Spring break was a blast!
We flew to Maun on Saturday and were camping in the wilderness for 7 days straight.
We had a base camp in Maun and then we would go on trips to camp in other places. The first trip was the mokoro (boat) trip and it was only 2 days. It was a nice introduction to camping for people like me who had never camped before.
We drove to the Okavango Delta and camped on this island with elephants, giraffes, ostriches, zebras, etc. We were polled across the hippo infested delta in mokoros in twos.
The boats were small and really close to the water. I was SO SCARED looking at the size of the boat and the depth of the water! Once you get moving, the nerves calm down a bit. While on the island, we took an evening and early morning walk looking for game. We went in groups of 5 and the guides were really knowledgeable about the fauna and flora of the island.
Then we went on a 4 day trip to the central Kalahari game reserve. This was a very intrilling trip for so many reasons.
We camped in the middle of a game reserve infested with human predators like lions! It was a lot of fun though because we would go on a morning and a late afternoon drive around the dessert. Each time we went out we saw tons of animals in big herds. The most prevalent were wildebeest, springboks, ostriches, gemsboks, suricats and a lot of bird species.
On the last day, we saw 8 lions during our late afternoon/ early evening drive. During the evening, it turns out that the lions followed us back to our tents. So when we woke up the following day, we woke up to our safari camp guides driving the lions away. They moved and set camp 100m from our camp. Later that morning, lion foot prints were found all around our tents. That night, around 8 pm, they started roaring loudly and we could tell they were moving closer to our tents. Everybody had to get away from the fire, rush to their tent and zip all the window and door flaps up.
Even though I enjoyed seeing all these animals, my favorites were suricats. These animals are hilarious!
When we drove by, they would freeze as if they were playing dead. They remained in that position for more than minutes!
Yesterday was International Women's Day! The school celebrated it with traditional dances and speeches.
They spoke passionately about the fact that Batswana women have equal opportunities as men only on paper. They empasised the fact that in reality, women are still lagging behind in development. One professor said that is evident because men can easily leave home and go study abroad while a women has to think about her children before she can decide to go further her education abroad. I thought this was a good point because it really is true. Later when I pondered more about this issue, I figured that there is no way around it because women will always be the ones that raise the children.
Till another time.
Love from Botswana!
