Thursday, September 18, 2008

No reality show could beat this: Maun Life



Maun, Botswana
September 18, 2008
(with photos of a Maun sunset on an August boat cruise on the Boro River and of Audrey, who didn’t seem to mind Maun’s reputation when she visited from Texas last month. The boat driver is James Howard, a motorcross fanatic British fellow who can’t get enough of Maun.)

While Kelly swims the pristine waters of the Indian Ocean at Zanzibar, I am in hot, dusty Maun back into the swing of my volunteer work.

I am looking on the bright side of having left a tropical paradise a week ago.

Maun is an outpost from days gone by, quirky as can be, teeming with legends about “characters.” And the thing is, some of the characters are still alive and walking past the same goats and donkeys as I do most days.

I haven’t seen him myself, but my friends at Karibu Safari say you can pitch up (a South African term for show up) at the bar at the Okavango River Lodge and see the guy without the arm. A lion ate it. The former national beauty queen from South Africa might be there at the same time. She’s missing a good part of her calf, thanks to a hippo attack.

Last night a gristled, bearded man at River Lodge was sitting at the table where my friends were. Kirk, one of Karibu’s owners, told me that the guy has two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from universities in Germany. He came to Maun and never left, making his living by running a marketing campaign for a safari company. It turns out that a woman I met a few months ago in Savute, a graceful slip of a gal who drives a huge truck and trailer filled with camping equipment for her husband’s private safari company, is a former French horn player in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Her husband used to be the guide for Lloyd Wilmot, who set up the tented camp 30 years ago that eventually became Savute Safari Lodge. Lloyd is one of the many children of Bobby Wilmot, famed crocodile hunter who died in 1968 after a black mamba bit him in the face. (Lloyd’s sister was attacked by a crocodile that left teeth marks in her boat but not a scratch on her.)

Lloyd is still around somewhere in these parts, and he is known to be fearless. I saw it myself: He cut a hole in the wall of his Savute house beside his bed. He’d put food on a ledge there for the lions; from his bed he could turn his head to the right and see the lions inches away and take their photos.

Friday night I was at the Bridge at Backpackers, the place Prince Harry and Chelsea frequent, when friends pointed out an older bush pilot at the bar. Everyone thinks that’s Lord Lucan, they said, telling me: Go ahead; Google him. Which I haven’t done yet. They said years ago a wealthy British man who meant to kill his wife but killed the nanny instead disappeared before he was brought to justice. Within a few weeks a wealthy British man, very mysterious, pitched up in Maun, to stay. The locals looked at the photos, and they are convinced it is the same guy. And that doesn’t even touch on the CIA stories I’ve heard here, but those are for campfires back in the U.S.

If you go to www.jacanaent.com, you can see a truly grab-bag of a Web site. The businessman in town who sells tasers and Leathermen and sandals and embroidered safari wear for the lodges’ staff and my can of “Gettem” quick defence spray has compiled photos and the history of Maun, for all the world’s viewers.

He writes of Maun, population 94,698 in the 2001 census: “This magnet for rural people eager to find work has been described in many different ways, from being ‘a place too far from civilization,’ tsetse fly infested (in its early days but now eradicated) rumbustious, the last frontier and ‘a dreadful hole,’ to the far more delightful and appropriate, the ‘Place of the Reeds.’’’

You can see I fell short of selecting Tuscany for my sabbatical year. But I can guarantee you that in Tuscany there are no classified ads in the local newspaper proclaiming the need for herdgirls and -- should any of my embattled journalism friends need a career change -- crocodile skinners.

I like the word “rumbustious” to describe Maun. It fits the can-do attitude so prevalent here, the best example of which I found on the front page of The Ngami Times on Friday. “LEATHERMAN SAVES PILOTS: Four hour drama in the air.” A female pilot and her husband had been flying a Cessna 210 to Jao Camp in the Okavango Delta to deliver supplies when the right wheel locked. For four hours, they did everything they could think of to free the wheels, including dumping freight and making three dives from high in the sky to see if they could get the wheels to work. Nothing helped, despite all sorts of instructions from all sorts of people on the radio.

How appropriate that in Maun finally came the magic words from one of the flight company’s’ ground crew: “Do you have a Leatherman?”

When the man in the air said yes, he was instructed to cut a hole in the seat above the undercarriage and then into the floor of the plane. The guy told the newspaper he used the Leatherman “like a tin opener,” and reached through the hole in the floor to free the wheels.

“I was more concerned about saving the lives of my wife and myself than losing a hand,” he told the newspaper.

David and Cathy Kays took out a quarter-page ad in the newspaper thanking every last soul who helped them land the plane, including “To the people of Maun, friends and family for being behind us in spirit and prayers while we circled overhead and for their loud cheering when we made a safe landing.”

They wrapped up their ad with a tribute to Maun, “a very special place with a community spirit that is rare to find. It is thanks to the above that we were able to come out of a nasty predicament. You all gave us the strength to be calm and practical.”

In Botswana, that part about being “practical” means they had been instructed with those all-important, ubiquitous words, “Make a plan.” They did, with flying colors. And now they will be among Maun’s legends, not as quirky characters, but as the latest names on the roster of can-do Africans. Makes me proud to roam around this rumbustious place of reeds and heat the likes of which could melt your toenails.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

So...how close are you to re-defining your "sabbatical" to permanent status? With all that kind of life to absorb you'll have only scratched the surface in a year.
Stuart told about your blog which is now one of my favorites!

A magical flower

A magical flower
The guide squeezes this flower and it squirts water like a water pistol

Cathy and Joe Wanzala

Cathy and Joe Wanzala
They couldn't wait to paste the Obama sticker on their car

My main man

My main man
Ernest is my trusty cab driver who blasts music as we make our way through Gabs

Ted Thomas, man of intrigue and style

Ted Thomas, man of intrigue and style
My friend, Ted, and his wife, Mary Ann, hosted a Safari Send-Off for me in Austin and treated me to a special mix of African music that already a UB student and a professor want to download.