Flying Teddy Bears and other Survival Strategies

Even more interesting than the people is the wildlife of the Kalahari, the smaller creatures that I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't been walking. Beetles with concave heads that pile sand on their shells for camouflage, beetles that disguise themselves as bok-drol (one did a poor but entertaining impression of a fresh springbok dropping as it buried its head in the sand when you disturbed it, but another did a spectacularly convincing impression of a month-or-so old steenbok dropping!), bugs that look like flying teddy bears (I still haven't worked out how that's a survival strategy), but the most convincing disguise was a rock edged with succulent leaves that, when you got close, pretended for a while to be a locust, just long enough to get a few feet away from you so that it could carry on being a rock edged in leaves.

The mice have also been entertaining, darting between tufts of grass where they survey the sky for predators before sprinting the next stretch of sand. One night, I happened to be standing in the way of one little mouse's nightly foraging routine. He looked surprised for a short while, then nibbled at my shoe and after deciding that at least that part of me wasn't edible, continued. Possibly the most spectacular thing has been the giant communal weaver nests, one single one as big as a Landy Defender 90 hanging from a telephone post. Some trees house bigger collections of nests though, a collection of 5 or so the size of small cars! Along with the multistory flats there were also the smaller modern style nests, where the nest was built on a telephone post but most of the next leaning out to one side supported by the wires as opposed to the pole. This gate those nests a distinct Jetsons look. There were also the loners, and communal weavers are pretty terrible at building single family nests! Functional though they are, they are anything but neat! This lends the odd tree scattered with smaller weaver nests the character of a colony of outcast hippies, all the more amusing when in their shade you find a poorly groomed sheep, sparing it's rastafarian style dreadlocks from the kalahari sun.

Heading towards Askham, the striking outline of the quiver trees long gone, the giant nests of the weavers started to give way to the rollercoaster flights of the hornbills and the spectacular colours of the lilac-breasted rollers. The grassland gave way to a more bush-like terrain with far more trees and the road (which wasn't great to start with) turned to silt, sucking the wheels of the cart down and doubling, tripling the force needed to pull my worldly possessions. Then a day before Askham I found tar again for the first time in two weeks. I also found a well supplied shop, and Germans.

They organised for me to leave Olive in the store room and we drove a few kilometres up the road to where they were camping for the night. On the way they tried to swing past the bottle store,"Ah man, it's closed..." one of them said, "But we don't care because we are in the f***ing Kalahari!!!!" to which everyone in the car replied with a loud cheer! This routine was repeated anytime something didn't go according to plan. 'Everyone' was Flo and Johnny (Be Good or Be Bad depending on what he was doing when his name was called) who were out from Germany working in the cape at a San educational centre along with Johnny (Depp) and the two other guys whose names I can't remember. Matza made three Germans, he was a friend of Flo's out to visit. We drove to Johnny Depp's father's farm, part of a communal farm area that had been given to the coloured and San community after they were evicted from the area where the Kgalagadi or Kalahari Gemsbok Park now exists. At first I envied the Flo and his two companions, mixing with the locals without having grown up with any racial tension, without anyone trying to blame them for whatever circumstance they find themselves in, but when the other two coloured guys got hopelessly drunk I sort of pittied them for perhaps seeing things out of context. The way they spoke about the 'boere' made me wish I could introduce them to all the friendly Afrikaaners that I had met that treated me and anyone of any colour with the utmost respect and welcoming hospitality. They did seem quite upset that their friends(and many people in the semi-integrated san community) were hopeless alcoholics though. They justified it as I've heard many people justify alcoholism in the coloured community, but their argument was flawed in that their sat Johnny Depp, a proud hardworking family man.

Mostly the evening was very enjoyable though, I particularly enjoyed the company of Flo with who I shared a passion for music and life (though we expressed them in quite different ways which was interesting). Perhaps the most entertaining part of the evening was when I realised where I recognised the name of the place they all worked: Khwattu... On the second night of my walk I had snuck into their gatehouse for a place to sleep! I told them this, apologised for trespassing, and we all had a good laugh...

I will hopefully get to an internet café soon where I can update the rest with a proper keyboard(hooray!)!! I am resting in Mafikeng at the moment so there are internet cafés, I was supposed to go today but it's a bit weathery and I'm a fair walk out of town. The forecast is good for tomorrow so I will hopefully get the blog completely up to date then. And thank you all for the comments! They are great to read!