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Emily's Trip
Hello all
Today was taken up partly with a "village walk". We were up for a 7 o'clock breakfast - OUCH lol!! This was very nice so i didnt really mind that much ;o)
It turned out that jelpa was our guide again as he came from that village and was the one who could speak eng the best... it was another really hot day which was a real bonus! As we walked through we saw all sorts of things. The 1st thing i noticed is that there must be a real knack to walking on sand... they seem to have absolutely no trouble when all of us are sinking and having a right hard time of it but oh well... we were getting the hang of it just as it stopped lol - always the way!
I wasnt sure at first whether we were allowed to take photo's so i missed a few opportunities the first being the site of a house being built with coke cans and the like can you believe!!! It was like a pretty collage of the bottom of cans and mud... a very "interesting" look shall we say!
We carried on walking round seeing all sorts of things which were all very interesting and strange in a way to our culture and opinions we have formed. I wont list all the different things we saw because i'll be here all day but the one thing i noticed most was how friendly the people were. I've noticed it from the beginning and still am... every person you pass will wave and say hello or something: EVERY, and all the kids, they'll all come running out to the truck or whatever your mode of transport may be saying hello hello hello or more often than not bye byue and when you wave back and say hello, they look embarrassed/confused and then they start off again with the big smiles and the hello hello hello's!!!
I took pics of most of the other things i saw and noticed and when i get back i'll put them all on the site for you!!!
We came to the end of our tour and we walked back to the lodge where we had a really nice late lunch and chilled for a bit. By chilling out i mean "mokoro riding". I put that in inverted commas because what it really was was we found a mokoro lying around in the lake at the bottom of the lodge land and patrick pursuaded me and mai that he could pole so we (very gullibly) said ok to a ride as it was still a lovely day. Unfortunately he wasnt as good as expected and wobble wobble splash we all fell in!!!
I was luckily wearing my bikini under my clothes so i was ok underwear wise but gray had said your there 2 nights so take 1 pair of trousers and 2 tops so thats what i did: 1 problem - my trousers were jeans and they dont dry so quick - even in heavy sunlight! We had the incident at like 3 or something and we were due to go see this basket lady at 4 and i was like AAAAAAH!!! So i was walking around looking like a right twazzok in my pj shorts for like an hour and then i had to get into still damp jeans: eeeeeew!!! Not a nice feeling!
But anyway we piled into the jeep again. *this jeep i keep talking of you have to be pretty athletic for: its open top, very high up, has no doors and no steps so its very much a 1 foot on the wheel aley hup and try and pull yourself (very unelegantely) into the seat * and off we went to see this lady.
She lived in the next town and when we arrived we saw a lovely old lady of about 67 (she never went to school so she wasnt sure) sitting very serenely weaving a basket. She looked like she could do it in her sleep she'd been doing it so long!!! Apparently it takes her about 1 week to complete one unless she is busy with other stuff as well when it can take upto two weeks. She started asking us lots of questions:
all these questions caught us a bit by suprise and they all seemed rather personal... age/marital status/children/why not married or kids/what do you look for etc etc etc! had us all a bit stunned, every time her eyes would look at you and she started speaking to the translater you throught "help!!!" lol... but it was a right laugh all the same!!! so that all said and done we'd learnt not much at all about basket making but a few things about each other!
when we got back to the lodge we went to have some supper which was due to be traditional botswana food: thats all we knew... it turned out to be mashed up fish (SUPPOSEDLY boneless) with waterlilly, samp (goey lumpy maize thing) and rape. overall really wasnt the best meal in my view but hey you gotta try right??!
after dinner it was down to the bar for some free shots - another traditional african shot supposedly lol. it was called a springbok and according to chris the barman) we werent sure if he was taking the piss or not) there was a dance that had to be done: this is how it goes:-
you have 2 horns (hands on your head), you look for lions to the left and then to the right, you wiggle you butt, go "ooo ooo" , jump forward the repeat the whole routine before downing the shot (peppermint liquer with amarilla - actually very good) with no hands... INCREDIBLY difficult lol: a lot ended up on the bar rather than in us :oP
the last activity of the evening was african dancing. before we got right into the dancing though we played an african game which is basically "hot and cold" but with this weird instrument but eventually we picked it up and we managed to embarass jon big time by hiding my flip-flop under his leg so the lady searching gave him a right good feel up lol! a couple of us had a go at that - i wasnt one of the chosen one's which was a shame but hey my come-up-ance can along shortly...
then came singing: they same us 3 traditional songs about a girl who grows up and her lover goes off with another girl etc etc... they did the dancing at the same time! the songs were what you'd expect: accapella except for lots of metal banging and clapping in different rhythms and they walked around this girl singing. on the last section she got up and did a really funny strange dance. she had this massive bustle of wooden beads on her arse and she moved around in a circle shaking her arse in a salsa-like motion, just bent over and less elegantly. it was back to us!:
we had to think of an english song and sing it - the only song that came to mind was 'in the jungle the mighty jungle the lion sleeps tonight... ah weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' so off we went - rather abismally i must say. the main lady obviously agreed as she made us do the dance to make up for our poor singing attempts ;o)
here is where my part comes into play: guess who was picked on first?!?! yup you got it - ME! lucily jon came up at the same time and we shook our bums lol - that evening was no time for inhibitions i tell ya!!! everyone in the end had their turn and it was soooo funny watching them i swear! anyway that was all they had time for, they then had this goodbye ritual where you sing a song and go around in a circle shaking hands in a complicated way... fun tho!!! vif i think had had one springbok too many and was MAD lol!!! but then to be honest it was very hard not to get caught up in their happiness and joyfullness. all in all another great day: our last in the delta :o( but its off to bed for me now as it ANOTHER early start tomorra...
night all
xxx
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