Desert & Delta Safaris would like to thank Maria for all the wonderful stories and contribution to our blog which include the profiles she did of our guides and managers before returning to the US after a year’s sabbatical in Botswana. Maria added a wonderful dimension to our management teams in the lodges during her visits which started as a mystery guest on assignment to check on the consistency of standards and levels of service between all the lodges.
Her Pulitzer prize-winning journalistic skills were put to very good use for the blog and we will miss her enthusiasm about everything and anything – even helping with a curio shop stocktake! Maria’s interest in the culture of the Batswana and her passion for children were a brilliant combination at Leroo La Tau where she organized a painting competition at the local school with the best paintings now on sale in the curio shops. The idea is to raise money to buy traditional outfits for the school to offer cultural performances to our guests. Her hat burning ceremony in the company of guest who is a world famous milliner at Camp Moremi on the night Obama won will also never be forgotten. We will miss Maria and we wish her every success as she tries to find a reason to get back to our beautiful country!
Thank you Maria – from Adrienne and all at Desert & Delta Safaris
Maria in Moremi
Below is an extract from her blog "mariainbotswana"
Maria in Africa
The beauty of the Okavango Delta and the utter stillness of the wilderness in Botswana stoked a fire in me to give up my professional life for a year and leap into the unknown. This is my pilgrimage to the continent that opened my heart. As I prepare to fly away from Botswana today, I find that the words I wrote then hold true:
I know that stillness speaks. I know that the sky can sing. I know that unity with the other is possible beyond words and recognizable by only the slightest thread in ordinary space and time. I know that culture is learned, customized like a suit of clothes, but the day may come when the suit is threadbare and no longer of use. I know that fire and water hold magnificent power and that rocks have stories to tell. And I know that the trees stand as witness and healers to the world. I know that tracks in the sand point to the animal but are not the animal, just as spiritual paths point to the truth but are not the truth. I know that dominion over nature can be only a temporary exercise. The cycle will turn, round and inside out. What is nature if not ourselves?
Often in my time in Botswana I have met tourists intent on checking off the animals on their lists. They have watched the National Geographic documentaries, so they arrive tuned and ready: "Lion…Order up!" They simply MUST see a lion or a leopard or a wild dog or a cheetah. They don’t want to hear how filmmakers spent a year in the bush to capture the images seen on TV. They look to the guide to deliver on demand.
Is it any surprise that the vibe of "power and control" is in the air when they take their first steps on the Maun tarmac wearing their starched khaki ensembles, with a host of techno-camper gadgets at the ready? I wonder if the animals sense it, because they sometimes prefer to hide away on their own holiday rather than meet the guests. I like to imagine the elephants down by the water hole stamping their feet and sharing a few chuckling snorts about the Air Botswana parade. They tell their jokes and before the guests return from an afternoon game drive, the ellies amble off silently in all directions, lickety-split into the bush, just for the fun of leaving lodge managers to say, "You just missed them! I promise. There must have been 10 bull elephants at the water hole, not 5 minutes ago."
What I wish for anyone who visits Botswana is to arrive with senses wide open for all that can be perceived. An opening of the heart will surely follow, by virtue of approaching the land’s treasures with the reverence of a novitiate, from the Fireball lily ablaze in scarlet to the dung beetle rolling a ball of wet buffalo poo with Herculean purpose. Where is that armored fellow going with that boulder of dung and at such speed? Sit and watch. The landscape and its occupants are grand, the whole of it, not just The Big Five.
Across the planet we are all sojourners among landscapes in constant change. It’s easy to miss the unfolding of the miracles where most of us live, stuck in traffic jams, a Bluetooth in our ear, a Blackberry on our dash. Underneath it all and through it all is a tapestry of nature woven from morning to night and all night through, indeed woven right through us. We forget to look for the gossamer threads. We’re walking amnesiacs huddled on street corners waiting for the light to say proceed. Here, in Africa, the recognition slaps us in the face, wakes us up. This is the light you’ve been waiting for. This is where you came from, this is what you’re connected to, this is the new news, same as the old news. Forget Times Square, for a digital moment anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment