***
When we go off on a boat or on a mokoro for a sunset trip in the delta maybe to buy some peppers from a nearby farmer, or just to watch the sun setting over the river, with a little picnic – some beer, maybe wine and a couple of nibbles, tie the boat up to some reeds and just sit there and appreciate the stillness around us, I can’t think of anywhere else in the whole wide world I’d rather be.
Or when I wake up in the morning and open my eyes to be greeted by the sunrise right there in front of me without even having to get out of bed – it’s really something special. Or when I have a day of just reading, like today. Nothing else on the agenda, just a long, lazy Sunday to sit in the sun until it gets too hot, and then move to the shade, keep on reading my book. Get lost in Anna Karenina, savour every word until I decide to have a break and do a slow, unrushed pedicure (more out of the need of having to wash my feet properly at least once a week rather than out of vanity – although the green nail varnishI put on today can’t really be described as a necessity…), followed by another unrushed lunch with Anna Songhurst, followed by more Anna Karenina. I go through moments, hours, even days when I forget about the time and the real world. I forget that this wasn’t always my life and that this is only a passing phase – that the real world is still out there, very much so, and that soon I’m going to have to return to it and pick up my life again from where I left it. Face the same reality.
I’m trying to hang on to every moment, remember that I’m privileged to be here, that I’ll (probably) never have a chance to re-live these moments again. But sometimes I get tired, lonely, fed up. When it’s another long day just sitting in the car counting the cows and donkeys we come across, or walking to a faraway field in the roasting sun with lots of flies around, or asking the same questions again and again from a uninterested farmer who just wants to kill all the elephants and her children are staring at me like I’ve just landed from outer space – and I just want to disappear, be somewhere else, away from the dust and the flies, clean, somewhere where people don’t beat up their dogs with sticks and children have clothes that are not just mere rags.
There is good and bad everywhere but some days I only see the bad. The hopelessness of it all, kids with no future because there are no jobs here, women of my age who’ve never been to school and who will never know anything else in their life but hard work in the fields and who will probably die of AIDS before they reach 40 (the average life expectancy in Botswana is only 33 because of HIV/AIDS). ***
After another month here, I’m beginning to see much more of the good than bad around me. Those moments when I suddenly fill up with love and appreciation for this place are more and more frequent, and now that I know I only have another month left in this country (officially stamped today with the remaining 30 days) I’m feeling very sad because I’m going to have to leave soon. I guess I’m happier now than in a long, long time, living this life, this adventure. Life is so easy here. My life in London often felt like the title of the Milan Kundera book that I’m reading at the moment: Life is Elsewhere.
Here it’s easier to seize the moment, to stop and look at the lighting in the distance, the fire hugging the wood, the women sitting in their compound pounding the millet, chatting away, laughing, dirty but happy children crawling or running around making toys of anything they can get their hands on. People are happier here - I’m convinced of that. If only there was a way to stay longer, I’d like to stay. I miss a lot of things from London but if nothing else, I think I’ve learned one significant thing about myself here (apart from discovering watermelons and peanut butter and that I taste good): I love to live in the countryside, with lots of space around, lots of quietness. I like simple life.
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