adventures 202: "t'ree of clubs takes all"

Day 2 [Sunday, September 4]
We woke up early in Camp Itumela. Like, way before the sun early. Trevor, our trusty guide, told us we had to pack up everything before we could even think about breakfast, so, naturally, Siri and I were the first ones with our tent down and in line for cereal and peanut butter bread. Team Elephants groggily bushed our teeth with water bottles and ate by the light of headlamps. As we headed out, the sun started coming up over the camp, taking the sky from dark navy to that soft gray-blue that promises to soon give way to sunshine. We hit the road, stopping quickly for gas and an unsuccessful bathroom search.

It was a long drive to Maun. The seven hour drive was a little intimidating. What the heck were we supposed to do for seven hours on a hot truck? "Whatever you want," Trevor said.
So we did.
We watched Botswana roll by. We counted the countless cows that shuffled up in herds to the road we drove on. We made a wrong turn into a diamond quarry. We looked at the tall plastic green water tanks in villages and speculated on how they keep bird poop out of the water supply. I reread the first Harry Potter book. We stopped to use the bathroom and found out that CocaCola is literally taking over the world. And then, we picked up the cards.

Look closely and you can see Zazu!

Our deck had the South African flag on the back. We were missing a joker, but the cards were smooth and slick and we studied our hands and plotted against one another. We merged everyone's rules for games and listened to Ketil, from Norway, explain that no matter what, "the t'ree of clubs takes all."
After about 10,000 hands, we knew names. We knew the sounds of laughs. We knew who takes sidelong looks at your cards and who would "t'row down de t'ree of clubs" at the last minute and surprise us all. The cards stopped being smooth and slick and instead gently coated with sweat from our hands and dirt from the floor of the truck, but we didn't really mind, because the grosser the cards got, the louder our laughs got and the more our hearts opened up to one another.
We finally arrived in Maun in mid-afternoon. The sun was hot and the dusty ground quickly covered us in a fine grit as we set up tents and changed into swimmies to hit the tiny pool at the back of the campsite. We played pool games, tried our hands at cricket, and ushered down the sun with a clumsy game of volleyball.
Dinner was served by the campsite in a large, open-air hut-like building, but it was about an hour late, so we crowded around a huge wooden table and played more cards. And more cards. And more cards. Until a sweet little lady came and showed us to a long table with a faded tablecloth where we would soon devour steamed rice and a beef stew of some kind with soft potatoes and hot red cabbage. As the night drew in, Colleen and I snuck out to the truck where we had a cake waiting for Siri's 20th birthday. With the help of Elroy and Paul, we tiptoed through the private kitchen and back to our table where all of Team Elephant joined in on a round of Happy Birthday. We had cake and laughs, and after most went to bed, Siri, Colleen, and I dared each other to finish the entire 1/3 of the cake in 3 minutes, which we successfully did. With bellies full almost to the point of bursting, we played one last round of cards, which Siri won because, even more than the t'ree of clubs, birthday girls take all.