The end of a Solo Leap adventure…

Posted on April 20th, 2007 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

Dumela everyone!

I’m back to Maun, Botswana. This little dusty town in the middle of nowhere definitively stole my heart I had to come back to my African family at Meno a Kwena Camp. I’m not doing much at the moment, just chilling out. I wanted to go back to the school but it is closed for one month for Easter holidays; it’ll only open back on May 2nd so I’m not sure if I’ll have time to continue the ‘computer project’ I started last year. I’m supposed to go to Zambia in May, where the next adventure awaits… : )

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 7th, 2007 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

I cannot believe it’s 2007 already! I’ve been in Botswana for 3 months now; it’s almost time to move on…

At the beginning of December, I finally went to the Okavango delta (THE Botswana tourist attraction) for 2 days. It was worth; it’s breath taking, so beautiful… very green, water and birds everywhere, elephants, etc… I tried to catch the beauty of it in my picture for you but reality is always better than the pictures!

We had the Christmas party at camp mid-December. All the staff and the village representatives (chief, policeman, nurse, etc) were there. There was some dancing, singing, eating, drinking and 1000’s of zebra’s at the water hole! Amazing… Everyone was happy; it felt great to be part of the “Meno A Kwena” family. I loved it.

I celebrated ‘real’ Christmas in Maun, at a lodge with some friends. We had a good party and as usual I danced all night long… I had muscle-ache in my legs in the morning!!! I was back to camp from the 26th until the 31st; we had quite a busy week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve with about 10 clients every day. It was actually nice to have a busy camp again and buzz around like a little busy bee : )

One night, just after the last client went to bed, I was finishing my wine when we heard a lion roaring… very close, just behind the work camp which is 200 meters from the camp fire where we were sitting!!! I felt like I was shrinking and my chair was growing… so small… This time, I was actually quite scared. We slowly and carefully got into the car and went looking for this lion. We found her (it was a lioness) but she ran away quickly. Jeff, one of the camp guides, found some small spoors from the lion cubs. It must have been the mummy! That was exciting…

The rainy season has finally arrived; it’s been almost 2 months too late… We got 3 big storms this past week and you know what? It’s not fun to live in a tent when it’s raining!!! Everything gets wet, your bed and clothes are always damp, you take a nice hot shower and when you’re finished you get another one! Ah well, that’s the other side of life in the bush : ) Anyhow, now I’m in a nice lodge room in Maun; everything is dry and I don’t have to brave Mother Nature’s elements to get to the bathroom- luxury!

Bizarrely I seem to meet people I know everywhere I go… here is my latest one. I’m driving 4 clients from Maun to the camp and we do the usual chat: where are you from, what do you do, etc… when I said that I lived in Utrecht for 10 years, one of the guys called Chris goes “no way, I lived there for 8 years!”
Me:“Oh really, how funny! Where did you work?”
Chris: “Amersfoort”
Me (At this point I’m looking in the rear mirror to have a good look at him): “Wait a minute! At Sun Microsystems?”
Chris: “Yes!!!”
Me: “Do you know Sylvie van Dam”
Chris: “Oh my god! Yes, I know her!!!”
To cut a story short, my friend Sylvie invited me to have dinner with some of her colleagues one night and I met Chris. He was just about to leave for Botswana. That was about 3 years ago and he’s still there. The world is SO small!!! It was nice to have those 4 in camp and we had some good fun.

Another little story about how some things will never change… I’m driving 5 clients back to Maun of the 31st of December. Everything’s going well; we’re arriving at Motopi (the only town between Maun and the camp) and I noticed a little red lamp flashing on the dashboard… Merde!!!! That’s the petrol lamp; I’m almost out of petrol and there’s still 80 Kms to Maun; there’s no way I can make it! Of course there’s no petrol station before Maun. What?!?!? You need to check the petrol stand before hitting the road?!?!?… I know Jeff is following us in his car so I stop and while waiting for him I activate plan A: go and inquire if anyone in the town can sell me petrol. No-one has petrol so here goes plan A through the window! Plan B is a half working plan: Jeff piles up the clients into his car to drive them to Maun to catch their flights but he doesn’t think I’ve got enough petrol to get back to camp to refuel (we keep fuel at camp) so I’m stuck in Motopi! And here comes plan C: I wait for one of the guys from camp to bring me petrol. I waited about 2 hours; it took some time before David reached someone at camp or he was just teaching me a lesson (!?!?!?). It was very interesting; the entire town came to chat with me or to just have a look at the white girl sitting under the porch of the general store. What is she doing here??!?!?!? Eventually someone arrived with petrol and I could leave. I didn’t have a flat tire, didn’t hit any cows or donkeys on my way and I made it safely to Maun. That was the last Christelle blunder of 2006!

We had a huge party for New Year with the same suspects as for Christmas. We drank, danced and laughed our heads off… until 5 am. 2007 started very well for me.

All my best wishes for 2007!!!!

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Lions, lions and more lions…

Posted on December 6th, 2006 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

I’ve got some more exciting lions stories!!!
I accompanied 2 clients to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve again last week (to help with the cooking). It was an amazing trip; we saw a lot: lots of Oryx, Wildebeest, springboks, steenboks, 8 cheetahs (yes, 8!!!!) and 7 lions.

We found our first 2 male lions during our morning drive. 6 AM, we’ve just stepped in the car and we’ve been driving for 30 seconds when the car stops! There are 2 male lions lying on the road, literally 20 meters from our camp!!! They are so big and beautiful. After 15 minutes of fanatic photography taking, we continue for our drive. Later on, we find another 5 lions lying under a tree: 3 females and 2 males. Lying down and sleeping are a lion’s favourite activities; I can relate to that. I always said that in my next life, I want to be a cat!!! Fanatic photography and we go again… 20 minutes later we found another type of cat lying under a tree…. 5 cheetahs!!!! Oh my god, 5 cheetahs! I’m so excited!!! My finger starts hurting for taking so many pictures. We leave our 5 cheetahs and continue our little drive. We find some very funny Giraffes, some more Springboks, Oryx, and 30 minutes later some cheetahs again! 3 of them!!! Somebody just shoot me now because I don’t think I can survive the excitement and adrenaline rush!!!!!!! When we couldn’t take it anymore, we decided to head back to camp to have a brunch. The 2 lions were gone but we decided to do a quick inspection of the surrounding bushes and YES, here they are… you’ll never guess… they are lying under a tree… 50 meters away from our camp and only 30 meters from my tent. Oh, yes Christelle! That was a good spot to pick to put your tent… between the camp and the lions!!! Anyhow, it’s business as usual in the camp: I’m cooking keeping an eye in the direction of the lions and we have lunch. Around 3PM, we go for another drive, have a little sundowner and we come back to camp for dinner… the lions are gone but they’re probably not far so we move my tent a bit close to the other 2; well I’m not a hero so we put my tent in the middle of the other 2! Personally I thought that up in the tree would have been a better choice. We have a nice dinner, good conversation, sipping wine, etc … then Jeff and Paul, our guides, tell us not to panic and to look behind us because we have some uninvited guests… so I turned on my chair slowly and I’m facing the 2 males lions 15 meters away! Did I faint? I cannot remember… maybe? No, I stayed very cool… amazing, isn’t it? The lions didn’t seem like they were up for trouble; they just walked in our camp, look at us having dinner and stand there. At some point, we were asked to slowly stand up and still slowly walk to the car. So we did just that… Before they joined us, Jeff and Paul took the wine glasses with them! Can you believe those guys?!?!? Here we are, in the safari car, sipping our wine, looking at 2 lions taking over our camp… That’s Africa! Eventually Paul drove the car to push off the lions because it looked like they had decided to spend the night with us J Lions gone, everyone in their tent and sweet dreams… I dreamt of lions that night, incredible, right? The lions didn’t come back during the night, thanks god! That would have been very scary… Those 3 days in the Kalahari were wonderful; I know I said it before but the African bush is an amazing place; you feel a deep connection with nature there; there’s no other place like this in the world.

Another little lion story… I was looking at the camp’s water hole last night. It was full moon so you could see very clearly. There were some zebras drinking, everything was quiet, then the zebras left. Suddenly we saw some shadows sneaking out… Yes, lions! We start counting…1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Waooo amazing all the lions at once (they are 4 females and 2 males around camp). We’re hoping we’ll see some little creatures crawling around because we’ve heard that one of the females have 3 cubs. An elephant appears between the trees and walks to the water holes, the lions flee and we hear the cubs and the mother calling each others; they were hidden under a tree a bit further. Then something catches our eye on the right…. Another lion! And another one! My god, there are 8 lions, not 6! Then we hear 2 male lions roaring further away… Impossible… 10 lions! It looks like new lions have been joining our little group. It could mean trouble because out of the 4 new lions, one is a male. And girls, you know how men are J During the entire night, we hear roaring, and something that sounded like a fight. It was a hell of a night in the bush.

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Born to be wild!

Posted on December 1st, 2006 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

Hello Again!

I told you the time flies out here; it’s been almost 1 month since my last entry! Bad bad Christelle!

I got my visa extension without any problem and I even got an extra 10 days. I can now stay in Botswana until the 10th of January which is cool because I can celebrate Christmas and New Year in Maun with my new friends.

Let me tell you about my latest visit to the school; always very entertaining those visits…. I start the generator on, switch on the computer and after 15 minutes everything stops… No, no, no!!!!!! No petrol in the generator anymore. And we’re in the middle of nowhere here, it’s not like I can go to the petrol station to get more (the next one is in Maun, 120km away!). So here I am with Pearl, the head of the school, going through the village trying to find someone who has petrol for us. Surely enough, Pearl knew someone who had petrol but there was nobody at home… so since I was “désespérée”, we just help ourselves. Oh, no I’m a criminal now!!!! After our misbehaviour, we’re back at school and I’m back in business… I thought…. Well, hell no! I tried to print a few things and the printer starts to paper jam and paper jam and paper jam: no way to print. I called one of the teachers and she said that the printer doesn’t print since it fell on the floor… “What fell on the floor?” “How?” “When?” “Somebody shoot me now!!!” I spent 1 hour inspecting the printer taking everything out and back in again but couldn’t fix it. Since the school urgently needed a few reports we had created to be printed, I switched to plan B: put all the docs on a USB key and print them in David’s office in Maun (hey, another trip to Maun!!!). I also brought the printer into David’s office; I’ll try to have another look at it there.
It’s almost the summer holidays; school stops on the 24th. Everyone is very excited about the upcoming holidays but not very enthusiastic about that awful machine called a computer… I feel like Don Quixote fighting against the mills! At least I was able to train Thato, one of the teachers, very well. So now I’m sure that when I leave at least one person will know how to switch on the computer, print whatever documents is needed and create new Word documents if necessary; my little contribution to the Moreomaoto Primary School. In December, when the school is closed, I’m probably going to create all kind of forms and documents for the general administration of the village (chief, police, clinic, etc).

Life at camp has been very busy. The camp was full for the first 2 weeks of November and it was hard work. There were groups going all directions: Makgadikgadi pans, Nxai pan, Central Kalahari Reserve, etc. I was lucky; I got to go to the Makgadikgadi pans again, 5 days this time. I helped out with setting the camp (putting up tents, setting tables, making everything look pretty, etc) and the catering. It was hard work sometimes but I didn’t mind; it was great to be living outdoors. It was a bit rough though: obviously no electricity but also no shower! But at some point, I got to shower in the cattle water post with a bucket! It was very “Out of Africa”.

It was all very basic but this little camp very quickly felt like home. On the last day, I went with the clients on the quad-bikes. Brmmm brmmm brmmm… Christelle’s speeding on the salt pans!!! It was great, riding with the wind on those huge empty Moon-like salt pans. You have a feeling of being alone in the world but it’s not lonely though; the emptiness and the wilderness of the landscape fill your heart… Just remembering it gives me shivers! Waow, Waow, Waow!!!! On that trip, we also went to observe some Meerkats; they were so cute. They look very human in their behavior and they are so funny. I could have spent hours watching those incredible little creatures!

Last week, I went to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve for 3 days (to give a hand again). Another very nice place to visit and it’s Cheetah country, those dear cats of mine. I love them! Unfortunately we didn’t see any cheetah… very disappointing but I’m going again next week so hopefully…

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you…I finally got to see my first lions! And I was the one who spotted them… very proud. They were 2 young males, part of the group who keep roaring at night. They are very impressive but so cute! One evening, we heard them just after dinner so we all jump into a car and went on a night drive to track those lions. And we found them: 2 females! They were lying very relaxed in front of the car and we also got a glimpse of the male but he was a bit shy. At a certain point, they started roaring… oh my God! What a power! You actually feel the vibration in your stomach and that was only the females. Apparently if the male starts roaring next to you, it feels like you’re standing next to the bass during a Rolling Stone concert!

It’s quieter at camp now, down to 4-6 clients a day instead of 20. We can all start relaxing and getting some sleep again. December should be quiet so hopefully I can get a few days off to go and visit the Delta. But you never know, David gets a lot of last minute bookings and local people (South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana) will start going on holidays so it may get hectic again at some point… My motto here is “Be prepared for the unexpected” … so I’ll be prepared!

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Botswanan Bush Life!

Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

Hello!

I started working at the school this week. What an African eye-opener! Things move so slowly here- nothing goes fast, except time; the days seem to fly away… And nothing ever, ever goes according to plan. The 1st time I went to school to start the computer, it went down after 10 minutes. The problem came from the generator ‘regulator’ between the generator and the computer; so back to Maun to get a new ‘regulator’. 2nd try: I’m at school but no-one can find the keys to the computer room and no-one really want to run around looking for them despite me getting very agitated! So like everyone else I just go and sit in the shade and wait for my lift to camp. 3rd try: keys have been found but when I tried to print I realize there’s a problem with the cartridge: there are some black lines showing on the paper. So yes, back to Maun to get a new printer cartridge. Ahhhhh!! I was finally ready to start teaching on Monday. When I arrived in the morning at the school, the head teacher I was supposed to train was in Maun for a workshop. There was an inspector in the school so everyone was running around pretending to work and no-one could spend time with me and the computer. So I sat there for 2 hours waiting for my lift back to camp doing nothing (again!). One thing this all experience is teaching me is PATIENCE!!!! But I’m sure I’ll get there in the end.
Lessons learnt this week:
1. 8am really means 9am
2. When going to school, take a good book!

So that that’s the school, now let me tell you a bit more about life at camp. Clients come and go; some are very cool, others less interesting. On average, there are 6 clients at camp every day. Next week will be very busy with a full camp; 16 clients! When I’m in camp, I help in the kitchen. The staff have been taught to cook a certain way and that there is no other way possible! Last week I grated the Parmesan cheese the wrong way (I used the small holes instead of big ones on the cheese grater); my god! Big chaos in the kitchen! Everyone who saw the Parmesan went “Oh no! That’s totally wrong; what shall we do?” and I’m sitting there totally astonished by the whole thing… It took me half an hour to convince everyone that this was not the end of the world. That was the Parmesan cheese example; everything is like that: the green pepper has to be cut that way, the carrot another way, the tomato like that, not too big, not too small… I almost need a ruler to measure everything!!! I wonder how long it’s going to take them to kick me out of the kitchen…haha!
Life at camp is pretty cool, no stress. I spend my time between the kitchen and the pool, entertaining guests and playing with the staff kids… very easy going life. So far I don’t miss the civilized world at all.

The days here are more or less the same: wake up at 7am (yes, yes- I’ve turned into an early bird!), sometimes 5:30am if I decide to go looking for lions with John (David’s dad, David is the owner of the camp). I go to the village in the morning or afternoon. The evenings are spent around the camp fire. We’re not allowed to walk around camp at night on our own because of the lions. It is a pretty powerful feeling to hear those lions roaring at camp; they are so close! I cannot explain really… Sometimes in the morning, we can find their tracks going through the camp; but no worries, we are safe in our tents; Safe doesn’t mean I’m not scared sometimes! I always have the impression that those lions are snooping around my tent at night, even when they are 1 kilometer away!!!

3 days ago, I went for 2 days to the Magkagkadi salt pans…. It was a wonderful experience. It’s a place like no others. It’s difficult to explain but when you’re standing in the middle of those dried salt pans, it’s only you and your soul. And sleeping there under the stars with no-one else around, no noise, only the wind…. simply AMAZING!!!!! I hope I get to go again before the rain arrives.

OK that’s it for now; I’m off to the immigration office to extend my visa. I cannot believe I’ve already been here for 1 month.

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Arrival at Meno A Kwena Bush Camp, Botswana

Posted on October 15th, 2006 by Christelle.
Categories: Africa, Botswana.

Wednesday October 5th, after 22 hours, some little ‘detours’ by London and Jo’burg I finally arrived in sunny Botswana. Oh, and by some miracle, my bags arrived at the same time as me! After a short drive (1.5 hours! Everything is relative isn’t it?), I arrived at the safari camp, Meno a Kwena, my home for the next 3 months.

The camp is divided in 2 sections; the Guest section with all the guest tents and the main tent and a bit further the Researcher Camp where I’m staying. I’ve got a tent there and I’m sharing the kitchen/living room and bathroom with 5 other people (3 guides and 2 other volunteers), the elephants and the lions!!!!!!!

When I’m in my tent at night, I can hear the lions roaring. It’s amazing! They are sometimes very close. Last night, I could hear one walking by my tent… Head under the blanket and I was saved! No need to say that I have stopped doing my midnight trip to the bathroom……

I’m still getting accustomed to my new surroundings, learning the bush rules (no running in front of the lions! Spiders are good, snakes are good, yes, yes), trying to remember every 20 or so staff names; all in Setswana! By all the laughing I’m getting back when I try to say a few words, I’m getting the idea that this French accent of mine is not only a problem with English!

My 1st mission in the village will be to teach the school teachers how to use their computers… there’s no escaping from IT, is there?!?!?! Most of the camp staff are from the nearby village, they are all super cool and very friendly. They all welcomed me with open arms and I cannot wait to start working in their village.

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