Woke to the patter of rain and dropped the sides round an oblivious Hakan. Looked out at our camp and saw garbage scattered everywhere, the oil pan tipped over and a shadow with flowing eyes at the edge of the light carrying something away. Beyond the glowing eyes was a raised back and I realised what it was. When I screamed at Hakan that there was a hyena in camp he grunted and changed his sleeping position.
Our camp stools were getting wet and I was desperate for a wee, so I grabbed our axe - we'd long given up on a wooden handle and Kel had fitted a metal one, so it was a beast of a thing - and swinging it like Conan the Barbarian I shuffled around camp collecting the stools, and envisioning being attacked by a rabid beast and dying tied to a tree (thank you Wilbur Smith), Didn’t sleep again; lay awake until a freezing cold dawn heralded by a sudden chorus of birds.
Despite the many new paw prints in camp, and the noisy baboons in the surrounding bush, also probably well fed from our scraps, no-one believed me about the other nighttime raider - until I ventured 50m or so from camp and returned with our missing sugar container (all of 4kg) and pointed out the tooth marks in the lid! We have become blasé about being in the park, leaving food out crazy when we are surrounded by wild animals constantly scavenging for food.
We spent most of the day enclosed inside Stanley because of rain and driving on horrendous grey muddy roads. Everyone read or dozed, paying attention only when Kel called “Lion!”. We rolled up the side to watch a majestic male with thick mane – darker on the top – and a female among the grasses. Ann recklessly got out of the truck to have a pee and the lioness became suddenly alert and stared, rising slightly on her haunches. Terrified that she might charge we yelled at Ann to hurry. Kel drove closer and we hung out the side watching the pair, the male in the open, eyes closing in a half-doze, even stretching out full length, the female watching us the whole time, just her face and ears visible through the grass.
We continued on quagmire roads, toiling through sticky, rutted mud and pools, rocking, sliding, bucking and bouncing through and around the worst areas, which we watched receding out the back of the truck as if on a movie screen. The violent motion snapped two ceiling net braces and Bob nearly lost his foot in the gaping jaws of the spares locker. Mud splattered Stanley and thorns ripped our new window. Amazingly, we didn’t beg bogged once, although the truck bottomed several times and the engine had to work hard. Today's were the worst roads so far; we worried that all the horrors we’d expected in Zaire were about to come true here. Bob commented: "Botswana is like a dehydrated Zaire – just add water!"
Camped on grey sand near a small pond (large puddle) 50km short of the town of Maun. Kel surveyed the damage to a limping Stanley. Per and I cooked our last dinner, another meal of tins; only breakfast and it’s all over.
Geoff tuned into the BBC World Service on his shortwave radio: sketch new about Libya, and England and America getting involved – at least the world goes on while we’re away – or out of sight anyway.
Read late on the truck finishing Nikki’s copy of A Dry White Season – a powerful novel by Afrikaner novelist André Brink describing one white man’s fight against the all-white system to expose the murder of a black friend and the sadly inevitable finale. Seemingly a no-win situation.
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