July 12

ROGER:
I just became a porter for my clients. Yes I am back at camp after putting them on a boat to spend the day on a Mokoro. My job now is to clean up, pack up, and do all the camp grunt work. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

We were planning on spending two nights here, but it is more expensive than camping in the wild (it’s hard to beat free camping). As they sat in the boat to take them across the lagoon to get on the mokoros, we “ran a vote”, and decided I should be packed up and ready to push on when they return around 4:00 or 5:00 (that is PM). I may have something ready for them to snack on when they return – (remember I am now the porter). Usually most are ready to push on, but Jolene sometimes needs some persuasion to “get onboard”. It works out fine and she doesn’t mind, but she needs to have some prodding at times to get her thinking about moving on and not sitting too long.

When I got back from the boat dock I found monkeys had invaded our camp again. We had most of the food packed up, but left the eggs and some cereal out, and they had that all cleaned up and had rooted through some things looking for more food. As I write this I must go chase the ones back that are trying to sneak in behind me to steal something. These are more cautious than some (the workers must use sling shots or something to chase them) so I can keep them at bay pretty easily.

Well I better get to work – actually I have all day. I better explain how I became the porter – I did volunteer. Two people can go on a mokoro, and since there was an odd person, (and not that cheap) I stayed back. I have done many mokoro trips in the past and although I do enjoy them, I know what it is like. Jolene only did one before, and the others don’t remember them at all. The last one Travis and Nicole did was when my parents visited in 1986 and Nicole was only two weeks old! It seems a bit odd now – taking a two week old baby on an overnight mokoro trip in the swamps – but back then we didn’t think anything of it. We used to take all our things and camp overnight, but today they are only doing a day trip.

I will let one of them tell you about the experience.
Roger

TRAVIS:
Today was our day to just sit back and relax. Not only did we have a porter back at camp to take care of packing up, but we got to sit in the bottom of mokoros all day while being pushed through the swamps by our polers. What a life, eh? That must be what it’s like to be with one of those safari groups that we see at campgrounds and stuff all the time…have your tent packed up for you, your meals prepared, and all of that. Now we’re back in the real world of having to earn our keep. Oh well. But I’m supposed to talk about the mokoro trip, I guess. Which was pretty awesome, I must say. We got on a motorboat to start, and were zipped along across Guma Lagoon and then through a maze of small channels that the boat barely fit through. We kept coming up on what looked like a solid wall of papyrus reeds at what I considered to be a slightly excessive rate of speed, only to have the driver whip the boat around a tight corner to keep us in the narrow channel. After about 30 minutes, we got a small island in the middle of the swamps, where we moved to mokoros and continued along with our three guides. Let me just say that every time one of those mokoros gets to where it is trying to go successfully, a small miracle has occurred, because those swamps are the most confusing maze of similar-looking grasses and islands that I could imagine. Anyway, we started out and headed lazily through the swamps, gliding through narrow channels and pushing new channels through the grasses as we went. One of the best parts was seeing all of the bird life; there were birds everywhere, many with beautiful, brilliant plumage. It was fun to be on the water, and to see so much water and so much green after being in the dry, desert-like areas of Botswana for so long. Around noon, we landed on an island, where we did a short 45 minute game walk and ate our lunch. The guides walked us around the island and showed us some of the plants and fruits that have been traditionally used for various things in Botswana. We saw a few warthogs and a bush buck (a small spotted antelope), but the best part of the game walk was the elephants that we saw. It wasn’t that exciting to see the elephants for the sake of seeing elephants, since we’ve seen so many already, but the exciting part was being on foot and getting fairly close to the huge beasts. It’s much more fun when you don’t have the safety of a car to retreat to. After lunch and playing a bit of catch with a palm fruit I picked up, we climbed back into the mokoros and took a bit of a more direct route back to the island from which we started. From there, we climbed back into the motorboat and arrived back at camp to find all of our things packed and ready to go. All in all, it was a great day, and it was a lot of fun to see the beauty and abundance of plant and animal life that is in this part of Botswana. After mom got a shower, we headed out towards Tsodilo Hills, a place where you can hike around and see a bunch of bushman paintings from centuries ago. We won’t make it the whole way tonight, so we’ll be spending another night in the bush tonight and getting to Tsodilo Hills tomorrow.
Travis