21st to 23rd of September, 2018.
With the help of Mrs. Durin and a young boy, I settle my tent. I decided put just under a tree because when the animals pass, they would detour of the three and then of my tent as well. It was clever, I admit, but it was not enough.
I sat and talked a little bit with the people, mainly with some young girls: Lame, Alice, Ludo and Gafaone.
Almost everybody in the village spoke English. A simple one, but enough for us to communicate.
While I was cooking my dinner, everybody was around me, paying attention. They still really think we, white people, are so different of them. Around 8 o’clock I told them I would try to sleep.
They remained awake until almost eleven, I guess. What surprised me also. But also saved me. You see, not too much after that, to be precise, at half past twelve, I woke up. I would not sleep again until six in the morning.
The animals were everywhere. I could hear they around, the elephants eating the leaves from the tree where I was under, some animal which came just very close to my tent, sniffing quickly (I am almost sure it was a warthog), hippos making their sound very close to where I was… I was going crazy!
Of course now thinking, I know I should just keep calm and tried go to sleep. They had no intention to attack me or so. 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 was: the elephants could step by accident in my tent and scarily start to try to destroy it, as it was an enemy. I was prepared to leave the tent in a hurry if I need and bringing with me at least my more important things. So I spent the whole night sat, wearing my boots and with clothes wrapped around my arms (to protect 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 harm me.
Well, as you can realize, I survived! And no animal even touched my tent. At sunrise, I opened the tent, checked around and saws nothing. I decided them try to sleep a few hours.
At nine o’clock, probably with the permission of Mrs. Dorin, the kids started 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 was 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 told Mrs. Dorin, very quickly still from inside of my tent, what had happened, and tried to sleep a little more. It worked just for less than one hour, of course.
After eating my porridge I had absolutely nothing to do. So had they. The kids were 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 would spend the whole day just sitting and talking and to plait in their hairs. Even I got something! But they said my hear was to soft to keep it. I think is because it was to short.
In the afternoon something upsetted me a lot. First Mrs. Dorin said that Brazil have a great economy. I tried to explain to her that might be, comparing with an African country, 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 said she disagreed with me. So I have to ask how she could disagree with me since she never been there and I lived there for 27 years. The answer was she just knew. Then she said have this “feeling” telling her that I came from a rich family. Of course it was just because I am white but she denied that when I made the question. What hurt me, it was think about my parents situation, the fact that they do not have their own house, my mother does not have an retirement plan and is not like they will live with my sisters, depending on them, like people do here in Africa. When I asked her why I would 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 answered it was because I wanted. She was not completely wrong about that part you see, 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 until where I checked, I have no idea what is going on tomorrow. At least not for sure… And for the first time in my live, 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 brought me to “the river”, which was more bushes with some water running around than anything else. They told me it was common people have their baths there. 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 asked Mrs. Dorin if I could put my tent inside the fence around her house. She allowed me. Oh my, that night I slept so well, that I could not even hear any hippos or elephants.
Sunday morning I went to the road and in a nice shadow I wait for my lift. I had to be in Maun on the 25th, from when I had a place to stay by CS and I would wait until the 1st of October to start my volunteer work. So the plan was going to the next village, Shorowe, spend the next two nights there and then going to Maun. But I decided to go directly to Maun and save the trouble in have 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.
