Easter Travels

         As my time in Botswana draws to a close I am trying to squeeze some last minute traveling in! Since it is now a school holiday I don’t have to do any teaching so I can take some time off work. Last week, Carrie (who graciously offered to be my travel buddy!) and I traveled to a farming village called Pandamatenga, or Panda, where we stayed with a family we know from church. We got a ride with someone out there, about 45 minutes away, and unfortunately were a bit delayed, so arrived around dinner time. We dropped our stuff then went with the whole family (Dean and Ellen, who we were staying with, their two children, then Dean’s brother, his wife and two girls who live on a farm close by) out to a nearby pan to have dinner and watch the full moon rise.

     I rode in the back of the buckey with the two kids – lots of bumpy fun! - as we passed through fields of sunflowers, sorghum, and millet to cross through the farm fence that is supposed to keep out the lions, elephant, and other pesky wildlife that can so easily destroy a farmer’s crop or cattle. The scenery was unlike anything else in Botswana, my personal fave was the huge fields of sunflowers, which unfortunately I didn’t get a great photo of, but were just amazingly beautiful!

    Unfortunately we didn’t see much wildlife while we were at the pan. There are still many larger pans that provide water to the animals farther into the bush, so they didn’t have to come in closer to the one we were at, but we thought we heard elephants and lion at one point. Panda is known for having a huge lion population, but the most we saw of them were their footprints along the fence. Otherwise, we enjoyed a fire, the moon, and delicious food before heading back to the farm to tuck in for the night.

     The next morning we had a relaxed morning with lots of tea and flapjacks! A Canadian neighbor brought her <1yr old daughter over and Carrie and I sang some songs with the kids while the moms set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids. It is so interesting to hear everyone’s story of how they ended up here. There is such a conglomerate of nationalities and stories of why people are living in this tiny little corner of the world. For several of the farmers in Panda, the reasons were not by choice, but because they were forced off of their farms in the early 2000’s when the government in Zimbabwe ceased all of the country’s farms. But I won’t go into all of that at the moment….

A few butterflies playing in the garden!

     After lunch we headed out to get a tour of the farms and a new farm that they had purchased. We also stopped to watch a man and woman who are training falcons to be predatory birds to control the population of Quellea, which are the equivalent to Starlings in the States, and very devastating to crops. We watched them fly the birds for a bit. They are still training them until they can get them to the point where they will chase the pest birds off of the farms. They were hired to pilot this program so that in the future farmers might use them for pest control. It was really neat to watch them!

    That night we decided to sleep out under the stars! We had a wonderful set-up with mattresses in the bed of a huge trailer set in their front yard. We were all snuggled up as we looked up at the vast sky with the almost-whole moon! Early in the morning before the sun came up we spotted a few of the Bush Babies (nagapis?) in nearby trees. Very interesting creatures! We managed to roll ourselves out of our cozy beds to get breakfast and be on our way with a ride back to Kasane. What a lovely trip! Thanks Ellen and Dean for a wonderful visit!!

      Back in Kasane for Easter weekend, Carrie, Octavius and I enjoyed a delicious breakfast of cinnabon cake, bacon and eggs on Saturday morning – it was amazing! And very filling…..

 

On Sunday morning we had a beautiful sunrise service at the Seep, then a fun gathering in the afternoon to celebrate. I introduced Easter egg dyeing to the group and we had a good time coming up with fun designs! We swam and ate food, then went our own ways for the evening. I reclaimed my house from spiders the next day then went into town to get ready to leave for Nata on Tuesday morning.

 To be continued…. Figure I will post this while I can because it is taking so long to write! Will post about Nata after the weekend hopefully!