A Journey of Giraffes

February 18, 2023 – Old Drift, Botswana

We have been off the Wi-Fi grid for a few days.  It reminded me of this quote by W.C. Fields.

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot to plug in the Wi-Fi and for several days we had to live in the moment.

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Without my metaphorical corkscrew, the blog fell behind.  It is impossible to relive the moments, but I jotted down some random thoughts as they recurred to me.  You might want to find a real corkscrew and pour yourself a glass of clarity to make sense of them.

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Ask about shopping almost anywhere in rural Southern Africa.

Yes, there is a town with a store.  It is only 30 km away.  It has everything you need, but nothing you want.

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You call a group of zebras a “dazzle”.  What else would you call them?

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Ask directions in Durban, this is what you get:

The pharmacy? Yes, I can tell you where it is.

Points to the left.

Go down halfway there, then turn to the right, right?

Keep going past my Auntie Emi’s place,

When you get to the robot (traffic signal) turn left, right?

Keep going more, more,

You are just about there now.

At the second robot, turn right again, right?

The pharmacy is at the big sign that says “Pharmacy”, right?

Thank you, that should be no problem at all.

Oddly enough, we found the drug store right where the guy said it was.

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We had a lot of laughs on this trip.  I think the funniest sequence was when OD imitated a North American princess’s reaction to seeing a very small spider in her room.  There is no way to convey the nuance, but imagine a very large Black African man, imitating a California Valley Girl.

“We are going home! Now!“

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I still have a little trouble with this one, but several guides told us the same thing so it must be true.  Zebra markings are a camouflage. Lions cannot see colour; they determine where their prey is by smell and by detection of movement.   When a dazzle of zebras is running, the lion has difficulty zeroing in on a single animal.

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There are a million inter-species adaptations at play in the Okavango Delta.  I will just pick one to tell you about.

There is a tiny insect that releases tannins when it is grabbed by a bird, making it unpalatable.  But birds have found another use for the insect (I can’t remember its name).  A bird will grab a few of these bugs and place them under its wings.  Then they ruffle their feathers to irritate the insects.  The tannins released by the perturbed creatures seep into the bird’s feathers and evict lice living there. A: Nature is Wonderful!  B: How do they know this stuff?

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I told OD that we had a cow struck by lightning a few years ago.  His immediate reaction was that witchcraft must have been involved.  He backtracked on the assertion, but I got the feeling that he wasn’t entirely convinced.  I know for certain that OD’s father and definitely his grandfather would have gone looking for a Sangoma if it had happened to them.

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All five senses are hard at work the entire time you are in Africa:

Smells. From the smell of wild basil after a rain, to the stench of a five-day-old Elephant carcass laying in the African heat, being ripped apart by hyenas.

Sounds. The ping, ping, ping of a Blacksmith Plover (sounds exactly like a small hammer hitting an anvil), to the trumpet of an angry bull elephant.

Sight. In one marsh area I counted six mammal species, about twenty different birds, and who-knows-how-many insect varieties, all around the same pond.  The photo didn’t turn out well, too much to absorb in one frame, but the visual impact will last a lifetime.

Feel. The dense mugginess of the delta swamp on a hot day, it gives you a sense of what it must be like to be a hippopotamus.

Taste. Fresh coffee in a tin cup, with home-made cookies, served on the hood of a Land Rover. You can’t beat that.

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The collective noun for a group of giraffes is a “tower”.  If the tower starts to run, it becomes a “journey” of giraffes.

Thank you for joining us on our Journey of Giraffes

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