by Louise Haupert, of College of Saint Benedict / Saint John’s University
After seven weeks in Botswana, I’m torn between feeling like I just arrived and feeling like this place is my home. I’ve studied more species of flowers, grasses, trees, birds, and mammals than I knew existed, and I’ve been amazed every day by the beauty of the landscape around us. I’ve observed baby elephants blowing bubbles and playing in the water, I’ve watched a leopard crawl down from its hiding place in the branches of a leadwood tree, and I’ve witnessed a pride of lions relaxing in an open grassland before heading off for their nightly hunt. I’ve also watched a monkey leap onto the table and steal my banana before promptly perching on the branch directly above me, just out of reach, and staring at me as it ate my snack. While some of these encounters were more majestic than others, all of them are a part of ordinary life in the bush. Every day is a new adventure. Some days you’re out driving and you see hundreds of animals—hippos, kudu, impala, zebra, giraffe—and other days you’re back at camp and an elephant stops to eat some leaves from the rain tree a few meters away, enjoying its breakfast while you enjoy yours. You never know what to expect, and there’s always something new to learn. 
Every night is another campfire, spent either identifying bird calls, watching hyenas prance past camp, waiting for us to go to bed so they can scavange for any remains from our dinner that we might have missed, or just talking and laughing together. We laugh a lot—often at our mediocre dance moves, which we break out daily. But no matter what we’re doing, we try to take advantage of every moment we have here. It’s not often that you get a chance to spend three months in the bush of Botswana. If you would have asked me a year ago, or even two months ago, what I thought I would be doing right now, I would have never dreamed that this would be my reality, but I am so grateful that it is.
It’s the simple, unexpected things that bring me the most joy here. One day, we were heading back to camp after a long morning of driving, and we saw a chameleon on the side of the road. We had never seen one before, so we stopped and hopped out of the car to take a look. It was swaying in the wind in a way that looked like it was dancing, so we turned up the music in the car and danced alongside it for a few minutes before finally driving away and leaving the animal to boogie to its own beat. Moments like these might be simple, and they might not even make much sense, but they’re the ones I wouldn’t trade for anything. 
I truly can’t believe that we only have one more month left in this beautiful country. There is still so much to see, so much to learn, and so much laughter to share before we leave. I have no doubt that these next five weeks will be as eventful as the last seven have been, and I can’t wait to see how they unfold!