Camping in the Kalahari

February 2 and 3, 2010

Ghanzi, Botswana
Central Kalahari

Our camp here at Ghanzi is the coolest so far. The huts looks like wigs of thatched hair, and there is Kalahari desert all around.

The temperature is 100.4 degrees in the sun, 95 in the shade. Because it was so crazy hot, we hopped into a pickup truck to drive to a nearby natural quarry, pictured at the top of this post. The quarry was amazing--the water was blue and cold and little fish nibbled on my toes when I hung on the rocks at the edge. It also must have been crazy deep--I couldn't see the bottom. It would be a great place to scuba dive! (Maybe I'll come around to this diving thing.)

When we returned from the quarry, some Bushmen escorted us on a walk. They showed us which roots and herbs they chew on when they are sick, and they even showed us how to start fire using sticks (pictured below). Although most Bushmen are settled in villages now, it is cool to see how they lived less than a generation ago. There were women who guided us too, and they carried their very cute babies in little antelope skin pouches on their backs. I asked them, through an interpreter, if they had a founding myth, and they said they did. "We came from the place where the sun rises," one said. "And we came from two monkeys, and we learned to hunt with bows and arrows." There was more to it--it was a really cool story.After dinner that night around the fire, I told the one and only scary story I know (lone backpacker on the Appalachian Trial, serial killer, camera with pictures of lone backpacker sleeping) and thoroughly scared my fellow overlanders. To me, it's a lame story, told too many times, but it must not have done a circuit in the UK. We'll have lots of campfires ahead of us and I wish I had more scary stories. Do anyone of my buddies out there have scary stories to share? I'd love to scare their pants off!

Books read: The Bottom Billion: Why Poor Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier. He argues that the bottom billion poorest people on earth belong to countries that are stuck in poverty traps. They will only become richer with capitalism. He urges the developed world to make policy changes (tariffs) and use military interventions to stabilise fragile governments. I think he is too optimistic about capitalism's ability to uplift people, and in light of the current snafu in Iraq, I don't think military intervention is the best idea ever.