By Marcus Demian of North Carolina State University
Wednesday, February 1st:
It feels like a lot happened today: up by 9:00 am in Johannesburg, ate quickly, managed to check into the Maun flight without getting there late despite confusing directions, and got to the gate with a few hours to spare prior to departure. August taught us a Korean jacks game over the course of our wait and we read and relaxed. The flight started at noon and lasted 1.5 hours. I had my sunglasses ready when I stepped onto the tarmac once we landed, and we passed through immigration with ease… except for Nicole, because somehow one of her bags didn’t make it to Maun and we had to leave the airport without it. Somebody had a dog on the cargo carousel in a wooden crate, and it made me feel pity for the big guy.
We met Lauren Sadowski, who is going by Sadowski because we already have a Lauren in our group. I thought her name was too long as Sadowski, so I told myself I’d have to come up with a nickname. We also met Nick Johnson who is just Nick… not that he’s not as interesting or anything… He’s just Nick.
Afterwards we exited the airport and waited for our local instructor, Dix, to arrive. I think it gave us a bit of time in the Botswana sun which helped us all get a sort of understanding of what the weather here was largely going to be like. We briefly met Dix when he arrived, and I noticed that he shook hands with Nick and Sadowski by putting his opposite hand on the arm he was shaking hands with. We learned there that this is how you officially greet people in Botswana, and I ended up shaking hands with him in the same way. We split up into three cars, evenly distributing the students and the luggage between the three cars, each driven by an instructor. You drive and walk on the left side of the road or walkway in this country which was throwing me off. I drove with Nick at the back of the sequence of vehicles and we became further acquainted with each other, talking about hobbies and about the place we were staying at. Nick had participated in Round River as an instructor in many different regions and it gave me a sense of security that I was in good hands. I learned that Maun is pronounced like ‘Mah-oon’ and not like ‘Monn’ or ‘Moun’ which I had tended to previously alternate between.
Once we arrived at Island Safari Lodge, we talked about campsite policy and about Botswana cultural norms and gestures. Hello is duméla in their language, which is called Setswana. Unfortunately, Dix had to leave shortly after we arrived at Island. After relaxing in the campsite, I noticed many bird species that I’d never seen before, which made me very excited for all the wildlife I was going to be seeing in the future. One species in particular caught my eye, which was the Burchell’s Starling, which has a glossy dark blue and purple coloration.
We were also visited by vervet monkeys which are a white tree dwelling species that has the capability to steal food and cause commotion within the campsite. I fiddled with my camera enough to get a terrible shot of one of them. Sadowski doesn’t like Vervet Monkeys and she’s very expressive about that.
We later went to the island safari lodge bar, which is the only place in the lodge that has internet access, in order to inform our families about our safe arrival. On the way to the bar we scared a monitor lizard, which got itself stuck in a fence until it was able to get free and scurry out of sight. At the bar, I FaceTimed my dad who was the only person available due to time zone differences, and I was happy to see him even though I had only been gone for 2 days. The bar has very friendly staff.
We were all hungry, and so for dinner we went to a restaurant called the Okavango Brewery where they make their own millet-based beer and have a BOGO burger special option on Wednesdays past 6:00 pm. This made it quite appealing to us and it was nice to have our food covered by Round River. Everyone seemed to be interested in their burgers so I branched out and got their chicken wings and these sweet potato millet balls that come with a certain sauce made of ingredients I couldn’t identify. I came to learn through the course of the meal that our instructors were very funny, highly competitive at spikeball, and that our relationships were going to be far better than simple teacher-student relationships that are all too common.
After we got back to Island, we decided to all jump in the pool by the bar, but we didn’t last long as the water was very cold that evening and the sun had gone down. After we finally caved to the chilliness, we all got cleaned off for bed and I used water from my water bottle to brush my teeth. I noticed that I was going to be needing to drink far more water on a daily basis in order to maintain healthy hydration levels in this climate. I then talked to Ziggy about how happy and fulfilled I was from the day’s events and how awesome it was that we were thriving halfway across the world in unknown territory. I couldn’t wait for what was to come.
Thursday, February 2nd:
Today was another very busy day, sustained by a breakfast of instant oats combined with honey and a dried fruit and nut mixture just before 8:00 am. This would be the start of what I deemed Immigration Day which is closer to a day of mourning than a holiday. Our goal was to get our residency permits that are required for us to be legally permitted to stay within the country for these upcoming months, which is a notoriously frustrating task according to our instructors due to the fact that it’s quite time consuming and can require multiple days of work. We stopped by a currency exchange bank to get the money for the fees that accompany the paperwork that we were given and then we went to the immigration office.
The office looked more like a DMV, and it was quite busy, with a larger variety of legal documentation activities taking place that you would think separate buildings should require for. The lack of air conditioning in addition to the hot day made our time there quite unpleasant, yet I was able to push through it knowing that the sooner we got through it, the sooner we could relax back at Island and further prepare for our first excursion. At one point we were sent to a health clinic to prove to the country that we weren’t either an idiot, stupid, an imbecile, epileptic, a psychopath or chronically addicted to alcohol. Quite a silly category of terms together, as acknowledged by the doctor interviewing me who laughed with me when she asked me if I was an idiot. While we were passing the time, Sadowski passed out our Kindles so we could be productive by getting ahead on readings. I have respect for her and her opinions on efficiency. The whole immigration task took 4 hours, but at least we somehow avoided paying the fees, so I’d say that’s a net positive.
For a treat, we even stopped at a street food booth run by someone that Sadowski calls her second mother, or her Botswana mother. There was the option of either rice or a steamed dumpling called madombi (mah-dohm-bee) with either fried chicken or beef seswaa (sess-wah) which is pulled beef in a light sauce, potatoes, and some curried vegetables. After we all got our food, Sadowski told the lady that we had not yet received Setswana names, which is a regular custom for Round River students and instructors.
I was given the name Mpho (m-poh) which means gift in Setswana. Most names in Setswana are real words in the language that are given as a form of manifestation of what you want the child to become or perhaps what they may achieve. August was given the name Thobo (toh-boh) which means harvest, Ziggy was given the name Neo (nay-oh) which also means gift and so I am now fighting her over that, Lauren was given the name Lesedi (leh-sey-dee) meaning light, and Nicole was given the name Lesego (leh-sey-ho).
We took the food to the Round River house where we were planning on grabbing a few things out of the storage container for later. The house has a few rooms for instructors and others to say when necessary, such as between semesters. I brought an orange-flavored Fanta from the street food stand which I knew was going to be super delicious as foreign soda tastes far better than American soda. We all destroyed the food that we had been salivating over while we carried it with us in the cars together in the small backyard deck of the house as we watched some weaver birds hanging upside-down under their nests where one of the two nest entrances these birds create is. We were also introduced to a hyper-concentrated type of juice called Oros that you can mix with a much larger proportion of water to get a nice juicy flavor, and with all of this consumption the day was entirely restored to happiness after the hangriness had been eradicated.
On the way back to Island riding with Nick, we stopped at the grocery store to get some pasta and pasta sauce and we continued, arriving at the campsite with no sign of Vervet Monkeys which I had been worried about. Apparently, they had been jumping on a few of the tents during the night, but I must have slept through it. We all went to the bar area shortly after we arrived and had individual pre-semester check-ins and were given responsibility over the kindles for the rest of the semester. Afterwards, Sadowski, Nick, August, and I whipped out the spikeball set for the first time and played until it got dark, marking the start of our addiction to the game.
Meanwhile, Lauren and Nicole were making the first student-cooked meal of the semester which consisted of potatoes and rice with chakalaka, which is a spiced vegetable mixture that is pretty common here and, in my opinion, could taste good on anything. The meal was surprisingly good considering the first time I checked on them, they were worried about the pan catching on fire because of the amount of oil they put in it. I showered and joined Nick and August at the bar where we played a portable version of the board game Settlers of Catan. I was winning by a large margin, and I gave them a chance to ally against me and win to add a bit of spice, but they just couldn’t pull the victory off. I spent the rest of the evening catching up with friends using the internet access at the bar and got destroyed by mosquitos before retiring to my tent for the night.