When it rains in Angola, the water flows through Namibia into Botswana and ends its journey in the Okavango Delta on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. The water brings life with it, fish and birds. And on a beautiful day in August, it brought one more thing into the Okavango: Me, sat in a mokoro with a heavy heart and a camera.
Thanks to my tour guide, who'd listed all the ways I could die just before we entered the delta, going into the Okavango wasn't my first choice of fun Botswana activities. But hey, it was part of the tour we'd booked, so I went. Luckily the picture of certain death that the tour guide had painted couldn't be further from the truth. I was surprised to find myself feeling at home in the 2 million hectares of Botswanan wilderness. I had to adjust to a whole new way of living. That temporary lifestyle change ended up changing me for good.
For three days, I called a tiny camp in the middle of nowhere my home. It had everything we needed: Trees to provide us shelter, tents to sleep in, a fireplace to cook and gather around at night, and a hole in the ground for a toilet. A shovel and a roll of toilet paper were our bathroom door and lock; If you couldn't find them anywhere, the bathroom was occupied. At night, if you had to go to the bathroom, we had to triple check with our flashlights for wild animals before leaving our tents. If we spotted any, we couldn't leave. I, for one, rather waited till daybreak than risk mooning a lion.
The camp and everything about it was intimidating at first. There was very little to do at the camp. Time stopped flying, skidded to a halt. It made me nervous. I did not belong there. I belonged in a nice comfortable home with a stable internet connection and a normal bathroom. I kept checking my phone, but of course I had no signal, nor anyone to text. All too soon, my battery died. In hindsight, that was exactly what I needed. With no screens to distract me, I set out to explore the delta.
My explorations never brought me very far in terms of physical distance. As long as I was by myself, I couldn't leave the camp unless I wanted to end up as a wild animal's meal. By myself, I could only go to the creek and stand atop a small termite mound to get a view of the hippos upstream. Usually, there'd be a few people from my tour group there, oohing and aahing at the hippos. Although the hippos provided us with enough entertainment, I never felt at ease watching them atop my termite mound. Despite their cuddly looks, they're the most dangerous animals on the continent, which didn't seem to bother my fellow tourists at all. At first, I felt silly when regarding the animals with suspicion while everyone else admired them. I lost myself so far in hippo related-worries that I barely noticed Vlinder next to me on the termite mound.
"You look at them?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the hippos.
"I don't trust them," I blurted out before I knew what I was doing.
"No," he said. "Neither do I."
I looked at him in surprise. This man, who knew the delta like the back of his hand, felt the same way about hippos as I did. Something clicked into place. A tension I'd held in my shoulders started to disappear. I strangely felt like I'd just passed an initiation rite. Like Vlinder had opened the door into the Okavango life for me.
I started to change after that moment on the termite mound. I started to adapt. With my phone as the main source of distraction gone, I decided to open my eyes to the sometimes scary delta around me and make it home. Most of my time was spent barefoot in a mokoro. Vlinder taught me about the animals I shared my temporary home with. Even the hole in the ground that was our bathroom wasn't so bad anymore. Time slowed down, and so did I. The chaos that had taken hold of my mind when my grandma passed away started to subside. My broken heart slowly started to heal.
After my first night in the Okavango, I finally felt like I'd left my problems in the past. The grief of losing my grandma had made place for a survival instinct and the muscle aches in my arms that came with preventing mokoro collisions. I started going on game walks, where I came eye to eye with angry elephants. I learned to read tracks and recognize different kinds of animal poop. In an open field, with zebras and wildebeest running around in the early morning light, I felt incredibly small, yet significant. I felt like a teeny tiny gear in the great big machinery of the Okavango Delta; I was overcome by a sense of belonging. For the first time in a long time, I felt at peace.
As I stood looking up at the sky each night, the usual whirlwind of thoughts that makes me so emotional didn't dare bother me. At home in the Netherlands, my life was all about deadlines, good grades, racing against the clock to achieve, achieve, achieve more and more every single day. Here, at home in the delta, none of that mattered. While some of the other tourists decided to exchange their malaria stories, I learned about giraffes and elephants. I spent ages just listening to the sounds of the delta. I listened to birds chirping, hippos grunting and elephants tearing trees apart. The laugh of a hyena startled me at night, while the quiet of midday and its blistering heat made me doze off in the shadow of a tree. I was a million miles away from running to catch trains, racing to make it to class, racking my brains to come up with something intelligent to say about Virginia Woolf. I was a million miles away from life as I knew it, and I loved every second of it. If only for a moment or two, I was an honorary delta dweller, with none of the worries of a university student. I didn't have to worry about finding a purpose in life anymore; In the Okavango Delta, all that mattered was that I was part of this life.
I almost didn't want to leave the delta when our trip came to an end. I'd even made peace with the fact that a hole in the ground was my bathroom. I didn't mind elephants stomping around my bed at night. But like every tourist, I had to leave the Okavango behind. The night before our return to civilization, polers and tourists gathered around the campfire to sing and dance. Black and white, Botswanan and Dutch, we mixed until we were one group, singing and clapping and stomping to the beat. Our last song ended each verse about the beauty of the delta with the words "Never forget". And as the final notes faded into the dark night, I looked up at the stars and knew those weren't an empty promise. I'd never forget the Okavango Delta and all it taught me.
x Envy
