articles on plaques around the dive centre.

Toward the end, my brother Gavin, who I've scarcely seen since he moved to Ireland when I was 16, came to visit at Komati the day after he arrived in J'burg where he'll be working for several months. Of course with my sister in Maun, me in Gaborone and Gavin in Johannesburg, all of us siblings are almost together on the same continent for the first time in ages; which is a remarkable feat in itself...

But I digress. I fear I haven't managed to adequately describe the sheer otherworldly nature of cave diving but quite simply it is something I've never managed to put into words. People often ask what you see to which you can only really say 'wet rock', but really it is a unique exploration; going into the depths of the earth, to mind-blowing places completely different to anywhere else you've ever been...

*And from the technical diving perspective*: The course was fantastic. Spending 6 solid days there I could really notice changes and improvements in my diving, my comfort levels and technique. Don was a great instructor and clearly knew how to adapt the course to individual needs (I was lucky enough to have him 1-on-1) and has a great holistic approach to cave diving. To any interested divers, if you haven't done so already, I would suggest reading "Raising the Dead" on the Dave Shaw story. Many of Dave’s deep training/dives were actually conducted at Komati Springs itself and the valley in the surrounding area is where his ashes have been scattered.

Desert and the donkeys

So following my big streak of dive-bliss, I returned to J’burg with my brother and from there back to Gabs. No, not to go back to study, but just to overnight before taking an extended holiday. The next day I took an overly long, overheated, overpacked 9 hour bus trip, wedged between two very, very large men. All the way to Ghanzi (in the west of Botswana, middle of the Kalahari desert) I felt like I was suffocating between the extruding layers of skin invading my seat that left me with less than ½ a seat to occupy --- not to mention Motswana individuals don’t tend like having the windows on the bus open… and I still don’t know why.

But I finally arrived in Ghanzi where I met up with an Austrian friend, Michael, who had just come from Namibia. Our objective was to find a cattle post where people were residing that would be happy to have us camp and learn about their way of life. Michael, having spoken to a local earlier, had established that the area around Kuke (a very small village) had some roads that led to cattle outposts. So we hitched to Kuke.

At Kuke, we noticed some policemen by the local tuck-shop and approached them, introduced ourselves and chatted. When they discovered what we wanted to do, they relayed it in Setswana (most people there didn’t speak English) and an old, 84 year old man came forward and responded. The police translated again. He said he would be happy to take us to his sister’s cattle post and show us how they lived – all we needed was our own tent, some food and to pay for his bus/hitch fare to the cattle post turn off. Incidentally, when it came time to hitch other policemen passed by and took us along and insisted that we didn’t need to pay for the ride, taking us all the way right to the cattle post.

At the cattle post (Kwa Moraka)

So what exactly is a cattle post in Setswana culture? Well, let’s put it this way; in Botswana there are more cattle than people. Cattle, quite simply, are a prime means of capital investment for all Motswana – even those who reside in the city – and many people have both their home (ie in the city) and a cattle post where their cattle reside. Cattle can be sold at a time when money is needed, killed for an important occasion where food is needed (ie weddings or funerals) and used as investment. But, most interestingly is the practice of ‘bride price’ which is still present in Botswana. When a man marries, he must give the uncle of the bride quite a few cattle – effectively as a form of payment.

The cattle post we were at was located in the Kalahari Desert, abutting the central Kalahari game reserve and quite far from… well… anything else. If I was lucky, I could climb a tree by the bore hole, stand on one of the branches, hold my phone up and get reception; I dubbed that tree, Reception Tree. But you don’t exactly go to the middle of nowhere to be on your phone anyway.

A bit about the cattle post.
The people: The man who took us was called “Ginger” (this developed into Ntate (father) Ginger) and was a quiet, friendly, cute fella, who seemed to feel honoured to take us to the post. There were others around the cattle post which was effectively his extended family – cousins, cousins and their children, nephews, nieces, families etc – all of which were extremely friendly and excited to have us there. Most of them spoke very little English so it put our limited Setswana skills to the test – though there were one or two that spoke English and could translate when they were around. The old lady (Ntate Ginger’s sister) was also a gorgeous character, who at one stage scrambled around in her hut and brought out an ostrich-egg necklace to give me as a present, expressing disappointment that she didn’t have anything else to give. I was more than touched by her hospitality and warmth and the day I left I gave her some of my earrings in return.

The food: People at the cattle post only really have a meal once a day. Apart from that, they drink tea. But when the days are so hot you can barely move, you don’t expend much energy and so we found this eating routine easier than we thought it would be. They predominantly eat pap (boiled maize meal, a basic starch rather simple in flavour and extremely filling) with seswa (pounded meat) which they rehydrate (as drying the meat is their only way to store it). Naturally, I skipped this and ate my pap with basic chakalaka sauce.

The tea: Normally I’m a coffee person and prior to the cattle post had been averaging at least 3/day. Out at the cattle post, I didn’t miss coffee once. I had tea. I have never had tea like it tasted there. It was made with pure bore water, loose tea leaves and fresh milk – like ‘fresh-from-the-cow-that-day’ milk; un-homogenized and un-pasteurized. Oh and always with a good helping of sugar. My 1 giant tablespoon felt excessive, but when I saw Ntate Ginger put FOUR in his, I didn’t feel so bad. But OOOOOHHH it tasted soooo good.

Water: Given the desert location, all water is sourced from a single bore hole and pump at the cattle post, so water is quite scarce. The cattle have to wait each day for their water as it gets pumped in intermittently and they drink a lot. One day we washed ourselves with 4-5L of water. Given back home a single toilet flush can use 9-10L of water alone, it really put things in perspective with such a strange, almost horrid, contrast. (Bathing conditions as pictured with the metal tub)

The heat: I’m not sure I can quite describe what the heat of the Kalahari is like. The sun gets too intense you will feel as though your skin is literally sizzling and each panting breath you take as you walk involves gulping in more dry, hot air and sweat streams down your back. Between the hours of 10am-3pm you can literally do nothing but sit in the shade of the huts and shift location as the shadow changes. The breeze is no relief either and the huge gusts of wind that come are reminiscent of the belch of hot air that confronts you when you open a fan-forced oven. The first day I found this hard to adjust to – fantasizing ridiculously about my time diving instead. 

The animals: Much to our amused enjoyment, there were horses and, more importantly, donkeys we got to ride (previously whilst waiting to hitch once and seeing only Donkeys pass by, we came to the conclusion that once day we had to hi-jack a donkey and ride it. This developed into a more reasonable objective of riding a donkey). Most of the life on the cattle post revolves around their animals. Given that they are literally ‘free range’ to the largest possible degree, a lot of time is spent tracking them and retrieving them, watering them and taking care of them. As a vegetarian, I thought this was great – the animals get to live out long and pretty carefree lives. Rarely do they kill a cow and when they do they select the ones that are getting older. They are taken away and shot – dying a quick, simple, painless death. We also saw some interesting wildlife: very large sand spiders (called the Kalahari Ferrari due to the speed with which they move), tortoises (yes, in the desert), some crazy cool chameleons and beautiful birdlife (yes, during the immobility hours of deathly-heat, I found myself resorting to watching birds to pass time….).

General life: I must admit the cattle post is a slow-paced relaxed spot. I think it’s a great location to retreat to but by the same token I don’t think I could ever imagine myself living there. It is times like this that I realize I am so lucky to have a choice. I have been born into a world where, for the most part, I can choose to live however I would like to live.

And back to the Delta…

As it happens, the cattle post was only about 2 hours from Maun and, given that Gabs is 10 hours away from Maun, it would’ve been wrong if I didn’t go an visit my sister – so that was the final holiday stop. This consisted of chilling at her work where there is a pool (Metsi!! (Water)), bumming around with her in her free time, journal writing and hanging at the backpackers by the river.

More surprisingly, when I was perusing Facebook and chatted to a friend I had made in Gabs, Scott, I discovered by chance he happened to be in Maun at the same time. He had set out to do a solo bike trip to Cape Town and left from Gaborone quite a while ago – I had assumed he’d have been out of the country by the time we got there. So naturally we all caught up and exchanged stories. He had met a German guy travelling around Africa in a Combi, having started from Germany and driven all the way down the West side of Africa to Botswana. Together they were going to travel Zimbabwe and Zambia (and beyond?). I won’t lie, the talk of their travels made me so tempted to run away from UB…

On the last day in Maun, Sunday, we joined some local expats and their families for a day out on the water and fishing. The only thing we needed to bring apart from a bathing suit was, apparently, beer. Given that we were leaving at 8am in the morning this confused me somewhat, but I just hadn’t been educated enough to realize anytime was good time for beer. 

It was a great day – on a boat again with the breeze and water, going for swims, pretending (and failing) to fish, good food and wine (I personally could only stomach that past midday).

Finally, Monday entailed another overheated slog back to Gaborone with just a single 5 minute stop in the 10 hours of travelling. Oh, and there are never any toilets on board buses in Botswana…..

Living in Botswana

So what is it, that is making living here so fun? To be honest, I can't place my finger on it -- it's nothing tangible but more just this effect being in this continent has on me.

Masome a Mabedi le Bobedi kwa Botswana (22 in Botswana)

Some people know I have developed a thing for the number 11 or sequences of '1's. I therefore determined, for no reason other than just 'because', that 22 (as 2 x 11)  is going to be an epic year of my life. (And I’m sure I’ll find a reason for 23 to be as well).

So how did I start my 22nd year of life? Reunited with my sister in Maun and on Safari in the captivating heart of the Okavango delta. Yup, a pretty good start.
My sister is currently a Safari consultant up in Maun - a gateway town to the Okavango that is inhabited by extremely friendly, relaxed locals and a minority of eccentric expats, to which I'm sure she fits in perfectly. With her 'connections' she wangled a trip for us to a somewhat exclusive camp, infamous for its tracking capabilities of wild animals. And it didn't disappoint. We got nice and close to wild cheetahs, lions (including those feasting on a baby Giraffe whilst the mother watched from afar with a heart-wrenching blankness), elephants, hippo's (well, they're everywhere..), various species of antelope including some rather rare ones, crocodiles, buffalo and the usual zebra, monkeys, warthogs etc. Naturally we took a Mokoro trip, a small 'bushmans walk' where we learnt some basics of bushmen subsistence, went on game drives and ate alot of food. 

Our 'tents' were a joke and by that I mean I don't know how they were ever defined as 'tents'. It was definitely one of the more luxurious things I have ever stayed in in my life. But I particularly liked the way it was designed in harmony with the bush -- aesthetically and otherwise. Solar panels were used for power, eco-friendly, locally made bathroom products were supplied for use and they emphasized filtered water rather than bottled. Each tent had its own raised 'balcony' from which you could see impala strolling around in the morning, a rock monitor (a giant reptile) and baboons, whilst at night you could hear the distant sounds of a lions roar as you went to sleep.

The camp was also a 'fly in/ fly out camp' from which you could see game from the air; elephants, hippos, buffaloes, giraffes and other biggies. Following the flight out of the delta, I took my flight back to Gaborone and the University that already felt strangely like home.

Out-and-about in Gabs

I'm not going to lie, in many respects Gabs is a 'hole'. But you'd be surprised the great things we find to occupy ourselves in and around that hole.

Kgale hill: If we're feeling like a hill climb followed by Bottomless coffee, then Kgale is the place to go. It's about a 45 minute or so walk up, but it is always more fun to opt for leaving the path and climbing up the rocks instead. The hill has a beautiful view over the city where you can see the way savannah merges into the built environment, with Gaborone dam, residences, shopping malls, bushland and other small hills dotting the landscape. Mugg and Bean nearby is our favourite haunt for coffee, though I won't lie; I have abandoned hope in finding good espresso coffee here and drink the filter variety instead as it scarcely ever disappoints.

Music festival: A definite highlight for me was a music festival with live music performances 30km out of Gaborone on a Saturday night. It was held in a large farmyard/field with music and dancing under the stars. As a song came to a finish and everyone paused from dancing momentarily, I would turn around to see whirlwinds of dust kicked up and twirling in the air -- hard to describe, but it was awesome!

Old Naledi: My roommate frequents Old Naledi -- a poor neighbourhood full of orphaned children and on Saturdays they often attend Iwana; primarily a playtime session but held at the church with a bible story afterwards. In truth, I am not much of a 'natural' kids person, but Lindsay convinced me to join her one Saturday and it really was an experience. The children are so touchy, so clingy, so desperate to be picked up, to be hugged -- more than I have seen in any other kids. It really is such a basic instinct for children to have; the desire for warmth and love from an adult figure, a basic part of childhood, which these orphans lack. A local friend of mine, Glow, also does something similar down in Lobatse in a crime-prone neighbourhood and its great to see people taking the initiative to play with these kids and see that they have some fun and support in their lives.

There are also often small craft markets, theatre performances (I'm yet to see one though!), Indie movies on show, aerobics at the university, a humble game park nearby, sports and miscellaneous entertainment around the city. It might not be Melbourne, but I always find that I am successfully able to occupy myself. 

*Other activities to follow*

Classes and the University

Ultimately, there are many good and bad points about the university... to start with:

The bad: Logic, quite simply, is something you frequently have to learn to forfeit. Teachers may unwittingly teach falsehoods (and being the student you can't exactly 'correct' them) and you'll receive marks that just don't add up as they should and spend a good hour showing your marker that it should be 90% not 70%, until they finally realize the total score was meant to be out of a smaller value than they had, which was the cause of the discrepancies.

You'll lose marks for not converting your answer to units which don't actually exist in the real world and for not spelling out common basic mathematical formulae that should really be assumed common knowledge.

Lecturers will spend most of the lecture telling students off for talking when they shouldn't, not talking when they should and picking at any students they actually know the name of and then go over-time or not arrive on time.

BUT

The good: Ultimately, what they know best is their own continent -- as you would expect -- and that is exactly what I came here to learn. What problems face the country/continent, what the cultural differences are, what is important to them etc. And, the fact of the matter is, being in an entirely different environment is extremely educational, experiential and enriching thing in itself. I won’t lie; I have learnt SO much from being here and am continuing to do so; most of it just hasn't been from classes or the university itself per se.

Living in a new environment, immersing yourself in a new culture, learning about cultural eccentricities, having the ‘unusual’ become the ‘norm’, being the minority and not the majority and quite simply adjusting yourself to somewhere out-of-your-comfort-zone (ie being a vegetarian in a beef-fuelled country, a diver in the middle of the desert, an outdoors-ey person in a mall and commerce orientated city, a ‘greeny’ in a place without recycling, an engineer in a university with little logic…) teaches you so much indeed!