Lost in Botswana, Part 2
As I’ve been reminded all too often, plans can seem a lot more straightforward in your head than they actually turn out to be. So it was with my original idea to visit Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park shared by Botswana and South Africa. I’d entered Botswana and was now driving along the Molopo River highway, (what I chose to call it, anyway…) when it became clear that I had completely misjudged the time it would take given the road conditions. Daylight was fading and the nearest place to camp was hours away across the border in South Africa; a border that closed at 6:00 PM.
Of the two bad choices I had—driving at night in Africa or free-camping somewhere here in the bush—I chose the latter and started to look for a gate in the fencing along the left side of the road where I might drive up and out of view for the night.
Eventually I spotted a gate that opened onto a decent two-wheel track that went up the ridge. I could see the track was rutted here and there and a bit steep, but otherwise clean. I opened the gate, engaged the 4WD on the truck and started up. After a few hundred feet, I topped out into what looked like endless rolling savanna dotted with the occasional acacia tree. Not a patch of clear ground in any direction.
By now, the sun was dropping below the horizon and the only choice seemed to be to keep going, just like that old poker cliche: ‘in for a dime, in for a dollar…’
Namib Desert
By now you might be asking, ‘Why didn’t you just stop right there and call it good?’ A sensible question without a sensible answer, I’m afraid. Partly it was this irrational sense of being ‘vulnerable’, a vexation in which the only cure was finding the ‘right spot’. My camping pals out there understand this odd compulsion. Also, and in my defense, I DID need some level ground to park the truck if I hoped to sleep in the popup tent on the truck roof without sliding this way or that all night.
Night does indeed come on fast at these latitudes and the tracks were getting harder to follow with every passing minute. The headlights weren’t much use as they pointed up in the direction of a road that wasn’t there. Even worse, the further I drove, the more the brush started overgrowing those two little patches of reddish soil I was trying to follow. My insides were now churning and the inevitable drumbeat of self-recrimination was at full throttle: ‘What the hell have you done NOW???…’
Soon enough, the brush had moved in tighter, scraping both sides of the truck like some savanna Brillo pad in an S&M car wash. Every few minutes one wheel would slam into a rut feeling like I’d hit it at 70 km/hr instead of 5 km/hr. Or a sneaky hidden rock would maul the underside with a ‘chonk’ sound like I’d just left behind an axle or a spring. For all I knew, I could have been leaving a trail of shorn-off car parts that would one day lead some Botswanan cattle herder to my desiccated remains.
After maybe twenty more minutes of this banging, scraping and swearing, I noticed something human-made in the distance up ahead; the outline of a shelter of some kind, a shepherd’s hut perhaps. I immediately turned toward it. As I got closer, the brush started giving way to clear ground and just as it did, dogs started coming at me from every direction. There must have been a dozen or more, scruffy and filthy, with matted fur and all looking to be from the same family tree of some mongrelized sheep dog stock. Thankfully, they seemed more curious than aggressive.
I stopped well short of what I could now see was a ramshackle dwelling of some sort, odds and ends of scrap lumber and tree branches creatively piled together. No sooner had I killed the engine than a man stepped out and came toward me. He had the slightly flattened Bantu features that seemed predominant in this part of southern Africa. He also looked like a guy who hadn’t been off this ridge in quite some time.
The chance of English working was pretty slim but it was all I had. I asked, ‘Could I camp somewhere here for the night?’, gesturing at the truck and the darkening sky. One of the man’s eyes seemed to wander off in a different direction from the other and he stood there in a pair of shorts and a much too small short-sleeve shirt that was unbuttoned.
Oryx, Namib Desert
I couldn’t tell if the camping question registered, so I gestured at the cleared ground around us and foolishly muttered, ‘Okay?…It’s okay?’ Suddenly, the man started speaking in what I assumed was Bantu while I stared and occasionally nodded like I had any idea what he was saying. He kept going, pointing and gesturing while the dogs circled and sniffed my pants.
Desperate to make my point, I resorted to the universal language of cash, pulling about 30 South African rand from my pocket and handing it to him, all the while bowing gratefully hoping he understood how grateful I was that he took this payment for allowing me to camp in my truck here for the night.
He looked at the bills in his hand, probably wondering ‘what the hell kind of money is this?’ I pointed to a spot that looked to be a respectful distance from his dwelling and again said, ‘Okay?…It’s okay there?’ At this, the man began jabbering away again, this time gesturing at some point further out toward an acacia tree. ‘Oh,‘ I thought. ‘He wants me to camp over there.’ So, with an enthusiastic, ‘Okay!’, I jumped in the truck and started in that direction.
I drove about 25 yards and stopped near the tree the man pointed to. No sooner had I stopped when I noticed the man and his hounds walking toward me, still waving, blathering and gesturing, his tone now one that I took to mean, ‘NO! Not here…THERE!’
Namib Desert
‘Oh,’ I said, completely confused. ‘There?’ I asked, dumbly, pointing at a spot further back toward the direction I’d just come from.
The man was making circling motions with his arm, waving his hand this way and that, and explaining as if I were a native Bantu speaker. He went on for a couple minutes like this when I realized he was probably trying to tell me how to find my way out of here, giving me directions. Or, maybe just telling me to ‘get the hell off my property or I’ll set these dogs on you!’
I gestured lamely along with him for reasons I am at a loss to explain. I nodded numbly as the dogs circled and the sky dimmed toward twilight.
‘Okay, thank you!’ I said agreeably, and climbed back into the truck as the man continued explaining and pointing this way and that.
Here’s a surefire recipe for despair: hunger, fatigue, night coming on quick and a feeling of being hopelessly lost in some vast, empty, trackless savanna on the other side of the world. At this point I felt like a zombie who happened to be able to shift gears.
For another fifteen minutes or so of nerve-wracking bouncing, bashing and profanity, I suddenly remembered a communications tower I’d noticed up here a mile or so back down the road. It must have an access track, I thought. If I could get to a higher patch of ground I’d be able to spot it. New plan–get near the tower, park for the night and in the morning, go down the access track it surely must have.
Well, it sounded good pretty good at the time….