Botswana destinations #3 & #4 – The Botswana flag and big, cloudless sky

The Botswana flag against its most common backdrop--a cloudless sky.
(farm1.static.flickr.com)

Like my home state of Texas, Botswana has big skies. Like the dusty West Texas skies of George W Bush fame, Botswana's skies rarely bring rain. A few months a year, known as the rainy season, it rains some and sometimes hard, but not enough to neglect watering the yard...unless you wish it to return to a dusty desertous patch of land where grass once grew. (This is how I found mine upon moving into my apartment). The rainy season corresponds roughly with summer, though seasonal references mean little here--leaves and snow do not fall in Botswana, and spring loses it's romance when it marks the departure and not the arrival of the things green and alive.

As I discuss in my first entry on this blog (called "Cloudseeding"), rain and it's absence define life in this dry country. The land is flat, the desert plant life small, and the buildings few, meaning that the horizon can sink no lower and the sky that pushes down upon its edges does not have to push too hard.

Unlike many African countries where I have been, here the national flag is often flown. It is my impression (having been here now only 10 months) that this reflects the nation' patriotism, and indeed the inhabitants of this land, while facing many challenges (HIV being one), have much to be proud of.

The blue on Botswana's flag represents water. The motto on the national Coat of Arms is "PULA", meaning "rain". The white-black-white bands on the flag represent the goal of racial harmony among Botswana's people, as well as the pluralist nature of the society here. They are inspired by the coat of the zebra, the national animal.

Botswana Coat of Arms (images.vector-images.com)

Botswana destinations #2 – The perimeter of the Gaborone dam

The Gaborone Dam. (www.picasaweb.google.com)

The Gaborone Dam is the water source for Gaborone. Because Botswana is very dry, the dam’s construction a century or so ago necessarily preceded the growth of Botswana’s capital city.
The dam is home to the “Gaborone Yacht Club” and the “Kalahari Fishing Club”, but this entry is about neither, nor is it about the dam itself. Here, I will share with you the highlights of the approximately 21 mile trail around the dam, which I recently biked.

Leaving from a friend’s home near the Ladies No. 1 Opera House, we set out at about half past seven and, as a few miles required walking and carrying one’s cycle, returned about three hours later.

Highlights of the trip, if I may describe a few, can be grouped into three categories: plant life, animal life and industrial landmarks.

As for plants, let me first say two things about the thorn bushes of the Botswana bush: they are ubiquitous and they draw blood. Bike tires must be tubeless and specially slimed to “Self-heal” when punctured, which occurs every few meters. Besides thorns, the “resurrection plant” warrants mention, for it turns brown in the arid winter, greens near rock puddles in the rainy season (~December-February), and smells of a Swedish sauna (an odor fusion of cedar, sweat, ozone, and eucalyptis).


The resurrection plant. (http://www.info.gov.za/ )

Moving to animals, one of the seven-person cycling delegation told me of a fresh-water shrimp that also inhabits these puddles, impressive given that this extreme habitat remains dry most months out of the year. They are called, and I am not kidding, the African Fairy Shrimp (Branchipodopsis wolfi). Alas, I was unable to spot one of the crustaceans during the ride, but I did find an article on fairy shrimp egg dispersal, published by the scientist that taught my co-cyclist of their existence. In addition to the shrimp, we spotted several other animals (humdrum in comparison, of course), including impalas, black-backed jackels, warthogs and dragonflies.

A black-backed jackel (www.farandawayphotographicarts.com)

Landmarks (our final category) included a piggery, where, according to my co-rider, “intensive pig farming” takes place, and a brick kiln (where nearby clay deposits are mixed with ~10% charcoal and baked around a central fire). The brickmaker was drying fresh fish from the dam on the top of the structure.

Botswana brick kiln near dam. (www.picasaweb.google.com)

The final landmark of note was the guard station where our trip began and almost ended. A young, rule-abiding uniformed guard demanded to see our permits that permitted us to ride our bicycles around the dam. After our party pointed out no fewer than five holes in the perimeter fence and as many trespassing, permit-less fishermen and cattle herders, the permit requirement was waived.

And thank goodness, for it was a nice loop, and the clouds mercifully blunted the mid-summer desert sun.

Less small- A patient encounter

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Human beings almost never spontaneously hold a strangers hand, but, for Mathambo, it was natural. As I walked in front of him to the exam room, he took my hand in his, and, when I looked back, he smiled up at me.

As he did this, two other young children were walking toward us from down the hall. For a couple of seconds, it seemed as if Mathambo was going to clothesline the children, or at least make them physicially break his grasp (as we used to do while playing "red rover" in the school yard). Though I did not know Mathambo well, this did not seem in character. Sure enough, at the last minute, he raised his hand (with mine) and allowed them to pass.

“See. I am big!” he told me as he let our hands fall again. Mathambo, four and a half years old, was 15kg heavy and 95cm tall. This is big for a two and a half year-old, not a child nearly twice that. But, he was bigger than the oncoming pediatric traffic, and certainly bigger than he was a year prior, when he reached the median age at which untreated, vertically-infected children used to die before having access to ARVs. In any case, I was not about to refute him.

Once in the exam room, I looked over Mathambo’s chart and the boy himself, noting that he was doing well (undetectable virus, high CD4 count, no clinical evidence of disease, and still smiling). I told him and his mother this, and Mathambo began dancing.

I told him that his medication adherence was 100%, and he began dancing with even more vigor, shouting “I am big. I am big!” His choreography was reminiscent of the “grapevine", with sidesteps, stomps, and the occasional clap.

One of the red rover children that had been walking the clinic's halls must have heard the proclamations, for he opened the door. Younger, littler, and sicker than Mathambo, the child had thin limbs, visible ribs, and a melon-shaped tummy. His face had the aged appearance that remains when so-called baby fat is not there shape a baby’s face, leaving young skin hanging on young bones, baggy, protruding eyes, and loose jowls. The loose-jowled child giggled and bobbed his knees a few times in sync with Mathumbo’s beat.

“Big!” Mathambo reiterated.

Mathumbo’s emulating counterpart gave me a quick glance, giggled some more, and, with some effort, closed the wooden door.