Botswana - 4

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August 28th

Well, here we are again. It's been about 10 days since I've updated this, but I was away last weekend and ended up with pictures that I feel are actually worthwhile for sharing! One of the med students who's been here actually has an O-photo site and is putting up Botswana pics. I'll link to that at some point so you can see those pictures too.

So - the update - I'm going to skip work-related stuff because it's pretty much the same day in/day out. But my dad flew in last Friday and we went to Madikwe. Madikwe is a national park in South Africa, very close to their border with Botswana. They do not have any malaria because it's too dry there, which is very nice. We stayed for three nights - until Monday afternoon. The place we stayed was Mosetlha Bush Camp. 16 person camp, sleeping quarters are two twin beds inside some weird amalgamation of a tent and hut.

We got there too late to go on the game drive on Friday afternoon, so we hung out around the fire pit and chatted (made plans for the rest of my life!) while waiting for dinner. As it started getting dark we heard this crashing.. probably an elephant. So I convinced my dad to come check it out with me. Now, the camp is not fenced in. There are some great stories of animals running through with predators chasing them. So when we heard the elephant I figured we could at least go to the edge of where the kerosene lanterns lit things to check it out. But on our way we were stopped. "There's an elephant - too dangerous!" So we sighed and turned around and were about to sit back down when one of the game drive vehicles pulled up and someone said: "there are lions! would you like to see?" Well, of course. So we hopped in and drove...

All of 30 meters. There, well within sniffing distance of the campfire that my father and I had been sitting at for the past few hours, were two young male lions. Big guys. They didn't like the flashlight that was being used to look at them, so they got up and loped off. I was suddenly very grateful that we had been stopped from going in search of this elephant.

That night - I had some trouble sleeping because it was very cold. After being in bed for an hour I convinced myself that I could poke my head out from the flap of the tent to look around, because I kept hearing all these noises and I wasn't sure if they were human. Turns out they weren't. I leaned my head out, and there's this HUGE bull elephant eating a tree not five feet away from me. I tried to wake my dad up: "there's an elephant outside?" "hrm." "don't you want to see?" "no, i'll just listen.." five seconds later... "snaaaaark..."

I briefly thought that there was another elephant on the other side of the tent, but it turned out it was just one of the other guests snoring. But I mean REALLY snoring.

So over the next two and a half days we went on five game drives. Each drive there was something new, and we saw cats on three out of five (not bad, huh?). Here's the quick list:
elephants
a pride of six lions
a cheetah eating an impala in the brush
wild dogs
kudu
wildebeest
springbok
klipspringers
impala
jackals
ostriches
rhinos
more elephants (we pissed these ones off!)
giraffes
a different pride of six lions eating a very dead zebra
zebra (did you know that the plural of zebra is a "dazzle" not a herd? and rhinos are a "crash")
rabbits (aka SNACKS!)
hartebeest
that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

We came back to the clinic on Monday, because there was going to be a gaggle of senators through (or should I call them a "chatter"?) including Bill Frist who apparently knows my dad. So we did the whole political thing. I was banned to the back room for a little while with the other people who actually work in the clinic. THey closed the door on us because we were laughing too loudly.

What comes next? Over the next few days I tagged along with my dad on random meetings. Ran in the Hash on Monday night (speaking of which: the next hash is the revenge of the harriets so everyone's cross-dressing. The marines have told me they're getting fishnets for it, so I think I'll have more pictures as of next week), went out to eat, bought a small grill for the backyard, and then my dad left yesterday. Today - back to business as usual, although Fridays are our slow days at the clinic so there aren't many people around. I have a new e-mail address, though I'm still using my hotmail more frequently since I can check it at home as well as at work. Try: sdaulaire@baylorbotswana.org.bw.

Anyway, lots of love to everyone. Please drop me a line! Lonely Siri...

Cheetah

This is a cheetah we saw on our first drive out (never mind the lions while we were just hanging out in camp). I have a better clip on the video camera but I barely caught her with a picture.

Elephants!

We saw lots of herds of elephants - even got charged by one angry Mama. But these guys were pretty far off from the road, so they didn't know we were there. Elephants as they are supposed to be.

Giraffe

Didn't see many of these guys, but they're absolutely beautiful! They have these huge dark eyes and long eyelashes. They look at you and just blink. Guess they have no idea what this weird creature with wheels is doing.