just another day in the field

Yesterday was the kind of day that loudly reminds me that “just another day at work in Botswana” can often be in fact quite extraordinary! The day really did start pretty ordinarily—I woke up, had my breakfast of bran flakes whilst checking email, fed the dogs, and headed out to town to meet a man at his home in Plateau (the hillside neighborhood of Kasane) for my first migrant interview of the day. The interview went fine, I had my usual lunch at the coffee shop, and happily accepted a delicious-looking container of pasta bake from the owner for my supper (she apparently believes starving students are either a) actually really starving b) don’t like to cook) before heading to another afternoon interview that also went quite smoothly. An uneventful day so far. I had a last interview scheduled at Chobe Safari Lodge later in the afternoon, so I drove over there and decided to sit at the riverside bar for a while working on my computer while I waited. An hour later, my interviewee showed up, we sat at the bar and did the interview, and after we finished I headed back to the truck in the parking lot to grab a water bottle only to find…a MONKEY IN MY CAR! And not only IN my car, but eating MY pasta bake that was supposed to be for my supper!!! Only a small piece of melted cheese left. Serves me right for leaving my windows open, but still, I was pretty mad because the pasta had happened look particularly tasty and I’d been thinking about having it for my dinner for a better part of the afternoon. Grrrr. I chalked it up to mainly my negligence and reasoned that losing my dinner was a small price to pay for living in such an exquisitely beautiful part of the world—I had just spent the afternoon typing away next to what is arguably one of the prettiest riverside views in all of Africa.

So I headed back into the lodge to finish up my work for the day and soon was engrossed in transcribing the last of my recorded interviews. Somewhere in the midst of listening to my interviewee describe the challenges of supporting his extended family back in the village on top of his own quite high living expenses in town, I noticed a slight commotion to my left. Around the lounge couches, a few tourists had gathered and were staring at something behind one of the armchairs, while two lodge employees looked on nervously. Before I really knew what was happening, a juvenile CROCODILE wiggled out from behind!!! It wasn’t huge and I didn’t see big teeth but still it had a mean looking tail and on top of that started moving in the direction of MY chair! Ah!! I hopped off seat and moved back, but the crocodile kept moving in MY direction! (later I realized that “my” direction happened to be the direction of the river, its probable intended destination, but at the time it felt like it had decided that little old me was its favored target)…I scrambled back and without even thinking, suddenly found myself crouched on a bar stool, and as it kept moving, then on top of the bar itself (wearing a dress the whole time mind you)! The crocodile waddled past at a quick pace and like lighting was back in the river, at which point I sheepishly climbed off the bar trying to ignore the laughter of all the wait staff around me. Hmph. I had lost a small amount of dignity which was unfortunate given that I spend a lot of time at that bar (its kind of become my outdoor office of sorts), but then again all those guys were behind the safety of the bar during this incident and I’m not convinced they wouldn’t have done the same if they had been on my side.

So that was my Wednesday at work. How was yours?