adventures 201: "with the sun rolling high"

There were 18 of us.
Siri, Colleen, and me. Kylee and Senta. Blair, Evan, Aaron. Mike, Allie E. and Ketil. Allie D. Vanessa, Franzie. Laura, Eva, Ashlee, Tammi. We had Trevor to guide us, Elroy to cook for us, and Paul to drive us. We were 18 study abroad students from California, Chicago, Norway, Germany, New England, Canada, Mississippi, New York, and on. We were 14 girls and 4 boys. On an early Saturday morning at the Johannesburg airport, we were 18 individual people who happened to be traveling together. But 10 days later, when those same 18 landed at the Cape Town airport, we were Team Elephants. We were a family, and this is how we got there:

Day 1 [Saturday, September 3]

We started in Cape Town, everyone a sleepy mess at the airport. After an early flight to Jo'burg, we loaded onto Shashe, our truck, our home. [We called Shashe a bus many times and were quickly reprimanded every single time: "It's not a bus; it's a truck!"] Most slept the first few hours; I watched South Africa roll by until Botswana. We went through customs, where I was told I could get arrested for taking pictures. (Whoops.) After we were all legally in Botswana, we were awake and Kylee broke out the card games. Around 2 small tables in the back of the truck, we took turns shuffling and dealing and standing in the aisle, learning each others' names and faces and personalities.

Shashe, named after the Shashe River in Zimbabwe

Colleen reppin' Team Elephants

Roomies Take Botswana

It was a day of traveling, a day of breaking out of ourselves and slipping into each other's lives. We watched South Africa roll away, making way for the high blue skies of Botswana and the occasional animal on the side of the road.We were nearing our first camp in Palapye, a little place called Itumela, as the sun started its decent. Looking out at that bright gold against the sapphire sky, I'm pretty sure we said to each other "This. Is. The. Lion. King." about 10,000 times. We threw on Waka Waka and Shosholoza and The Circle of Life and sang our way into the camp where dinner was waiting for us under reed huts. We sat at a long table with weird drink concotions that tasted like licorice and fried Mopane worms. We bonded together by jumping in the campsite's ice cold pool, played a game of pool with the locals, and, exhausted, crawled into our 2-person tents for our first night's sleep in Botswana.