The last time I was in Gaborone

My last trip to Gaborone

I’m in Gaborone in Botswana for a few days next week. I’m looking forward to it. I was last in Botswana in early 1993 after travelling over-land all the way from Bristol. I’d already had plenty of adventures before Botswana and I had a few left after leaving it for my eventual destination – Cape Town. Unbeknownst to me, the reason I was sleeping something like twenty hours a day is that I had the terminal stage of Malaria – Black Water Fever – which made doing most things more difficult. It’s amazing, in retrospect, to see how I was so ill that I didn’t even have the self-awareness left to know that I was ill!

Those stories are for another time – though I’ve already written a draft of the ‘That’s Over landing’ story.

I’d come from Bulawayo to Vic Falls, thinking it’d be an easy matter to get from there to Botswana.  I hunted for buses and even spoke to tour guides, whilst marvelling at the monstrously huge prices the Vic Falls Hotel charged for everything. Eventually I gave up and, after half an hour’s negotiation got a taxi to the border for a slightly less than ruinous amount.

There was nobody there. I walked across the bridge from Zimbabwe to Botswana as if I was the last person alive. It turned out later that it was the off-season for the game reserves, so everything that could have shut down – it was February, so the heat was immense. As I walked across the bridge in the heat waves coming from the tarmac, I was reminded of the first scene, on the beach in Camus’ ‘The Outsider’ – but there were no Arabs, there was only me.

The border post on the Botswana side also seemed deserted, apart from it; there was no human habitation. It was a long bridge, so the taxi that had dropped me had long disappeared. So I sat and waited.

It wasn’t long before the Border Policeman came out of the building. He was surprised to see me. He stamped my passport and asked where I was going and how I was getting there. He could see I was a simpleton, so he explained it all to me; I couldn’t walk because it was too far to the first town to get there by nightfall. There were dangerous animals on the road and I couldn’t walk off the road because there was a danger of unexploded landmines – the area is in the Caprivi Strip where the old South Africa used to attack those wanting a new one. He was a kindly man, so, when he knocked off, at about four in the afternoon, he gave me a lift into town. To the only place open, the Pub.

I asked about busses. Yes, there was a bus to Gaborone – it’d be on time too, due in May.

The only workable solution, apart from staying there until the season, was to hire a car. Fortunately there was a Hertz rental station and they had a four-wheel drive. It was the first time I had driven one, but, when offered advice, I was too tired to feel up to absorbing it.

Even though it was off-season, I paid a huge amount for a permit to travel through the game reserve to a man who seemed very surprised that I was going at all, let alone alone.

I’d travelled for a couple of hours and it was late afternoon when I got stuck in the sand. The vehicle wouldn’t budge – the more I tried to drive forward or back, the deeper in the sand it sank. I tried the various levers that appeared to be something to do with four-wheel drive, but nothing happened. I got out to see if I could, perhaps, dig myself out – but the sand was like a pizza, fresh from the oven, painful to be close to, let alone touch. There was no sandmat – if there had been, all would have been well – I knew how to use sandmats from my earlier adventures.

So, I stood next to the vehicle and thought. I wasn’t very good at thinking and, as usual, I was exhausted enough ( from the anaemia consequent on the Black Water fever ) to fall asleep in an instant. As I was thinking, I looked at the vehicle that might be my last, trying to take it in, as if I was going to paint it. Thus it was that I noticed that there were markings on the wheel-hubs with some sort of indentation. Closer examination showed that they were a sort of switch. So, for want of anything better to do, I switched them and tried again. They were obviously a necessary part of the four-wheel drive system as the vehicle immediately climbed out of the sand as if it had never even considered being bogged down. I was delighted.

I drove on for about ten minutes. It was now dusk. I saw some dark, uneven shapes on the road ahead of me, they moved strangely. I thought that, with their size and movement, they were bears. When I got close enough, I saw they were hyena. My observation of the wheel hubs had cheated them out of a meal – but only just.

I travelled south, wondering vaguely where I’d be spending the night. An hour or so later, I encountered another vehicle. We stopped and chatted – as people do when there’s nobody else for several hundred miles in most directions. They were looking after a camp for the off-season. I was welcome to stay as long as I promised to pay for my beer. Beer! I enjoyed a night in a very, very plush tent in a camp bed that was more comfortable than I believed possible.

Next morning I drove through the magnificent, empty, game reserve. I forget all that I saw, but it seemed to be a game city, so many animals were about.

I got into Gaborone late the next evening. I dropped off the car and found a small hotel and slept. I lost a lot of weight from the Black Water fever – not from the illness itself, but because I seldom had any time to eat, being mainly asleep.

Next morning, I took a taxi mini-van to Johannesburg. My impression of Gaborone was a small, but prosperous and welcoming city. I hope I’ll find it like that again next week.