Traveling is an adventure

I wrote this last week and thought I posted it but just realized that somehow it was only saved as a draft. And I can't believe how long it is. Another couple of updates: I just gave my ISP presentation and am currently working on the last couple of changes to my paper (39 pages total, eek!) and I'm going to print it today so then I'll be all done which feels fantastic. i'm back in gabs now and it's great to be back with the whole group. After finishing my paper, I'm going to visit my gabs family tonight and on friday I'm going to visit my otse fam who I miss so much so I'm really excited to see them. But anyway, here's what you should have seen a week ago:

So, I've gone on two trips over ISP. I just realized I never wrote about the first one and just yesterday I got back from the second. it's going to be long, so only read it if you really want to. Anyway, here's to the Botswana public transportation system and (somewhat) helpful people:

About a week and 1/2 ago I went to Ghanzi and D'Kar, which are 2 San villages a ways west of here. We went to go to the craft shops and museum. It was fun, definitely worth the trip. Everything is completely unclear though when your travelling in this country. We got off the bus in D'Kar and went to the museum/shop area, which is a small building where maybe 30 people were sitting outside, staring at us try to get into the museum and fail because it was locked at about 1 in the afternoon. Most of them don't speak setswana or english, so it was just an awkward situation, but eventually we figured out it would open at 2 so we waited until then. After looking at the museum and going to the shop, we hitched a ride to Ghanzi and checked into our hotel, which couldn't find our reservation because Alyssa had difficulty communicating over the phone and it turns out her first initial became a T and she's from Boisidaho (as opposed to Boise, Idaho) among other mistakes that got lost in her accent. The rest of the day was good, in the mornign we went to the San craft shop in Ghanzi and were at the bus stop by 2 for the bus that was supposed to leave at 2;30 to return to Maun. however, everyone kept saying they didn't think it was coming because they haven't seen it all day. (This is after we had some other friends get stranded in Ghanzi after their bus hit a cow, and they ended up staying a week by choice becaue they made a friend who let them stay at their house.) So we waited until 2:30 and headed to the place that is apparently the hitching post to go to Maun. we spent 2 hours trying to get a ride, and finally the bus drove into town at 4:30 and we amazingly made it back that day.




My next story is a lot more stressful, at least it was for me at the time. However, the first part of the trip was great. I went with 4 friends to Tsodilo Hills this week. We got the number of the guy who runs the museum there from our director, and called him to see if we could get a ride there because there is a bus that goes from Maun to a village 35 km outside of the hills, but frm there you need a 4X4 and apparently you only go there if you have a private vehicle, but many SIT students have gone in the past and it's a really neat place to go. So anyway, we called this man Fane and he happened to be in Maun, going back to Tsodilo on Tuesday. Fantastic, we got a free ride all the way there--in the bed of a covered pickup so we kind of felt like prisoners, but that's just how we do in this country:) We didn't know what time he was coming so we contacted him and finally heard he would be coming around 4:30. Sure enough, he did and after running errands for an hour and 1/2 in Maun, we got out of town by 6 and arrived at Tsodilo at 11 pm. Since it was so late, Fane told us to just put our sleeping bags on his living room floor instead of setting up tents for the night. Okay, whatever-nice guy, just a little awkward. So that was fine and we got up in the morning to set up at the campsite (free, by the way!). We spent the day enjoying the hills, which were fantastic. We hiked 2 trails, which had a ton of rock paintings. That's what Tsodilo is--it's an area where a lot of 3000 year old rock paintings have been preserved and are open to the public to hike. It was really beautiful out there. Also, important for the story-we talked to Fane in the morning about getting back the next day, and he said he would be going into town after a meeting ended after lunchtime and there's a bus that leaves at 3:30 so we should be able to catch that. Good deal, no worries (well, not many at least). Thursday morning we hiked another trail, again fantastic. We were ready by about 1:30 and waited for Fane, who was still in his meeting. meanwhile, we saw a man with a Nxamaseri Lodge van and t-shirt and asked him when he was headed back to Nxamaseri (nearby village). He said around 4 and we would be welcome to hitch a ride with him. Later we learned that his name is Mark, he's a white South African and does maintenance at the lodge. Since 4 was too late for us to get the bus, we kept waiting but when it was 3 and Fane was still in his meeting we started to ask Mark about hitching a ride to maun (deemed impossible) or an in-between destination with accommodation (again impossible). However, Mark said he could set us up at Nxamaseri lodge for a discounted P100 (~$17) per person for being Maun "residents." So we decided, sure, then we know he will be able to drive us to catch the bus in the morning and we'll be good to go. A little late but it's okay. Oh, and we needed to get back by friday because our 90-day visas expired friday and we tried to do it monday but the immigratin office wouldn't let us becaue we were too early. So while he's driving us, he begins to inform us that we're going to have to pretend we actually know him, and our story is that we're friends with his girlfriend who lives in South Africa. To us, this was sort of just a joke, like maybe we'll have to quickly play it off to some receptionist that, yeah, Mark's our friend, no big deal. Soon enough, we find there are three legs to our transport to the hotel-first, in the van. then you get to the sandy part where you need 4-wheel drive so we rode in the back of a pickup. Finally...a boat. Oh, so now we realize he's taking us to one of the ritzy island lodges in the delta that are generally only accessed by plane. This was starting to get entertaining, and when we arrived at the lodge, we were greeted by this young, pleasant manager named Kat and soon realized we were the ONLY people at the lodge, and we're going to be eating dinner of leftovers around the table with Kat and Mark, like a family. The first lie came when Kat asked where we stay in Maun and someone said we were visiting her boyfriend who works in Maun, and little did we know Kat "knows everyone in Maun. What's his name?" With lots of questions, he ended up being Jimmy Grey, 26 years old, tall, blonde and just started working in Maun at the sankuyo management trust. Funny Kat doesn't know him. After she left us, we talked about it as a group and decided we really didn't feel comforable making up this huge lie about who we are just to save a few bucks and we were going to just tell her who we really are and deal withthe consequences. First we wanted to talk to Mark though because he would probably be getting in trouble for this. So when we came to him with the request of telling her the truth, he said, "no, you can't do that. she'll charge you the normal $350 rate. What do you want to drink? Let me get you a drink." completely ignoring our discomfort with the entire situation. So we ended up not telling her and got through the night okay. The mornign was agonizing though. over breakfast, she started asking more-where we actually grew up, etc. and it was clear she wasn't buying our american accents as being south african, as we claimed to be from johannesburg and went to the university of cape town, etc. We were all feeling sufficiently horrible about lying to this woman we hardley knew who was being incredibly hospitable to us and genuinely interested in our lives, which we were making up. At any rate, we finally left and ended up making it onto the bus and returning to Maun fine, but this was probably my second-most hated experience of this semester, second to a time when I really thought one my friends might die, but that's another story and he didn't die so it's okay. Basically, I'm really not proud of this whole situation and I (and the people I was with) felt completely helpless to change our situation. However, Mark was really just trying to help some girls out by giving them a place to stay, which we appreciate, but I really don't know how to tell you how uncomfortable the entire situation is. But that's how we do in Botswana. Be flexible and be ready to encounter more awkward situations than you would ever desire. And I learned some things from this experience too, plus I still got to see some incredible rock art. Not bad. Ok, I'm done with that now.



Just to make Friday worse, our 90-day visas expired on friday and we had to renew them. we tried to do that on Monday, but they wouldn't let us. So the people who were still in Maun spent the entire day at the immigration office trying to work out our visas because they really did not want to grant us extensions. So literally from 1o am they were trying to get the officers to let us stay legally in the country for another week. When the four of us arrived from Tsodilo arrived at about 2, they were still fighting it out and we all waited around until they finally gave us visas at 5:30, an hour after their office technically closes. That was a major headache, but at least I'm legal!



Now that that's all done, I've been enjoying my last couple of days in Maun. I leave early tomorrow morning to go back to Gabs for our last week, during which time we'll present our ISPs and hang out together. ISP is nearly done-all written and just needs some proofreading! Short version of my conclusion is that people really like having CBNRM in Khwai want to keep it, but they don't really like a lot of the management decisions that are being made and many community members don't feel like they have a voice in the trust which is no good because it's supposed to be community-based, but like always, authority tends to take over decision-making and get on power trips. CBNRM has helped conservation efforts in Khwai, and people are getting a better understanding of what conservation is and why it's so important. The trust has also created a lot of employment for locals, which is great.

I've been so productive. I'm really quite proud of myself. At least half of my ISP is written:))) Now I just have the discussion and conclusion, which is the part which I actually have to think about which is why I've started procrastinating over the past couple of days. But it'll get done. I have high hopes for tomorrow.

We've been having some fun doing random things like tonight it's our friend's birthday and we're renting a combi (a common form of public transportation, sort of like a buses in the US but it's more like an 18-seater hippie van). Next week we're going to go to Tsodilo Hills for about 3 days which is a place with old "bushmen" rock paintings. it should be pretty neat. It's the one place that if we travelled, our academic director said to go there. I've been getting sort of bored with being here. There's only so much in Maun, and I'm ready to move on to another part of the country. After tsodilo, I might travel a bit before I have to be back with the whole group in Gabs but I havent' quite figured it out yet.

It's some sort of holiday here. Something like labor day? All it really seems to mean is that everything is closed, which didn't work well for me when my shoe broke today and I came to town to get new ones. With no luck finding an open store, I decided to grace you all with an update, but I'm realizing that there's not that much to tell. Hence, you get to know that I have a broken shoe for lack of more exciting information.