Tuesday, 5 May 1987: Searching for Meaning on a Vast Salt Pan

2:20 PM, roaring south on the Kasane-Nati highway at 120 kph.  Hugh piloting; Will – shotgun; Jonathan – rear gunner.

There are numerous good stories here in Botswana, but they aren’t world-shattering events.  There probably wouldn’t be all that many world-shattering events anywhere if everyone in the world were as laid-back and peaceful as the Batswana.  I’m sure I’ve missed a number of good stories here in Botswana, but I can only write so much of it down anyway.

We just had lunch – a bit of a challenge when you realize you’ve stopped in the middle of an ant colony.  This afternoon we’re bound for Sowa Pan, one of the two Rhode Island-sized dry lake beds in northern Botswana.  Collectively they are called the Makgadikgadi Pans.  The lake beds date from a geologic epoch not so long ago when the climate was more humid in the area of southern Angola, the original source of their water.  In recent times, hardly any water flows into the pans from Angola, but they do periodically receive water from local ephemeral streams during wet years in this part of Botswana.

Before lunch, Hugh stopped for a new bakkie (pick-up truck) that had broken down.  They had a tire with a slow leak and needed an air pump.  Luckily for them, Hugh has one.  So one of the guys pumped up the tire while Hugh talked with them in English.  They were from Zambia on their way back from shopping in Gaborone.  Hugh found out that they bought the truck there.  I was surprised that they could get together enough foreign “hard” currency to afford the truck.  No one in their right mind in Gabs would take Zambian Kwacha even in payment for a pack of cigarettes.  

Jonathan (age 6) is looking over my shoulder watching me type this.  I doubt he can read all the big words yet, but he probably sees his name and wonders what I’m writing about.  If he can read it, he’s learned English in a lot less time than it’s taken me to be able to read French at an elementary level.  But then, as we know, my linguistic ability sucks elephant poo-piles like the ones I saw and photographed yesterday in Chobe National Park.  Hugh referred to one heavily-pooed area as an “elephant’s loo” (“loo” is the British and South African English word for toilet).  But I digress.  [2 July 2023 note:  Actually, Jonathan was a very bright kid who later earned a PhD and became a university professor.]

The landscape we’re passing through is rather green for arid Botswana.  Scrub forests with scattered tall trees here and there.  And the grass is fairly lush.  Monotonously flat for most of the trip, but we’ve just arrived in an area of small hills.  We just passed – literally – a wide place in the road.  Every 50 kms or so, there is an emergency aircraft landing strip on the highway.  Here the pavement widens to double width for a kilometer or so with huge international airport-sized white lane marks running down the middle.  It might be quite the cheap thrill to be cruising along here in your big Merc (Mercedes) at 180 kph and notice a 727 with engine trouble on the horizon bearing down on you at several hundred kilometers per hour!

Batswana men with donkeys on the Kasane-Nati Highway.  Sorry about the poor quality of this photo which is a photo of a framed photo on our living room wall.  I can’t find the original slide or the scan file from 30 years ago. 

Hugh just stopped a few kms back for photographs.  There was a young Motswana male and an older one with donkeys.  We snapped photos and then greeted them with a few words of Setswana.  I rarely photograph local people unless they aren’t aware I’m doing it or unless someone else like Hugh arranges it.  About 50 meters beyond the donkey herders were two old men herding three rather fat head of cattle.  Hugh stopped and offered them food.  He gave them leftover canned corn, baked beans, and bully beef which we had had for lunch.  I asked one of the guys if he’d like to try a matzo.  He was so hungry that he would have taken anything.  So I gave him a large (10”x10”) matzo.  Hugh fired off a couple shots of our interchange.  Good scrapbook stuff. 

Other than the odd menageries like these and a car or truck every 15 minutes or so, there isn’t bugger-all on this highway.  Mostly straight for 300 kms from Kasane near the Zambian border, to Nata, just north of the pans. 

After filling up with petrol in Nata and grabbing some cold Castles (and an Iron Brew soda for Jonathan), we stopped for pics from a bridge over a dry river valley.  Then on for another kilometer to the “Wild Beasts Butchery.”  Hugh bought several large sticks of biltong (sun-dried beef jerky) to take home and ½ kilo of steak for us to cook tonight.   Price for the steak was P2.76, about US$1.50 at the current rate of exchange – a good price for a good steak.

Wild beast Hugh scores dinner at the Wild Beasts Butchery in Nata.

 

We finally reach the road to the pan 49 kms east of Nata on the road to Francistown, Botswana’s second largest city.  It’s gravel and only slightly improved.  At first, Hugh doesn’t want to take it as it’s really rough.  He’s afraid of chewing up his tires.  Suddenly, after about one km, the road gets better so he decides to stick with it for the next 20 kms.  Just as we pass a young guy on a bicycle, we immediately hit an unmarked fork in the road.  Which way, Robert Frost?  The young guy’s English is fairly good.  He says bear right.  The pan is another 15 kms.  Hugh rewards him with some orange juice and water.  I present him with another Mosmark’s Matzo.  My Jewish friends back in Colorado should be pleased that I’m introducing a little kosher culture into the Botswana heartland. 

Just as we reach an unmarked fork in the road, a man on a bicycle tells Hugh to bear right.

 

The bicycler is on his way to a cattle post (ranch).  He has come from a refuge center this side of Francistown.  Botswana has a number of refugees according to Hugh.  They include South African blacks and other Africans who may be out of step with the political imperatives in their countries of origin.  They can stay in Botswana, but it’s nigh on impossible for them to acquire citizenship, according to Hugh, even if they marry a local. 

 

8:50 PM, out on Sowa Pan

Around 5:00 PM, we arrived at a group of buildings after driving about 35 kms west on the Sowa road.  It looked like a mining operation and it was – an oil company’s experimental program to develop the soda ash deposits on the lake bed.  We spotted a Motswana guy and asked him how to get to the pan.  Hugh gestured with a pan-shaped form.  The man pointed to the south behind some of the buildings.  We followed him around to the south side of the buildings where there were two sandy dirt tracks leading to an immense, barren wasteland to the south.  I handed the fellow two apples, thanked him, and we drove about ½ km to the “lake shore”.  As John Cooke, the Environmental Science department chairman, described it in a lecture last week, it looked like a lake shore, but the “lake” was bone dry.

The “shore” of Sowa Pan looking out onto the dry lake bed.  Sign next to me says this is a BP soda ash development program area.  Photo by Hugh Gordon.

  

The tracks led down a slight embankment on to the lake bed.  From there tire tracks went out and disappeared in a couple directions toward the horizon.  Now, it was me who was being hesitant.  High insisted he drive out on to the lake bed to find a camp site.  I wanted to stay on the “beach”.  It wasn’t the concern of a sudden return of Noah’s flood that bothered me.  It was warnings I’d heard about driving on the lake bed.  The crusty chemical surface seemed solid enough to the feet, but according to Professor Cooke, even a 4-wheel-drive vehicle could get mired in the mud if it was wet below the surface.  I relayed this information to Hugh who was unconcerned.  I didn’t want to get his van stuck out in the middle of unfucking nowhere and have to walk umpteen miles for help.  At the same time, I was more than willing to walk some distance out on the lake bed carrying our stuff.  I trust my two feet much more than a motor vehicle based on past unhappy experiences.  Hugh went for it anyway and I bugged him to death to, for god’s sake, stay on the tire tracks left by previous adventurers.  He went out from the shore about ½ km without incident, and we set up camp for the night.  I got some photos of the late afternoon sunlight hitting the somewhat lumpy pan surface.  Hugh cooked the steak which we enjoyed with mushroom gravy, small boiled, un-peeled potatoes and a bottle of Chateau Libertas red. 

After dinner and clean up, I announced to Hugh that I had to venture out on my own tonight to write.  With the exception of the shore and mining camp to the north, the pans seemed to extend to the edge of the earth – a sort of moonscape sans craters.  Compass in hand, I pointed in a westerly direction.  “If the body isn’t found, you can assume that a starship has carried me off into the night,” I declared.  I told Hugh that I’d walk for 10 or 15 minutes before starting to write.  Instead, I walked for 20, figuring that would be about one mile.

So, here I am.  Not another human within one mile of me.  Conditions are nearly perfect.  A cool breeze is blowing from the southeast and the temperature is around 70°F.  I’m wearing a light jacket and my trusty backpacker’s headlamp although the batteries are getting a bit low so I may not be able to type much longer.  But, we’re one day shy of a first quarter (half) moon, so that and thousands of stars in the clear night sky will guide me back unless the starship gets here first, of course.  Wild animals?  Well, anything goes in Africa but I’ve heard nary a sound.  Not even one cursed mosquito, believe it or not.  The total stillness is amazing.  Only me out here with myself in a vast expanse of grey nothingness.

I suppose one should come up with some spiritual insights at a moment like this.  I’ll try not to get too dramatic.

The first thing that strikes me as I turn off my headlamp and contemplate the horizon for a moment or two, is the universe.  I feel more a part of the heavens sitting here in the lawn chair I brought along.  With so little visual and audio stimuli from earth except for the breeze and the glow of the moonlight on the pan, it’s possible to lose more connection with earth than I would normally experience. 

I was frightened coming on this walk by myself.  A mile from no one with only my compass and the stars to guide me back.  I kept a close eye on the terrain ahead.  It remained very hard and stable.  No rains of any significance here for probably a month or more.  Now that I’m here, I feel a bit more secure.  Think I prefer the light from the stars to the total blackness of a cave when the lights are turned out.

Profound insights – I want profound insights!  There must be something out here…oh my GAWD, is that a starship headed this way?  I’m scared.  Should I go with them?  Would Hugh be pissed off if I disappeared?  But how could I say no to an offer of interstellar travel?

No, it was just a shooting star about 20° below the Southern Cross, which I’m currently facing in my lawn chair.  I’ve been asking the “Universe” to please reveal itself to me since this seems like an appropriate time and locale.  But I get no message.  How is it that these sanctimonious jerk-offs like Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts claim that they speak with God when I can’t?  What makes them so damn special other than good publicity? 

Actually, I doubt that there is all that much to “get” out here except that it’s a very peaceful and unusual environment.  Very unusual compared to what the average Joe is used to – unless he’s a Bedouin shepherd.  I’m glad to have had the opportunity to experience this place at night.  But maybe what I’m experiencing is all a bunch of self-indulgent shit.  Maybe I think too much.  Maybe I should stop typing as my light is almost out and I won’t be able to read my compass very well with only the moonlight for illumination.  The time is now 9:55 and I need to find my way back to camp.