The single most important conclusion I reached, after traveling through Japan, as well as countless hours reading, studying, and analyzing this fascinating culture, is that you should always tighten the cap on the shampoo bottle before you put it in your suitcase.
~ Dave Barry (the inimitable modern-day Montaigne) 😂

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had 

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
~ Toto (Lyrics from Africa) 🐘

Preamble 🐢

Following On The Heels Of The Previous Guest Contribution…

Yo, check out the geeky guy above, the one with that safari hat—so we’re told that this is going to be all about a day in Botswana—I mean, what exactly have we gotten ourselves into this time?

First the good news: following on the heels of the recent and spectacularly successful blog post (A Gift of Three Poems from a Reader), let us rejoice in the knowledge that we have been given yet another gift, this time a gift of prose!

See, I’m telling you, you all have kept your faith in me, faithfully reading everything I post around here—whether grudgingly or ungrudgingly I won’t say, because I can’t tell—so you clearly need a break from me, from time to time, and probably sooner than later. So there you go, your wish has been granted and your dreams—for now anyway and until my next rambling-filled essay—have been realized 🎡

…We Have Ourselves A Guest Essay!

This charming essay—demurely entitled merely as A Day In Botswana—is by Kitty Fassett, who also happens to be our resident poet!

Allow me first, though, to answer a question which, dare I say—judging at least by the knotted brows on your forehead—is percolating right now in the nooks and crannies of your mind: Is this essay going to make me a better programmer, a better technologist, the author of smashingly beautiful code? 😲

The brief answer is: No.

So What Gives? 💰

A slightly more elaborate answer: This essay will, however, make you a more relaxed programmer. And hey, that counts for something, does it not? I mean, come on, haven’t you heard of HDD (hammock-driven development)?

For crying out loud, it’s right up there with TDD (test-driven development), quickly ascending to the Pantheon where RDD (resume-driven development, whatever that means, and as some wags would have us believe) finds itself firmly ensconced. Pardon me if you mistook my RDD reference as standing for Resilient Distributed Datasets which, of course, are powered by one of my favorite programming languages, the Scala programming language.

But I digress.

We Stumble Upon A Ruckus 👻

At this moment, as we find ourselves poised to dive into the essay proper, we get summoned to a higher court to take care of some improper (monkey) business 🐒

Oh my, we got this mind-boggling dialogue in which yours truly finds himself the unenviable position of interlocutor- defendant (yo, fancy that!)

Introducing The Guest Essay 🎪

That being my final attempt to save my sorry rear—picture me, if you will, in the plight of Harry Potter facing the baddie Voldemort in the Deathly Hallows—the incipient verses above drifted from my lips just before I lost consciousness (Dang, those mallets sure can pack a wallop!) 🔨

When I came to, the roaring engine of the Cessna was wailing like the banshee… 👺

But How Do We Get There? 🚁 🚂 🚕 ⛵

Exactly. First we have to get there. Hey now, there’s our ride, woohoo! All aboard the Cessna.

(Spoiler: Be on the lookout for authentic photographs from the Botswana trip itself—I bring them to you on behalf of Kitty Fassett—right after the guest essay that now follows. Meanwhile, as for the photographs embedded in the essay itself, I have carefully selected them topically from the public domain) 🎥

Okay, let’s stop all this monkey business, and give us the guest essay. Like, right now!

Easy there, now… 😂

A Day In Botswana (by Kitty Fassett) 🐈

1. Full Of Sound And Fury, Signifying… Something!

It started with a roar and a clatter, followed by the loud thud of a falling tree limb brought down by a family of baboons acting out their morning exuberance, as they galloped across the cabin roof, lunging from there to the nearest tree and then bounding tree-to-tree until they reached their designated food source 🍟 🍔

2. I Give Him You, The Noblest That Survives

It was lucky that we hadn’t been under the tree limb as it came crashing down. As it was, we already had plenty of thrills ahead of us as we climbed into the Land Rover that would bring us in close proximity to dangerous animals in the Okavango Delta. As home to “the big five”—elephant, buffalo, rhino, lion, and leopard—this swampy inland sanctuary within the Kalahari Desert provides a surrealistic backdrop to the lives of animals who act out the daily drama of eating or being eaten.

The scenery conjures up an image of life and death, with the black gnarled skeletons of dead acacia trees silhouetted against the sky and surrounded by wild sage and tall yellow grasses that provide perfect camouflage for things that creep and crawl 🐛

3. Nay, ’tis Strange, ’tis Very Strange

Scattered every few feet or so throughout the alternately wet or drought-ridden terrain, are mounds rising like mountains, some as much as ten feet tall, providing sustenance for the strange elusive creature called an “aardvark,” which makes itself scarce as it sticks its long nose into the private dwellings of termites 🐜

4. Fierce To Their Skill, And To Their Fierceness Valiant 

We never saw an aardvark, but we did see plenty of elephants, Botswana being the elephant capital of the world. These giant vegetarians roam in peaceful family groups, foraging for food, grabbing clumps of grass in their trunks, shaking out the dirt before shoveling the grass into their mouths. Competing in numbers with the elephants are herds of Cape buffalo 🐗

Considered the most dangerous of African mammals, these are the Darth Vaders of the animal kingdom, black and scary and uniformly endowed with wickedly curved horns. The herd that we came upon was clumped together under a sycamore fig tree, managing to stay cool in the shade.

5. Impatient Of His Fit, Breaks Like A Fire

The buffalo earns its bad reputation by its readiness to charge at anything that moves (a bovine tendency, I gather, if you consider the spectacle of bullfighting and the way a bull will charge at a red flag waved by a matador.) As we approached this particular herd, the alpha males of the group stood staring at us, sizing us up, I suppose, but with a fortunate preference for the cool of the shade over the sport of chasing us down 🐊

6. Prosper Our Colors In This Dangerous Fight!

Second only to the buffalo, the most dangerous animal—and in fact the one with a greater killing record—is the ridiculous-looking tub of lard known as a “hippopotamus.” Don’t be fooled by the fact that the hippo will stay submerged in a swamp all day, pushing up its nose now and then to take in air with a loud snort.

Most of the time you may not know it’s there, but it knows where you are, and if you start getting on its nerves, it will let you know by raising its head above the water level and opening his mouth in a wide yawn to show you its teeth. Most of these are molars used for grinding up the green grass, called “hippo grass” that grows on the edges of marshes, but towards the front of its mouth are incisors that serve no purpose other than biting its enemies 🐉

If you see a hippo opening its mouth at you, take it seriously and get out as fast as you can, since the hippo’s yawn is a sign of undisguised hostility, and you don’t want to find out how fast it can run to catch you and bite you in half.

7. The Prey Wherein By Nature They Delight

Rhinos are scary creatures, too, but much less numerous due to poachers that kill them for the horn that is later ground up to make a powder that’s supposed to act like Viagra. We felt lucky to see a single black rhino that ignored us as it went about its business of eating the ubiquitous grass. One can hope that the rhino population can be once more on the increase, as activists in the area bring them in by plane from less protected areas, keeping them corralled until they’re ready to be released into the wild.

All the above-mentioned are herbivores. Not so the big cats that need to stalk their food, catching it in a surprise attack before it scurries. The cats are nicely disguised within the grassy plain, the lion’s yellow coloring blending in with the yellow grass, and the spots on the cheetah or leopard allowing it to remain hidden in the mottled light and shadow within the more jungly areas 🐯

Leopards are elusive and we had to search far and wide before finding one sleeping on a high-up tree branch, whereas the single cheetah that we saw was just hanging out in the shade of a bush, opening an eye to view us with boredom before yawning, rolling over, and going back to sleep.

8. Stood Challenger On Mount Of All The Age

Cats are known for sleeping a lot, although the pride of nine lions that we saw was gearing up for a prowl, hoping to land something on the hoof in a surprise attack. As we arrived fully exposed in a wide-open Land Rover to ogle these beasts in the privacy of their home, I couldn’t help but wonder why a hungry lion wouldn’t lunge for the nearest prey at hand—namely us, when we are so easily accessible?

The lion has no need to outrun an impala or a zebra, when the buffet is right before its very eyes in the form of a group of khaki-clad tourists with cameras and binoculars. The fact that the lions don’t lunge at us makes me wonder if perhaps they need the challenge of a chase to stimulate their appetite rather than going after something so boring and predictable 👒

9. Or You Survive When I In Earth Am Rotten

The best cat food consists of the many varieties of antelope such as impala, springbok, lechwe, and wildebeest, as well as zebras, warthogs, and baboons. Less so giraffes, because they’re too big and too top heavy. But the antelopes roam everywhere to be eaten not only by the big cats, but by hyenas and wild dogs as well.

As to determining who eats who, it often boils down to numbers. A lion can take out a hyena, but a pack of five or more hyenas can take out a lion. Hyenas have a bad reputation, made worse by the movie The Lion King, and yet the sweetest sight I saw was a mother hyena nursing her cubs. It was a scene of maternal bliss, the hyena a Madonna of the animal world 💑

10. Like A Wild Bird Being Tamed With Too Much Handling

I haven’t gotten around to mentioning the birds, which abound in hundreds of different varieties. Some can be seen swooping down for fish, while avoiding the jaws of the crocodiles as well as those of the mammal population, managing to avoid being eaten because they can fly 🐥

11. And Vice Sometimes By Action Dignified

The birds would need more time to focus on them, but by the time we retired for the evening, we’d had a full enough day. And yet the drama wasn’t over. I was barely dozing off when I heard a ruckus much like the rude awakening of the morning.

The baboons were at it again, yelling their heads off and waking up the entire camp, with the camp manager telling us the next morning that the yelling was a warning to the other baboons about a predator. We’d had a lion at the door as I put a pillow over my head and went back to sleep 😴

Will In The End Conclude The Matter So

Oops… So the aardvark pic that had appeared earlier, I now realize—the guest essay having concluded above—was actually one of America’s beloved and adorable aardvark: Arthur! Based on deep research that I’ve subsequently conducted, aardvarks are evidently not known to be bespectacled in the wild 👓

Hmm… Who would have thought. Anyhow, to set matters right, I present to you above a somewhat less endearing aardvark.

Or What Strong Hand Can Hold His Swift Foot Back?

Goodness, I nearly forgot to make good on a promise: Authentic photographs from the Botswana trip itself! So here they are. Again, I bring them to you courtesy of our guest writer, the inimitable Kitty Fassett. And yes—if only to confirm your foregone conclusion—I did not write this essay. I couldn’t have 😬

Hey you, I heard that loud and clear (“Akram, you city slicker, we were dead sure anyway that you couldn’t have been roughing it in the jungles of Botswana. Like, your idea of roughing it is more like wearing a shirt with a starched collar!”) 👔

Sigh, I sure got a bunch of flattering readers. Your words are a balm for the hurting mind 😳

Picture Postcards (From) Botswana! 🎫

Mom Elephant With Adorable Baby

Fierce Jaws (Careful Now!)

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail
And spread the waters of the Nile on every golden scale
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws.
~ Lewis Carroll

Dang, If Looks Could Kill…

I Need My Morning Coffee. Now!

Hey, You Talking To Me?

Imagine One Of Us Giraffes Getting A Sore Throat…

Ahh… Master Of All I Survey 

 

Yo, I Am Grumpy (So What Are You Gonna’ Do About It?)

 

My Name Is Sergeant. And Yes, I’m Boss Around Here! 

 

Hey, Didn’t You Read That Sign?! “No Paparazzis Allowed.” 

 

Motherhood And Apple Pie (The Hyena Version)

 

The Only Way To Stop Me From Charging Is To Take Away My Visa Card

 

On The Prowl 

 

I Sure Could Use A Snickers Candy Bar 

 

Hey, Me First (Aaa… Just Toss That Snickers Bar Right In)!

 

Yo! Cheetahs, Too, Need A Siesta Or Two

 

Hmm… That sure doesn’t look like prime-time jungle in Botswana, judging by all the concrete and that high-tech vehicle in the pic! (Yep, now that was my cue that the splendid pics provided by our guest author—Kitty Fassett—have now come to an end. That’s why I was filling in: Remember what I said elsewhere, all I do around here is “staple and glue”!)  📎 📨 🔖
Now that is one magical-looking flower specimen that I just had to drag in, as we’re witness it unfold and announce its existence to the world. Parting thought, and if you could please turn your attention to the pic below: How many monkeys—look, we might as well throw some monkeys in there while we’re wrapping up an essay which took in the plains and jungles of Botswana—would it take to write the complete plays of William Shakespeare?