Do you know Uncle George

We got an early departure from Tafika and bumped and ground our way to the airport for our 9 a.m. flight. We didn't seem to be in the computers, and they had no confirmation that we were on the flight, had paid for our tickets, or any record that we had even flown to Mfuwe in the first place. But that was no problem, they issued us boarding passes and said that we would be all taken care of for the two flights to get back to Livingstone and our transfers back to Botswana.

The Zambian Airlines plane had an air circulation problem, and we literally sweated our way back to Lusaka on the plane which had one seat per side and held about 25 passengers. Upon landing in Lusaka, we were told that the plane was being grounded, but that our bags would go through, so not to worry. Everybody rolled their eyes at this. Apparently they all knew better, and sure enough, here comes all the bags which needed to be claimed then rechecked for the flight to Livingstone.
Again, they did not have us in the computers, even though we had just checked in an hour earlier, had boarding passes all the way through and bag tags. Again, no problem, here are some new ones, just get on the plane. I felt like one of those stories at the bottom of page 26 of section two in the daily newspapers when they need to fill space: "A Zambian Airlines plane is missing with 25 passengers in the deep bush of central Zambia. No word on the nationality of passengers, but spokespersons said that tourists were probably on board."

We arrived safely, obviously, without incident. A transfer of 40 miles brought us to the border of Zambia and Botswana, the meeting of the Chobe and Zambezi river systems above Victoria Falls. There were 50 or so semi-trucks all lined up trying to get all papers taken care of so that they could board the ferry, one truck at a time, and cross into Botswana. It takes days we are told. However, our "Speed Boat," a fishing boat with benches and a 16 hp outboard motor took us across in just a few minutes.
Upon reaching Botswana, our other transfer company was waiting for us and helped us clear Botswana immigration, a rather hectic scene of people trying to explain why their papers were not in order, why they had to spend the night at the border, or why they didn't have any money to get where they were going.

We were told to take all our shoes from our luggage. Since we had been in Zambia they needed to rub them down with the liquid which prevents hoof and mouth disease. That's great, but nobody bothered with the shoes we had on our feet which would have been just as contaminated as the ones in the bags. Oh well, what do I know?

We got to the airport and tried to get our rental car at Avis to get back to Joe and Cathy's in Maun. It is a six hour drive, and everybody said that we needed to drive only in daylight since the elephants walked the highways at night, and game could come darting across the road at any time. Not a pleasant thought at nighttime especially.

However, Avis closed the office for lunch and although they were supposed to open at 2:00 in the afternoon, it was 2:45 before anybody wandered back into the office. I won't go through all the haggles and hassles I had with Avis at that point, but suffice it to say, that Jim got pissed, and when it became obvious that we weren't going to make it in one day's drive, we finally opted to stay the night in Kasane and take the public bus the following morning for $14 a person rather than pay $400 just to have the pleasure of driving an Avis car.

Everybody told us that we needed to say at the Chobe Safari lodge at over $140 for the night. But the Lonely Planet book said that the Liya Guest House provides warm, friendly rooms for less than $75. We got a taxi to the guest house and they had rooms. A woman with a delightful smile named "Light", (Lesedi she later explained is the Setswane word, but she likes Light) showed me the rooms while Carol watched the luggage. I was shown a room for $66 which had a bathroom across the hall, and then a room for $68 which had the bathroom in the room. Tough decision, and I had to make it without her input, but thankfully, I made the right one and spent the extra two bucks.
They didn't take credit cards, so we had to get to town and get to an ATM machine. I talked to Light about making arrangements for the bus the following morning, and she said that she could take care of it. There are no reservations, but if you get there early enough, it's no problem. She would call "Uncle George" and make sure we got there in time. It was important to have somebody reliable to actually pick us up when they said they would. I teased her about keeping it in the family, and she said: "Oh, no, it's just what everybody calls him."

I showed her the book with the reference to her guest house, and she was absolutely delighted. Apparently nobody had mentioned it to her, and she kept it for a while as she had to show everybody the book. We laughed and teased about who was warm and friendly, and how they got the write-up in the book
She said that we could catch a taxi on the road close to the guest house and get to town for 60 cents. While we were waiting, a man, Eric he said as we introduced ourselves, came walking by whom we had seen earlier at the airport, and he said it was only a half a mile to town. We've learned that people really have no concept of how far things are when walking. You just get there when you arrive, but we needed the exercise anyway, so we joined him in the walk. A car came by and he did a modified "Hook-em-horns" sign with his little finger and his index finger, so we started making jokes about that and I showed him how to blow the mind of some Texans by doing it when he met new people. I asked him if he knew new Uncle George, and he said: "Oh, do you mean the taxi driver?" So apparently Light was steering us correctly.

Upon returning to the room after finding the ATM, we opened the drawer of the desk looking to find Gideon's Bible, but instead found salvation Botswana style: About 15 packs of condoms, and two diaphragms (women's condoms they're called)

Uncle George said that it was important to get to the bus "station" (a parking lot) at 5:30 because the bus would leave promptly at 6:00.
We got up at five the following morning, and true to his reputation, Uncle George was there at 5:30. He had told Light that because he had to get up so early, he was going to charge us double to get to the station, so it cost us all of $6 instead of the usual three.
When we arrived there was already a group of people milling around and a lot of luggage lined up. Everybody looked at us as if to say: "Are you confused? What are you doing here?" Obviously, westerners don't take the local buses often. I finally realized that the line of bags was a queue for the order of when to get on the bus. I put our bags in the line and established our position. At 6:25 the bus showed up, and "promptly" at 6:35 we were on our way. I was impressed by the civility of the people getting on the bus. It wasn't Italy where it's everybody for themselves. Everybody stuck to their position. We were lucky to have gotten there so early, "Thanks Uncle George," because we were in the middle of the pack. The bus was similar to those airport shuttle buses holding about 25 people. Well, there were 40 or so of us, and not everybody made it. Carol and I wound up in the back row, five narrow seats which held four people. I had a seat ridge in my back for the entire three hour ride to Nata, while Carol had to hold her backpack on her lap. Many people had to stand and I had a guy's butt much closer to my face than I really wanted. A mom, grandma, and one year old girl were sitting in the row in front of Carol and the little girl just didn't know what to think about these two pale faces. She looked at us with an amazed look on her face, then would hide behind mom when we made eye contact. I reached out to touch her hand, and she recoiled as if a snake was attacking. Must have been the haircut; When she started acting up after an hour or so, mom would pick her up and move her toward us as if to say: "If you don't behave, I'm going to put you back there with them. Her behavior improved immediately. The three hour ride was better than we thought, and we made it just in time to catch another bus coming to Maun. Just enough time to use the bathroom, grab a coke and get on the bus. This one was a big bus and Carol and I had three seats for the two of us. Enough room to spread out our lunch and eat on the way. We got to Joe and Cathy's place around 1:30 p.m. and I just said a "Ha, gotcha Avis."

We spent another lovely evening with Joe and Cathy. and it was like coming home again. They are such great people and have made such a success of their lives and provided their children with the tools to do the same. The world is a better place for them being part of it.

We drove to Namibia and were reminded of all the little things about driving. Tons of animals on the road, cows, goats, donkeys, horses. Everybody speeds by at 75 miles an hour hardly slowing down. These animals are very road savvy. They look both ways before crossing and even my four old grand son doesn't do that. If they start across the road, then you know they'll continue to do so and can brake accordingly. If they cross and are beyond your car, you can be assured that they won't turn back into your pathway. I guess it's Darwinism in action. The stupid ones get killed and the smart ones pass on those learned skills to offspring. There are surprisingly few accidents. We didn't see any until the last day's drive. Most of those that do occur happen at night when vision is impaired.
We saw lots of ostriches along the way and Cathy had told us the story of one of the daughters of the first prime minister who got into a flap because she sold some diamonds. People accused her of ripping off the diamond industry through corruption, but it turned out that she had property with ostriches on it which are just big scavenging birds like chickens who pick up a lot of rocks which they store in their craw to grind up the food they eat. It seems that there were lots of diamonds on the surface of the ground which the ostriches ate and when they butchered the ostriches they found all these diamonds in the craw. Being the hardest of the rocks, they didn't get ground down and were in perfect condition. I never got specific details, but apparently there were sufficient numbers of them which led to a tidy sum of money for the woman. End of corruption story.

Because you have hundreds of miles of bush with seemingly nothing in between, people need to mark the "driveway" into their hut, so they get very creative about how to mark where they live. A pole stuck into the ground will have a variety of items attached to it for identification purposes. To list a few that we've seen: an old tire with an upside red quart oil can impaled on the top of the pole; a pale blue fender from an old car; a rusty 50 gallon drum painted red with the top/bottom yellow; a woman's pink skirt flying like a flag in the wind (don't even want to think about that one); an old enamel sink; a hubcap, a plastic bucket hanging by it's handle and a aluminum tea kettle at the top. Turn left at the tea kettle about 50 kms outside of Maun on route B1.

Botswana is such a paradox, being both a shining light as to the prospects of African nations, and representing the despair of social situations. Since discovering diamonds after independence in 1966, Botswana negotiated a contract with DeBeers, THE big diamond conglomerate in South Africa whereby they take 75% of the profits. Namibia, for example, has a contract which splits the profits 50-50. More about that in later letters.
Anyway, the benefit for the people is that there are a lot of social services provided for the them. Everybody upon turning 65 receives a pension no matter whether they've received wages or not. It's not a program whereby people have to pay into it, it's just a service. There is money and it is spent fairly wisely. None of the rulers of Botswana have retired as wealthy men with swill bank accounts. No $100 million private jets like the king of Swaziland.

On the other hand, aids is in epidemic proportions and takes a terrible toll on the people. Families are not one man, one woman with their children. There are signs all along the highway urging people to be sexually faithful to their partner when they are away from home. There has been a very flexible system of who sleeps with whom for centuries and it is difficult to turn that around. Cathy tells us that she never asks people about who their father is, because they often don't know. Young girls are encouraged by their mothers to have children when they are very young, regardless of marital status because the mothers want grandchildren. In many African societies, men would refuse to marry a woman unless she had borne a child to ensure that she was fertile. There are just SO many children!!

I'm not making judgments about tribal life or social mores, it's just that what may have worked for tribal societies for centuries is now causing some serious challenges in modern 20th-21st century life.
Stay safe,
J and c