September 3, 1998

Jack's Camp originated as a free refuge for travelers disheartened and disheveled from crossing the huge Kalahari Desert. Jack was a real person. The nature of his business isn't of record. After he was killed in a plane wreck, his son started the camp as a safari business. No zoning permits were required. I think all the pans together are 4000 square miles in size. The neighborhood consists of a rancher, his two wives and a flock of kids. A bushman and his wives and more kids make up the rest of the roster.

We visited the cattle ranch. The owner and one wife had taken the car and driven 70 or 80 miles across the desert to town. The other wife was left home to plaster on her house, using a mortar of cow dung and clay. When we drove up, she was balancing a five gallon bucket of water on her head, drawn from the well for the livestock.

Two brothers or half-brothers rode in on dun horses driving mares and colts to pen in big corral. They were very proud of a blue-eyed albino colt and mighty camera shy. The only drawback I could think of to having more than one wife at the same time was that the boys can't be named "junior," and it's awkward to call girls "little Mary," or some such. Otherwise, the two families looked pretty comfortable by African standards.

The rancher free-ranges his 750 head of cattle. Cattle and wives are a symbol of wealth in Botswana. I wasn't able to meet the other wife, but if she was as content as the one doing the masonry work and other little chores, like shoveling maize in the vats to make beer, I'd support our country adopting the custom to spread out women's work loads and lighten the burden of the men.

Four miles from the ranch, we stopped under a boabab tree 88 feet in diameter at the base. The tree is the second largest in all of Africa. From the beginning of the exploration of the Kalahari, this immense landmark guided explorers to a once source of fresh water. The big thing was to sit beneath the shade of the same tree the famous explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone and his wife camped under in 1857. Mrs. Livingstone was pregnant. She was a missionary's daughter. Nevertheless, as hot as the desert becomes, she might have supported the idea of ol' Doc having two wives.

On the final afternoon, the bushman, Cobra, led us out on the pans. His people can live nine months in the desert without standing water. He showed us the roots and tubers bushmen dig for food and water. He dug up a big, red meat, tuber barely perceptible above ground.

Told us how women push straws down in the sand to make a seep well. Stood motionless, only pointing while a kori bustard, the largest flying bird in the world, took flight for the short distance his wings lifts his 90 pounds of weight. Flicked away dead sprigs of grass with his spear to show us an old track of a brown hyena. Said the brown hyena eats all the meat he can scavenge. After the animals leave, he eats roots and tubers just like these Stone Age people adapt their diets to fit the circumstances. (Movies emphasize the sweet disposition of the San or bush people. However, their enemies have a hard time forgetting how straight they shoot poison arrows.)

The next transition required checking out of customs from Botswana to pass customs into Zimbabwe and immigrate to Zambia. In the course of two short flights and one motor trip, we crossed the long bridge the British built paralleling Victoria Falls. A British guy talked above the roar of the falls how the bridge was built in London to be assembled in two sections.

"The brilliance of the engineers was such," he said, "the precise temperature and time to complete the feat the sections had to be lowered was 6 a.m. Following directions, the bridge fit together with only a quarter of an inch gap."

We had a picnic on the banks of the Zambezi above the falls. Spray rose high in the air like upside down rain. This was our only exposure to tourism. Spoiled monkeys and aggressive baboons eyed our lunch sacks; people walked by from all over the world. The group made a desperate raid on a curio shop before we were loaded on vans to go to Livingstone airport.

After so many days in the bush, being in traffic shocked me. The big shock, however, came when a pilot radioed for instructions on how to start his plane, then taxied onto the field, strewing luggage from an open hatch. These pilots, you see, were the ones to fly us to a landing strip so remote that thorns are placed around the tires to keep the jackals from causing a flat.