John

The leather shop

John the missionary and the catharsis of Rakops

I went over to the skinny white man (no mirrors in sight) and said
'are you John?' incredibly the response was 'yes'!

It turns out John is a missionary who has been in Africa a long time
and in Rakops for the last eighteen years. In retrospect, had I known
of his pastoral status, I should really have said 'John, I presume?'

He asked if I'd found a place to stay yet and offered me a bed, shower
and dinner. I explained my situation at the Lodge and accepted without
hesitation, dashing back to the lodge to collect my kit. There was no
one about, I did consider searching for someone to ask for my money
back (about £5) but was pretty sure the answer would be a firm 'no'
and they'd more than likely demand money for the dinner I'd not yet
eaten. So instead I just grabbed everthing and sped off across the
darkening savannah. I wonder what they made of the crazy white man who
turned up out of the desert on a bike, paid for the night, did nothing
for hours except drink lots of water and then disappeared?

John had to lead a bible study group for an hour or so with some local
children, but meanwhile offered me the use of his Internet. This was
amazing, to be suddenly transported from sitting alone in the
unfriendly 'cocktail bar' weak from the combined effects of the sun
and wind, having to pursuade the staff to give me each glass of water.
I'd considered this afternoon the only time felt anything approaching
Conrad's so called 'Heart of Darkness' which if you've ever read it
(and if you haven't you really should, it's not very long) is nothing
about Africa being either dark or full of black skinned peoples, but
is instead about slavery and how it makes lives cheap and futile and
has a lot of people just sitting lying around, a bit like Rakops. So
anyway I'd gone from feeling like that to sitting with a nice coffee
happily typing away at the blog listening to the sounds of children
singing songs from down the corridor. I was a happy man.

John soon finished up and I was done blogging. We walked round to the
bakery he ran (in addition to the leather shop and a primary school -
busy man, certainly I'd bet the busiest in Rakops!). We made coffee
and ate apricot jam sandwiches all evening whilst sitting round John's
table discussing all sorts of things (including maps of course). It
was a great evening.

John was also English and had been at Cambridge studying medicine and
then Engineering before deciding many years ago to head south to
Africa to work as a missionary. He had travelled all over the
continent including times in a number of war zones such as the Angolan
border war. He was a missionary in the truest sense of the word. He
lived in a mud hut with just twenty eight pounds in a bank back in
England.

I mentioned the feelings of unease I'd had at the lodge, John agreed.
Apparently a large part of their income comes from people going there
to use the rooms for sex. Though it's not actually a brothel it is
pretty much used that way. I was glad I'd left. Whilst on the subject
we discussed the HIV situation in Botswana. In common with most of
Southern Africa prevalence of the infection is extremely high. Around
thirty percent! Hard to imagine eh! Thirty percent is a lot. If you
try to think of something thirty percent of the UK population do I'd
guess you're talking on the order of things like watching Coronation
Street or Eastenders or world cup finals, it's a lot. What was the
explanation for this? After all contary to what many many assume to be
the case it's not really a Pan-Sub-Saharan African phenomenon. West
Africa for example has much lower rates.

I mentioned I'd once attended a lecture given by a speaker from the
WHO. His hypothesis involved the Southern African mines. This whole
region is rich in valuable minerals such as gold, uranium, diamonds
and platinum. These employ large numbers of people, almost entirely
men, who travel from rural villages to the mines only returning home
once or twice a year. Large numbers of men living away from their
wives equals a thriving sex industry. Whether this was correct I don't
know. But there are plenty of regions of the world with large
unskilled male labour forces. Even using the example of West Africa,
Ghana was formerly known as the Gold Coast and has massive goldmines
and the Niger delta is swimming in Oil second only to the Middle East
in reserves.

John felt the reason was cultural and relatively recent and due to the
structure of society and poverty. Marriage (at least in Rakops) was
rare and where it did happen it didn't tend to count for much. If
there was money it was usually the men who had it and the women, who
had the children to support, that needed it. With few skills to fall
back on women have little option, but to use sex to make ends meet.
With the high levels of poverty this translates effectively to a
culture of normality towards infidelity and sleeping around.

He also mentioned what he saw as the seemingly ingrained lack of
motivation to see things through or finish off projects as part of a
wider pernicious problem. This explained many of the half built houses
I'd seen around the village.

This connection between poverty, the disempowerment of women and HIV
also seemed to make sense, but then the question comes back, why
should Southern Africa be any different form other parts of the world,
or even other regions of Africa? There's plenty of poverty elsewhere,
Africa may be worse in places, but Botswana itself is relatively
stable and well off compared with places such as DRC or Rwanda.

We talked for houn and not just about HIV and laziness, but I'm not
going to go on and on boring you with everything we discussed, suffice
it to say it was a very interesting evening. My early starts and long
days in the saddle soon caught up with me though and I was forced to
retire to bed with lots to think about.

I woke early, well before first light. I tried once again to get the
stove working and failed once again. John had warned me Botswanan
petrol is notoriously bad and infact said he usually filters it before
use. Perhaps that was the problem. Luckily he had a kettle and I found
I could rustle up a pretty decent porridge just using boiled water
(with plenty of sugar and cocoa) useful tip for the future.

I managed to be on the road just after six. It was already light, but
there was little sign of the sun just yet, merely a hint of a red
beginning to spill along the horizon. The air was cool. As I passed
the last huts and moved out onto the vast open savannah I was in a
strange mood. My time in Rakops had given me a lot to think about.

I've thought twice about putting this next part in the blog. It's
pretty personal, but as you will see central for my journey. If I was
back home I'd probably be to embarrassed to do it (most of my friends
believe, with good reason, that I'm some way along the autistic
spectrum as it is). Hope you don't mind. Fear thee not there will be
more classic tales of adventure to come futher down the road.

Mostly (perhaps selfishly) most of my thoughts kept becoming centred
about myself. I've long felt plagued with never finishing things off
properly. Sometimes to the extent I'll be afraid to attempt things I
know I could achieve for fear of failure (this trip was almost one of
those). In Rakops I'd observed the effects of this at a community
level. I'd seem that its often the little bits which make the
difference. From getting round to putting a roof on your house or just
getting up and onto the road early where a couple of hours can make
all the difference. Similarly there's no way I could just have just
sat around in Swakupmond contemplating my journey, planning to leave
most of it to the last minute and then make a rush job of it to
Maputo. That would be impossible. I had to cover a certain amount of
distance each day or I'd never get there. Here was a valuable (and I'm
sure to most, obvious) lesson for life.

My mind was on a roll. Churning out ideas and bringing up long buried
fears and questions. I guess back home it's easier to bottle things
up, or put them off for another day. This is the difference when
travelling, especially when it gets tough, these things begin to
surface and won't just go away so easily. You can experience a
cathartic cleansing. This was happening to me out on the savannahs of
Rakops.

I read quite a few books. Always did as a boy. Many of these are about
adventures and far off places. This is great, but does tend one toward
a feeling of almost unquenchable wanderlust. I'd been particularly
badly bitten by the Africa bug many years before ever setting foot
south of the Sahara and often wondered where this would lead me. Could
I ever get it sufficiently out of my system to be tuely content with a
life in Britain, to settle down and have a house, a family, grow
vegetables in the garden? Having spent time with John discussing the
things we had and the experiences I'd had over the last weeks I no
longer felt I could be happy to actually live out here and call it
home. I liked this.

Perhaps it had been something as simple and vain as merely needing to
prove to myself (and I guess my friends) that I could do these things
I could take on adventure, but in my heart I didn't really want to
live my life that way. I belonged In England, in fact probably in
Oxfordshire. It felt great to finally know this. It meant I could make
plans in a way I'd never felt before.

True it was great to have exotic friends from all over the world and
to travel and experience the world, but though I'd never really felt
any really fervent nationalistic identity like some of the Scots (and
one Englishman, you know who you are) I know, I did now know I was an
Englishman who loved his country. I was very lucky, unlike all the
people I'd met in these beautiful but barren lands, when I got back I
could look forward to the bellowing rut, autumn mists and Guy Fawlkes
night, not the heat of the coming rains. It felt great to finally know
and accept this. I would certainly travel again but I'd always love
England. (in case you're wondering Tom I did and I was).

Without realising it I'd passed my halfway point yesterday. I was now
at my centre of the continent. The furthest I would be get from the
oceans. I still had a long journey ahead, but this pilgrim of the road
was on his way home. I'd reached my Santiago de Compostela, I'd
reached my goal. It wasn't a white sandy beach in Mozambique. I'd
found it here in the middle of the desert and it hadn't really ever
been a place or location after all.

The hardships of the journey now seemed neccesary and I almost
welcomed them. I only felt grateful my journey of self discovery had
allowed me to include jewels such as the Okavango and the Namib, but
it was the Kalahari which had really counted in the end.

The fear I'd sometimes felt about traveling alone (fear I'd in fact
experienced almost entirely before actually setting out, travelling
can be tough, but not half as frightening as you may imagine) now
seemed a required part of things. Sure at times it would have been
great to have had someone to talk to during the dark days of Ghanzi,
but then I'd never have had the time alone just me and my mind. I'd
have been too easily distracted from the monotony. Certainly I woudn't
be where I was now and I was very glad I was here.

Fear not (or hope not) my friends, reading this knowing I've just
spent the evening with a man of god. I remain a far atheist agnostic I
don't even believe in the hippy version of Gaia, but that doesn't mean
you can't have a spirituality.

By now the sun was up. It had completed it's daily transformation from
thin red stain, to cool orange globe to glaring yellow/white ball. I
was heading due east straight towards the heat. I was ready.

The hot road to Rakops

'...like a submarine at the bottom of the ocean; it was there but it
emitted no signals, soundless, motionless'

(Ryzsard Kapuscinski, Describing the stupor of a village at noon)

As I'd expected and I suppose really quite wanted I made a late start
from the Tswana family. After feeling all pleased with myself at how
well the stove had performed the previous evening I now could not get
it to start up at all. All rather embarassing. I persevered for about
twenty minutes before having to accept defeat. Perhaps some grit had
got into the feeder tube from the fuel bottle. I did notice the fuel
itself was quite low and hoped that may be the issue and it was just a
matter of buying more petrol. So instead I tucked into some dry
biscuits an egg and some sweets, whilst Laila (this is the name of the
woman who had taken me in) and her family tucked into some hot
porridge. I didn't feel quite so clever now.

I was not unduely worried about starting out late since I only had
100k to cover all day. So I felt good despite not actually getting on
the road till nine o'clock, my latest start so far. I headed off
moving pretty much due south, still following the course of the Boteti
river. It lay just a few kilometers to the east through the mopane,
but with the lack of any real elevation and the density of the scrub I
never actually saw it again. With the late start I fully anticipated a
fierce showdown with the wind right from the start. Instead the
tailwind from yesterday returned and I was flying! With the pace I was
keeping and a bit of effort I reckoned I might even make Rakops in
under four hours!

I never did see signs for any of the 'exclusive' lodges I'd initially
planned to camp at. In fact it was a good hour before I even noticed
more Tswana huts. My split second decision to stop with Leila now
seemed more than just a good idea, if I had carried on it would have
been very dark before I passed the next Tswana huts and in all
likelihood would probably never have spotted them in the dark. I'd
have been forced to camp without a Boma in an area chock with Lions
and Hyenas, a quite different prospect to a lone Leopard. Leila's had
NOT been one of my mistakes and I'd almost not even done it. Perhaps
my third man had been silently running alongside me in the mopane
calling across to me. I felt a little uneasy at how easily I could
have made the wrong choice.

I was moving fast, but within a a couple of hours was starting to feel
strangely weak. I wasn't sure what was wrong. I didn't feel nauseated
or have a headache. I was still a little worried I could have picked
up malaria camping by the swamp at Sehitwa or even been bitten by a
tick back at the huts. Still I didn't have far to go now and wanted to
try and make the most of the tail wind I had, my pace was still great.
I pressed on.

I next time I passed a mobile mast I dialled the number I had for a
contact John in Rakops. I got through. It was the wrong number. Well
that was that. I'd be camping again... but now without a stove. From
what I'd managed to workout I expected Rakops to be quite a nice
place. Not anything like as big as Maun, but the map did indicate an
airfield and a petrol station.

As i got to within 30km of Rakops the vegetation opened out into wide
savannah with occassional clumps of acacia. The grass here was shorter
than back in the Namib. There were a number of quite big dust devils
in view.
Ground squirrels were common. Running off a safe distance as I
approached befor standing on their hindlegs of get a better view of me
as I passed.
A Baetelur eagle was circling of to my left much to the concern of a
pair of crowned plovers who flew up swarking their hearts out every
time it passed.

As i approached Rakops I passed what looked like a nice lodge out on
the grassland. I was still 10km away so pressed on, I didn't want this
distance added to tomorrow's total. At least it seemed I'd been right
to assume Rakops might be a nice spot.

I reached it about half an hour later. It was not nice. No please
don't think I only like a place if it has nice coffee houses,
restaurants and lodges all geared up for western tourists. I don't. I
wouldn't have come on this trip I that was what I was after. What I
mean is that one can tell if a place has people who take care of it.
Regardless if how much or little money they have. I guess it's a bit
like keeping your house clean and tidy. Rakops had broken wire fences,
many of the buildings were half built, there were very few plants (I
know this is a desert but many villages seem able to grow nice plants.
It was quite hard to discern where the centre was. There were quite a
few people about but few of them were doing anything, they were just
sitting or lying about.

I came to a sort of crossroads where there was a shop and place you
could buy food and beer. I ordered some food and chatted with the
girls in the eating place. They we nice enough but couldn't recommend
anywhere other than a lodge back out on the main road.

I ate up and headed back the way I'd come. Xere Lodge was the place
I'd been directed to. From a distance it had a nice thatched roof and
lots of small huts out the back. I thought it would be quite nice to
get one of those and relax for the afternoon. The place had a bit of a
strange atmosphere. Yes it was a little run down and it seemed no one
really ever cared about it. It was just a place to make money, but
there was something else about it I didn't like. Still, it was the
only place there as. So in I went. Rooms were the equivalent of about
£40! Even camping was a fiver, not so bad usually except you had to
pay everytime you wanted a shower and there were no really 'ablutions'
as they call them, you just used the staff quarters. On addition to
this they insisted that if I wanted food I had to order it now and say
when I would eat it. They seemed generally lazy apart from doing their
best to get money from me.

The day was still hot so I opted to put up the tent later and find the
'Cocktail Bar' proudly advertised on their sign. This turned out to be
a room with a low desk for a bar with a fridge and a few bottles of
spirits. I was the only one there and took a seat on the corner. I had
a couple of drinks but then when I wanted water they became very
grudging about giving it to me.

As I sat in the corner I realised I felt overwhelmingly drained of
energy. I couldn't work out why. I'd only done 100k. There would be
many longer days ahead. Perhaps I was still paying the price for the
Ghanzi days and would continue to get weaker. If so my plan to cycle
all the way was done for. I'd be on the bus within days. Had i pocked
up malaria in Sehitwa, did a tock bit me last night? Then I realised.
The problem with a tail wind is you get hot. This had happened to me
back on the Namib savannah. That time I'd been out for a long time and
also lost a lot of salt. This time it had o ly been for a short time
so my electrolytes were in fair shape but I'd simply got too hot. Not
heatstroke, I felt no nausea, but certainly my short sprint had been a
bad strategy.

I stayed there fr three hours and gradually felt better. About an hour
before dark I dragged myself out to go get some petrol to see if I
could get the stove going. The lodge was on a kind of bypass road
outside the urban sprawl itself and this time I took a different road
into Rakops. The place was the same heading this way as the other.
Except for one important thing.. there was a leather shop. I suddenyl
remembered, though id been given John's number which turned out to be
wrong id also be advised to ask for him at the leather shop. It
appeared I'd just missed closing and it was all shut up. I almost
carried on, but decided to take a quick look round the back.

My Tswana family

Leila is the lady on the far left.

The Tswana

I always knew I could never make it from the Okavango to Rakops (the
next major village) in one day, it's about 250km. So there would need
to be a stop at some point. Problem was there weren't many options. As
I've already described my route now roughly followed the course of the
Boteti river and continues to do until Rakops. The only official
places to stay along this stretch are some of the most exclusive
safari lodges one could ever be unlucky enough to find oneself in.
These are the kind of places which don't really advertise themselves,
charge upwards of US$300 a night... for a tent and are generally
located at the far end of long deep sandy tracks. Not really very
accessible nor my kind of thing.

The reason these lodges are here is that the Boteti forms the south
western border of the Makadikadi Pans park and is a migration route
for herbivores moving between the pans and the Okavango. Migrating
herbivores are followed by predators, lots of them. As I rode along
and it got later and later I was mulling these things over in my head.
I guess the truth was I'd not really worked out a proper plan for this
night. I'd sort of assumed I might somehow spot a slightly less
exclusive lodge close enough to the road for me to access and just
walk over and ask if they would mind if I just pitched my tent, either
round the back where no one would notice me, or perhaps try and
entertain their rich guests with embelished stories of midnight
leopard wrestling and near misses with Bull Elephants.

I continued along through the disturbingly close relatively high
mopane woodland, my shadow extending further and further away to my
left, none of these lodges were standing up to be counted. Not only
that, but since crossing the river earlier in the day I'd begun to
notice that the few villages I did pass generally surrounded
themselves and their livestock with a Boma. I'd not seen this up to
now and took this as an indication that there really were hungry wild
beasts in the area.

So what to do?

The purpose of this trip was only ever partly to see new things, visit
places I'd never been before, see the sights, the primary aim was
adventure! And as I passed a small group of huts in the trees I
decided once again the time had come for adventure. There would be no
fancy lodges for me tonight. I made one of those split second
decisions and turned the bike off the road and into the trees.

Tswana huts conform pretty well to the stereotype of African mud huts
(although these particular ones were actually made of sticks). I'd
guess I'd chosen this particular spot I'd heared the sound of children
playing which I took to mean there would be a family. I pushed the
bike through the sand to the edge of their boma and called out 'Hello,
Hello' a head popped out from around the side of the nearest hut and
then a woman appeared and walked over. She spoke no english and my
tswana was no better. I made lots of signs trying to indicate what my
tent looked like, putting my palms together at the side of my face to
show sleep, flapping my arms and pointing at the road to show I would
leave tomorrow (not sure how I thought that action would make any
sense) and pointed at the sun showing it going down. I'm pretty sure
she thought I'd been out in the heat too long and looked at me a
little strangely... but didn't invite me in. Bugger! This wasn't going
well. I got out my little map showing the whole of my route which
often helped explain things in these situations. The map seemed to
mean absolutely nothing to her and I was still standing lion-side of
the boma. l, was running out of ideas and the sun had turned deep red
and was touching the tops of the trees. Last chance, I patted one of
my panniers and said coffee and pointed at her. She smiled and pulled
back the boma. I was in!

Inside the place consisted of three circular huts each about four
metres across. The Walls were made of a single layer of sticks about
the thickness of a forearm tightly packed together and since they were
not uniformly straight they left many thin gaps. The roofs were made
of thatched yellow/brown grass tapering from a central point to form a
flat cone. These were joined together by two Walls of sticks just over
shoulder height so that the central hut was joined to the other two.
The main living space lay within the area bounded by the huts and
these walls and here there was a fire and a few low wooden benches. On
the open side of the triangle formed by the huts was a very scrawny
thorn tree about twice my height. Everywhere there were chickens and
goats everywhere.

Return to the desert.

'Sadly it is much easier to create a desert than a forest'

(James Lovelock)

I managed to get up early for once. Perhaps it was because, although I
was sad to be leavung the old bridge, I was also excited to be back on
the road and back to my nomadic ways. It is Sunday and lying in my
tent I could hear the sounds of an African choir (if you know
Ladysmith Black Mambaza this is the kind of thing I'm talking about)
drifting over from the far bank of the river. This was mixed with the
usual morning birdsong I'd become acustomed to in the delta (you go to
sleep to a frog/bat lullaby and wake to rounds of birdsong). Though I
was out of the tent by half five I still didn't actually make it out
onto the road until seven. Still that was my best effort yet!

As I headed up to the main road I met David on his way in, thanked him
for his hospitality, had a last look for the legendary enormous
croccodile, but I guess it was too cold and early. I never did spy
him, but perhaps luckily he never saw me either.

Five kilometers down the road I realised I'd left my sausages behind,
two big fat juicy looking ones in the fridge. Bugger! But I wasn't
going back. My final task in Maun was to pop a postcard in at the post
office (seems to be the only place they have postboxes) and then I was
away! Back into the desert!

After the tough experience of the first half of the Kalahari I'd
decided I should no longer push it in this environment. My grit may be
up to the task but my mortal being was not. There would be new rules.
I'd allow the bike to pick it's own pace and see how I got on just
sitting along for the ride. This actually seemed to work pretty well.
My pace was slower, but not significantly and I was now enjoying the
ride. Even when the winds started up about nine (in my face as usual)
the pace didn't drop off too badly. Another side to this slower pace
was that I sweated a lot less (probably also due, in part, to getting
going early before the heat of the day) this was important since I
fully expected to be unable to refill with water before Rakops the
following evening. So conserving water reserves would be key.

I'd also decided to take proper breaks rather than counting the times
out of the saddle crouching by the bike to refill my water bottle or
have a pee as breaks. About mid-morning just as the heat of the day
was really starting to get into it's stride I was taking one of these
breaks under a shady tree eating an apple, when a young guy came by on
a horse. In the shadow of the tree he didn't spot me at first and was
actually circling around inspecting my bike from his saddle when we
first noticed each other. He spoke good English (certainly better than
my Tswana) and instead of as usual asking why I'd not got a motorbike
or bought a bus ticket was instead just impressed with my plans. I've
often found this with horsemen and also with the San, unlike more
urbanised or westernised people they seem to get it and tend not to
ask why one would try to make things so much harder for oneself, just
for the sake of it. They recognise the desire to push oneself. His
name was Basuti and he was heading off to look for one of his cows he
reckoned was somewhere in the woodlands further up the road. I decided
I'd best get moving so we ended up riding along together for a few
kilometers chatting and sharing my biltong before he decided to veer
off and disappeared into the trees.