Traversing the Bots

I know it’s been a while since I last posted, so here goes. After all of my international travelling, I decided it was time to explore within the country I’ve been living for three months now (I can’t believe it’s been so long!). The weekend before last, my fellow CIEE students and I went camping at Mokolodi, the game reserve where we had earlier seen our first rhinos. It was delightful; the nighttime weather here is perfect, and the stars looked incredibly beautiful. We even got to see some giraffes on our way to the campsite! Here are pictures of one of the giraffes and of us, the happy campers.

This past Thursday, we travelled to Orapa, which houses some of Botswana’s most important diamond mines, managed by the Debswana Mining Company. The town itself is closed, so we had to carry permits wherever we went. After a two-hour safety lecture and video, we got dressed up and headed over to see the mines—from a distance. We were taken to a balcony overlooking the mine, where we could stare deep into the Earth without really being able to see anything. The sun was blazing, our gear was hot…in short, we were all pretty cranky by the time we left the Debswana facilities. Because of confidentiality restrictions, we were forbidden from taking pictures, so you’ll have to imagine the experience (not that you’d really want to).
That night, however, we travelled to Serowe, where we went on our first nighttime game drive at Khama Rhino Sanctuary. Once again, the weather was perfect, and we got to watch a whole herd of zebras galloping past our vehicle! We also saw a lot of rhinos, as I tried to show below. I wish the pictures had come out better, but part of the magic was knowing that everything we saw would only remain in our memories.

The next morning, we went to Serowe’s cultural museum, where we learned about the history of the area. Central to this history is the love story of interracial couple Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, and his wife, Ruth Williams. In fact, this story is about to become a movie (“A United Kingdom”) starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, along with the always-incredible Tom Felton. We couldn’t finish part of our tour because of the filming, but we were able to take pictures on the set before we left!

We returned to Gabs on Saturday night, and I went with a friend to watch a street dance performance at a local school. The first act was a “dance-play” about a chemistry class gone awry, and it was told through classic hip-hop, as well as animation, crump, and b-boying. I was blown away by the talent (shout-out to TNT Dance Crew Bots!). The crump was better than I’ve ever seen, even on TV. The second act was a retelling of the Passover story (Moses and the Israelites leave Egypt). This act called into question a lot of how I’ve imagined the story. When Moses’ mom carried her baby to the river, she carried him on her back wrapped in a bright pink blanket, the way Batswana often do here. The image seemed so incongruous to me, and I realized that a lot of my perception of the story is colored by where I come from. Still, seeing Moses kill an Egyptian using capoeira was awesome.
This weekend, I’m travelling internationally for the last time. I’m heading to Johannesburg, where I’ll be visiting the Cradle of Humanity to see some of humanity’s ancestors, including the newly discovered Homo naledi! So proud to be a nerd right now Until next time, sala sentle!

P.S. Photo credits to Leah and Jake for the Mokolodi pictures and the shots of the film set!