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The Lion in Botswana

The Okavango Delta is in the middle of Botswana. It's a mix of prairie, bush and series of water canals and tall grass running through many parts. You can get to some of the remote areas by hiring a local 'guide' to take you in a dug-out canoe called a mokoro. They stick you and your stuff in one of these mokoros, and push you along Venetian style. The reeds are between water-level and 3 feet above the water, so sometimes you can see along the plains and sometimes you can just see a long canal with grass or reeds on either side.

Besides me, there were two Swiss guys, an English couple and an older Belgian couple that had set out to camp in one of these remote areas. After about 45 minutes on one of the canals, we stopped at a small island to strectch our legs, into the canoe for another hour or so and we arrived at shore where we could camp. Now at this point I can confidently say that we were in the middle of nowhere. The Okavango Delta covers about 15,000 sq km of grass, woods, reeds, and of course waterways. There are some lodges scattered throughout, but other than those cabins, there is nothing except the animals. I loved this part of Africa. On a game walk we saw all sorts of giraffes, elephants, zebra, wildebeast, etc. but no cats. The closest we came was a day-old zebra kill, which was kind of cool because you could see the claw marks from where the cat brought the prey down. The kid who was leading the walk was the classic 'pick up a piece of poo and determine which animal and how long ago' tracker.

As soon as we had arrived at the site, the polers went out in search of firewood around the area. For the two days we were there, the fire was kept up 24 hours for safety and for warmth for the polers, who slept on the ground. It didn't seem so at the time, but by nightfall I realized that my tent was quite a ways from the fire. In fact, my tent was by far the furthest from both the fire and everyone else's tent. You could still see it from the center of camp, but when the guide was explaining what to do in the case a lion or other cat came poking around your tent, the distance seemed a lot greater. To top it off, the polers did not carry any form of 'lion protection,' not even a damn stick. There was the small knife used to cut the fish, and that was it. Actually, that was a common theme in most the areas we went in Africa; no one carries any form of weapon...it's much better to take your chances with the wildlife/theives/carjackers than to be caught by any government 'official' (read: young man with an AK-47). You're much more likely to be killed by the latter, as most people don't get a chance to explain first.

OK, so back beyond the middle of nowhere. The sunset was amazing. I sat on a 12 ft high termite hill made of dried mud, and took a few photos of the sun setting over the Delta. By dusk you could already see quite a few stars, and by nightfall there were millions. I laid down with my MP3 player on a grassy slope near our site and stared at the stars for about an hour, de-focusing my eyes to watch the satellites crossing the sky at different angles.

Some time later everyone went to bed and wouldn't you know it, in the middle of the night, there is *something* creeping around my tent. It's too small to be an elephant or hippo, but too big to be an armadillo or something. So of course in my mind equals LION. I first heard it in the brush, but then move closer into the tent area. Now, the Botswanian kids had told us that if a lion came round and started poking at the tent, to just lay perfectly still and quiet; the lion wouldn't know what to make of the tent, get disinterested and wander off. Well, sure enough, it circled around the area a bit and then seemed to take an keen interest in my tent. It poked once at the side, then a couple times at the front of tent. At this point, my heart was pounding and I just tried to breathe as quietly as I could. It did seem to lose interest in the tent, but I didn't hear it creep off like I heard it creep in. As far as I knew, the cat had just plopped down a few yards away from my tent and was just sitting there.

I must have eventually drifted in and out of sleep, but that night seemed to last forever. FINALLY I heard the Swiss guys rustle around a bit and get out of their tent as morning broke. I immediately popped out and grabbed the tracker guide to look at the tracks. He came over to the tent and poked around, looked up and around, back down at the tracks. With a confused look he turned the other way, then turned back to me and, in broken english, told me that........a guy from the other side of camp had gotten lost after going pee and came to my tent thinking that it was his.....The 'lion' that I had been fearing all night was, in actuality, an older Belgian tourist trying to go wee wee.

That guy still owes me the two years I lost off my life and a new pair of underwear.