adventures 203: "welcome to the okavango"

Day 3 [Monday, September 5]
We beat the sun up again. Elroy made us breakfast and the usual "hurry up and pack everything!" began. But this day was different: essentials only. We were going into the Okavango Delta for three days, as far from civilization as we could be, and there was no room for silly things like extra socks or hairbrushes. A man picked us up in a new truck, a truck with two long back-to-back benches and metal knee-high walls that folded down for packing up.  The truck was high off the ground, and we clambered up into the benches, proping our legs on the now upright wall, and settled in for the hour long ride to the edge of the Delta. "Better keep your feet in," our driver told us, and after a tree limb tried to take a chunk out of our shoes, we listened.

 The pavement turned into dust and dirt, and the small CocaCola advertisements gave way to thatch-roofed huts and more roadside cattle. We bounced and bumped and tried with all our might not to fly right out of the truck, and then, suddenly, we were there. Small wooden canoes lined every inch of the shore, and kind eyed men and women stood waiting for us.

The second the truck was in park, the truck walls were down and all our camping stuff was in boats. "You may ride with me," a sweet middle-aged man said to Siri and I. We weren't really sure what was going on, and we just stood there hesitantly as this man took our backpacks and 5 liter water bottles and situated them in his boat. "I'm Peter," he said, and then he proceeded to explain to us how we would be using our folded sleeping bag pads as seats in his "mokoro." After our confused looks, he went on to explain that the mokoro tree grows strong in Botswana, and it is often cut down and hollowed out to make a small boat of the same name. Peter grew on us quickly. "What's that?" we'd ask, and every time, he had an answer. He stopped separately from the group to guide us through the Delta reeds to show us tiny silver frogs and let us pick the water lilies that we were quickly obsessed with. "Smells good!" he smiled.

 

The sun was hot, scorching high above us, searing the scoop of our necklines into our skin, a tan line we've still yet to shake. We relaxed, the soft dip of Peter's pole entering the water as the soundtrack to our three hour trip through the reeds. I read the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, becoming at once both utterly thankful for the peace of this day and heartsick for my own Ya-Ya Sisterhood in Boston and the sweet sticky heat of the South. It was a divine longing, a pure love for blessings of the sun and of the water and of dearest friends and forever family, especially my mama. Something about being in that mokoro, reading about Sidda and Vivi Walker took me back to a rusted pole sticking out of the water in front of an Eastport cabin, my mama's long tan foot tied to the pole as she floated, eyes shut under her sunglasses. I could practically feel the tightness of the floaties on my upper arms, smell the hamburgers Popaw and Uncle Gerald and Uncle Jerry were making high above on the porch. Nesie was on her own float; Danielle was fishing the way Popaw had taught her. It was unreal when I opened my eyes to find myself still in the heart of Africa and not on the Tennessee River. It was one of those moments that I fully felt the weight of the duality my life has these days, the being ever present in my calling while still feeling my heart planted firmly in the red Mississippi clay. Wings and roots. I'm still figuring out how to have both, and that long mokoro ride was full of God's whispers of peace about it all.

By the time we reached camp, Siri, Peter, and I were about 15 minutes behind everyone else, the last ones to arrive. Someone had thrown up a tent for us, and Peter helped us carry our stuff to it. We had one of Elroy's delicious lunches, and everyone just sat in the heat for a bit, sweltering a bit. (Bless their hearts; they don't know what real swelterin is.) About an hour before sundown, some of the men offered us a walk through the small island we were camping on. We ventured out, clad in the most neutral colors we had, and saw antelope and cranes, bones and poop, tracks and trees and holes and rocks and dirt, dirt, dirt. We were sleepy, tired from the heat, but that could never stop us from standing there in the open plains, staring in awe as the sun made its descent behind the tree line. We made it back to our camp, had some more of Elroy's favorite foods, crawled into our tents, and quickly fell asleep to the sounds of the Okavango.