Thursday, October 12, 2006

mopipi and sage in june


"Smell that?" my new boss asked as a sharp warm scent curled into the truck. It was familiar and obtrusive but I wasn't quite sure what it was. "Overgrazing around here has led to a total proliferation of sage bushes, and when you combine it with the stink of the tree that's everywhere, this is what you get. It's called a mo-pee-pee tree because, well, that's what it smells like," Larry explained, grinning behind silver-rimmed glasses and below a bald head with a sprinkling of stubborn gray sprouts.

I laughed. Urine and sage certainly would be a noticeable combination. We made a few quick stops in town, proceeded to the university centre, and then on to the home of some friends of Larry's, where he and handful of other expats played roller hockey on a full-size cement rink painted powder blue and white. I'm not kidding. It's called Mukwa Leaf Gardens (Larry is Canadian and originally from Windsor, near the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs). The fee is ten pula (about $1.66) to use the rink, which is a recent increase because, as the owner says, the hippo is hungry and has to be fed.

Greetings from Maun, Botswana, which is to be my home for the next year-and-some-months. For those of you who are unaware, I had a late-breaking opportunity to come here to the University of Botswana's Okavango Research Centre and run some research projects of my own design while postponing my job at the University of Massachusetts for a year, and I took it. So I am back in Africa, with all of the joys (warmth from people and the land, giraffes, sunsets) and obstacles (lost luggage, no contract, no work visa, no paycheck) that come with it. For the time being, as my boss will be away most of the next three months, I'm staying in his house on the river just outside of town and down the road from the small university centre. Once I have permission to come and go from Botswana, I'll be headed for Namibia to continue some work I started there a few years back and stay with my adopted Zimbabwean sister, where I'm told that I have already been assigned to be a member of her wedding planning committee. I have no idea what that means, but I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it.

In the meantime, I assumed that while I am close to the tremendous biodiversity and wild landscape of the Okavango Delta (for a basic intro to the premiere safari destination of southern Africa, see http://www.okavango-delta.net/info.htm), I wouldn't actually be able to see it for some time. On Friday, however, I finagled an invitation to a community-run lodge in the Delta and spent the weekend with a South African tourism consultant and a Swedish communications coordinator for the World Conservation Union. So by Saturday night - two days after arriving here - I was sipping a Windhoek Lager and watching the sun go down over the main river channel thru the Delta. Taking a few photos, my rather antagonistic South African companion said, "The angle is really great from about ten meters further that way," indicating the water and finding himself to be quite hilarious. He was, of course, testing my fear of the crocodiles that are thick and often quite sneaky. I made sure to march much closer to the water than he had, took a few shots, and returned to my beer. "Did you think I wouldn't?" I asked him, smiling, a bit bolder (and certainly more foolish) than our Swedish friend who had only been here for a few months.

No comments: