by Oscar Psychas, of Middlebury College
After we were sent home in response to the pandemic, we students find ourselves completing our online coursework in the quietness of our homes back in the States. For those of us who are privileged to be able to stay at home and not be sick, it’s strange how this is a crisis that is marked by more mundaneness and quietness than usual. Against this blankness, memories from our time in Botswana unexpectedly bubble up in bright flurries of images and sensations as I go about my day. While reading an article about human-wildlife conflict in Botswana during our online studies, I suddenly was taken back to the glow of our campfire in Botswana, sparks reaching out to the tens of thousands of stars above as the bush hummed with restless energy of insects and larger beasts.
Rasta, our escort guide, friend, and a proud Bushmen, had a spark in his eyes as he acted out a campfire story with grand gestures. One day a local man was out collecting wood when he suddenly spotted a pair of lions on the prowl. Searching frantically for a hiding place, he found shelter a tree cavity. But the lions happened to bed down to sleep right outside of the tree. He was desperate to escape as night fell. Finally, he made a decision. Rasta imitates his action as he stands up, pops his head forward, and yells with all his might “RAAWRR!” He mimics the lions scrambling away with their tails tucked in. We descend into a fit of laughter. Rasta, or Alpheus, like me, is 22 and likes to play the goof. But unlike me, when Rasta tells a story, all of us listen, because it’s bound to be good. Next to him is his friend and fellow community scout, Collen sits beside him, playing the role of the elder at 29.
As our community escort guides, Rasta and Collen joined us every morning for wildlife transects and camped only a few feet beside us. In the afternoons and evenings, we would find time to hang out with them between breaks of our class and their watching American action movies that boomed out incongruous sounds of battle scenes into the bush. Spontaneity ruled the day. Many days, it was the universal bonding of juggling and passing around a soccer ball. Another day, Rasta invited me out to the grass to help him catch grasshoppers for bait. He had fashioned an innovative grasshopper smacker out of the sole of a shoe and a stick. Later that afternoon, a couple of us American students joined his friends, sacrificed grasshoppers in a plastic bottle, for a fishing expedition on the river.
As we walked along the river, the Botswanans teasing me for bringing a yoga mat, I noted with increasing horror that we were getting closer, uncomfortably closer, to a pod of perhaps 50 hippos that I had developed personal beef with during the past few weeks. Soon, we were walking past them, setting up our fishing spot only maybe 300 feet away. Our motley crew sat down and settled in to fish, the relaxing scene of hanging out and fishing by the riverside on a warm afternoon tempered by the intensifying grunts of the up to 4000-pound creatures. Hora, clearly the experienced fisherman of the group, cast a line. Suddenly, the dominant male rose up his body, puffed up his chest if it’s possible for hippos to do such a thing, and lunged at us. As someone who tends to be on the “flight” side of the flight-or-fight instinct, I had already run a good ways away before I saw that Hora had thrown a stick in the hippo’s direction. Miraculously, the hippo gave up its charge and returned to the pod. But then it returned and started to come at us with a new fury until he cast it away with another stick. Soon it became a routine part of our fishing.
Their grandparents’ generation lived as hunter-gatherers and fisherpeople in the wilderness of the Okavango Delta, taking part in a culture that has endured for over 20,000 years. But when the Moremi Reserve was formed in the 1960s, they were forced out of their homeland and into villages, where they could no longer continue their lives as hunter-gatherers. The decades since have been difficult for Bushmen communities like Mababe. Stuck between being excluded out of the fruits of modern prosperity while also being banned from traditional hunting, they fear for the future of their culture and communities. Tourists drive past Mababe on the way to the world-renowned wildlife of the Moremi Game Reserve, with no idea of the complex relationship between this place and its wildlife and the Bushmen that know them better than anyone else.
But what feels important for me to write about today is how grateful we felt to get to bond with Rasta and Colleen and so many other people during our time in Botswana. They were just really upbeat and kind guys who were deeply proud of carrying on their culture and taking leadership for their community. Collen is starting up a reptile education center, where kids from around the area can interact with snakes and learn about their importance for the environment in a place where many people are afraid of them. To finish this off, I thought I’d share what I wrote on two of those evenings after long campfire conversations with Rasta and Collen, with only edits for clarity:
“Today there was a tsessebe [antelope species] on a hill on transect. Coffee and a feeling of tired wellbeing. Feeling like I appreciate the environment without thinking, it’s just a waterbuck there and it’s cool stuff. Remembering last night’s conversation around the fire with Alpheus about Bushmen culture, how some young people want to continue it and some don’t, people in villages towards cities, his eyes light up as he said he will fight and die for his culture, really a personable guy.”
“He told of his dad who when hungry would fill up a glass of water, thru it [casting a magic spell] a lion came out of a bush and killed a wildebeest on the spot. The dances and medicines and songs still passed on. Really been great getting to know Collen more recently. Hope to do the plant walk with elders [Collen had set us up to walk in the bush with elders to learn about local plants, but an all-day car breakdown sadly canceled this]. Feeling gratitude for life.”
They’re facing more difficult times than any of us could have imagined during our time together, as the pandemic affects the tourism economy.
