21st to 23rd of September, 2018
Hitchhiking in Botswana: Mababe
With the help of Mrs. Durin and a young boy, I settle my tent. I decide to put just under a tree because when the animals pass, they will go around the tree, and then around my tent as well. It makes sense, but…
I talk a little bit with the people, mainly with some young girls: Lame, Alice, Ludo and Gafaone.
Almost everybody in the village can speak English. It is basic, but enough for us to communicate.
While I am cooking my dinner, everybody is around me, paying attention. They still really think we, from the West, are so different of them. Around 8 o’clock I tell them I would try to sleep.
They remain awake until almost eleven, I guess. It’s a surprise for me. Not long after that, to be precise, at half past twelve, I wake up. I would not sleep again until six in the morning.
The animals are all over the place, and I can hear them. The elephants eating the leaves from the tree where I am under; some animal very close to my tent, sniffing quickly (I am almost sure it was a warthog); and the hippos. Yes, the hippos are actually what makes me almost freak out. I can hear them right in front of my tent. I recognize their sound, from when I saw them yesterday, by the river at Kavimba.
I know I should’ve just keep calm and try to go to sleep. They have no intention to attack me. It is what I always say to everybody. And I know is true. But when it is in the middle of the night, and is just you inside your tiny little and fragile tent, oh no, you can freak out easily. My concern it is: the elephants could step by accident in my tent, and by getting scared, start trying to destroy it, as it was an enemy. I am prepared to leave the tent in a hurry if I need it, and bring with me at least my most important things. So I spend the whole night awake, sitting, wearing my boots and with clothes wrapped around my arms (to protect me in case some predator tried to attack me, like I did in Kenya a few months before), just emanating good thoughts for them to leave without harming me. That’s sound hilarious.
Well, as you can realize, I survived! And no animal even touched my tent. At sunrise, I opened the tent, checked around and see nothing. Only then, I try to sleep a few hours.
At nine o’clock, probably with the permission of Mrs. Dorin, the kids start to clap hands outside of my tent. Why? In Loki’s name, why? Even if I had slept very well the whole night, could not I sleep until the time I wanted? It is rude, I know, but I also know that they do not have much idea about what is rude and what is not. So I just tell Mrs. Dorin, very quickly, still from inside of my tent, what had happened, and tried to sleep a little more. It works just for less than one hour, of course.
After eating my porridge, I have absolutely nothing to do. So do they. The kids are in a school break, and the mothers, well, I do not know if all of them would get their money for the husbands or what, but they spend the whole day just sitting and talking, plaiting their hairs. Even I get some! But they say my hear is to soft to keep it. I think is because it is too short.
In the afternoon something upsets me a lot. First, Mrs. Dorin says that Brazil has a great economy. I try to explain to her that it might be, but only when comparing with an African country, and just because we are older than them and it is a completely different reality, but still is not a great economy and there are a lot of poor people over there. She says she disagrees with me. It is her right, I get it. But I have to ask how she could disagree with me as she has never been to Brasil, and I lived there for 27 years. The answer is – she just know. Then, she says have this “feeling” telling her that I come from a rich family. I truly believe she is just saying that because I am white, which she denies.
What hurts me it is to think about my parents situation, the fact that they have never had their own house; my mother does not have a retirement plan, and it is not like they will live with my sisters, depending on them, like people do here in Africa. When I ask her why would I spend hours under the sun to get a free lift, and make camping on the bushes, and cook my own food if I was rich, she answers it is because I want to. I do not want have lots of money and become one of those stupid tourist who do not care about them. But I am not rich and I cannot be rich. I can might find a job and save for two years to have some kind of comfort while travelling for what, six months? But that is not what I want. I want to live my dream now. Right now. Because I have no idea what is going on tomorrow. At least not for sure… And for the first time in my life, I am proud of the way I live. I have exactly what I need to survive. Why should I want more?
That changed my mood a lot and I think everybody noted. The girls take me to “the river”, which is more bushes with some water running around than anything else. They tell me it is common for people to have their baths here. I had my baths in a river every day for a month when I was in Uganda, but I could never do that in this “river”. Nope.
To be able to sleep this night, I ask Mrs. Dorin if I can pitch my tent inside the fence around her house. She allows me. That night I slept so well, that I could not even hear any hippos or elephants.
Sunday morning I go to the road and, in a nice shade, I wait for my lift. I have to be in Maun on the 25th, from when I have a place to stay by CS and I would wait until the 1st of October to start my volunteer work. Originally, the plan was going to the next village, Shorowe, spending the next two nights there and then going to Maun. But I decide to go directly to Maun and save the trouble of having to find another lift sooner. I would look for a church or somewhere to stay until the 25th and that was it. I just had no idea how my plans would change drastically for the rest of my time in Botswana.
10 Years Around the World 