The rabies adventure continued to Botswana though, this time, with not as much running around. I was able to get a really good feel for the country and I loved it. The people are wonderful and friendly and the sunsets are spectacular. We visited Gaborone's museum of natural history, a local village and a nearby game reserve. Every place we went welcomed us with incredible hospitality and a lot of ululating (not the same as uvulating for those of you at Icefall last March!). There was much singing and dancing and I must say that Botswanans might love to dance almost as much as Greeks do. At the local village, the women shared stories, traditions, and customs and prepared a large meal for us all. In keeping with tradition, the men were seated and served first which meant that by the time the poor women were able to get food, there was nothing left aside from sorghum and crushed maize. It made for quite a bland and monochromatic meal. And you can imagine how a bunch of women scientist felt about standing around in the dust waiting for the men to be seated and fed properly. However, we were visitors here and therefore took our spoonful of sorghum and ate it.
At the game reserve we ate dinner on the patio overlooking the hills and the one river that runs through Gabarone which is dammed in order to form the reservoir that feeds the entire city all year long. Most of Botswana is a desert so water management is extremely important. I had a fascinating two hour long conversation with the Dean of the Agriculture School about water management and Botswana history. He was absolutely shocked by how much water the US and Europe uses because Botswanans are very aware of water usage and have everything intricately timed according to the rain cycles in the country. He also gave us the entire Botswanan history in an effort to explain why Botswana is such a safe, stable and well-off country on a continent where that is certainly not the norm.
We were then visited by a local dance troop who performed for us. They are a self-assembled group of orphans (I am guessing a result of the incredibly high HIV/AIDs prevalence in Botswana) who perform in order to preserve the culture of their tribes as well as to raise money to send some of their members to school. They were absolutely wonderful to watch, though when they tried to pull me up to dance with them I had to plead with the poor boy to let go of my hands because I explained that I would implode if I had to get up in front of everyone.
After two weeks of traveling, it was nice to be on my way back home. I spent the morning wandering around the bush by myself checking out the vervet monkeys and birds in the area before heading to the airport. Botswana Air actually forced me to check my bag all the way through to Seattle which I was loathe to do and utterly convinced that I would never see it again, since it had to go through Johannesburg and Charles de Gaulle. But, miraculously, it arrived safe and sound in Seattle. I was shocked. Anyway, the few days I spent in Botswana has really made me want to go back there and explore more as I really did love it there.
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