My Safari in Botswana

This was how close I got to a lion in the Kalahari. Actually it was yawning, perhaps with boredom. All the other animals and birds in the Bush turn and look at humans in a four wheel truck then run away, but lions aren’t afraid.

This was my favourite creature: the honey badger. He’s digging for scorpions. He creates quite a dust storm.

When I got to Johannesburg airport for the flight to Maun I thought I’m going to take against this safari malarkey: lots of rich white South Africans with pockets on their legs and chests and camera gear and dripping with gold and self satisfaction. But our safari was different:

It was Naga Safari. Naga means cheetah in Tswana. Kenson’s the boss. He’s a local independent Batswana guide in Maun who knows the Kalahari and all about its creatures. He has one eye and a limp. He organised things beautifully. There were four of us visitors and he had about six helpers. Our tents had showers, sort of bucket things on rope, and lavatories, well lavatory seats over a hole in the ground, torchlight beacons, and canvas basins and bedside tables. There was a separate dining tent, a log fire burning night and morning, very good food. And the helpers were having a heck of a holiday for themselves.

What you do on Safari is drive around before dawn for five hours in an open vehicle and say ‘ten to eleven’ or ‘twelve fifteen’ if you see an animal or a bird. Then you get going with your cameras and binoculars. I saw or almost saw cheetahs and jackals and springboks and bat eared foxes, eagles, ostriches and vultures but whenever I said ‘nine fifteen’ or ‘twenty past eight’ it was a termites’ nest or a shrub. I excelled at not spotting things and not being able to see what the others could see, partly because by the time I’d worked out where five past nine was the creature had buggered off, partly because I was concentrating on not falling out of the vehicle and partly because I couldn’t manage to focus my binoculars which seemed to steam up. Nor could I work my camera. That’s an ongoing problem. Then you have lunch and a rest and then you drive around again saying a quarter to two or twenty to one. I felt a bit cooped up and jolted about because you can’t go off on your own in case you get eaten. I liked hearing the lions at night though and the hyenas snuffling round the tents but I did shed a tear when wasps swarmed out of my shower. I think I was overtired and too far out of my comfort zone.

I do recommend it but doubt I’ll go again. I’m more a woodland walks and remote islands sort of person. But I like Africa and I love Isak Dinesen’s stories.

Taxing Times

I like my accountant. He always seems pleased to see me and gives me a kiss though God knows I’m one of his minor customers. Once a year, and always later than he’d like, I take him a box of receipts I’d rather shred and card statements and a convoluted list of inputs and outputs and profit and loss. I like his attention to detail. He goes through all of it. He knows so much about me: how many times I’ve been to Unwins and Waitrose, subscriptions for the London Library and Guardian soulmates, He sits opposite me in a big chair behind a big desk. He looks inquisitorial. He says, Can you really claim that your purchase of a floating duck house is a tax deductible item for the writing of a biography of Edith Cavell? No, I answer, and the expense is deleted. And a Chinon armchair? No. Three printer cartridges for a Samsung ML2525W? YES!

I don’t know how the rich get hold of their money. Squillionaires we call them now. And I’m still not quite sure how many noughts there are in a billion. Or a trillion.

I rather approve of Warren Buffett. He’s an American financier and the third richest man in the world but apparently lives quite modestly, though modestly is a relative thing. He thinks he and anyone acquiring more than a $1 million a year should pay lots more tax. Lots and lots. True. ‘My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress’ he says. ‘It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.’ Hear, hear. And our government too. It’s obscene for people to be very fat or very thin. Both conditions need radical treatment.

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I’m as ready for Botswana as I know how to be. Got melarone , a mosquito net and disinfectant to put in the drinking water and have learned how to turn off absolutely everything on my iphone because even to look at it when there costs a fortune. I’ve now been told someone will take us in a little boat down a river where there are crocodiles, hippopotamuses and weird birds. That’s as well as whatever there is in the Bush. Hyenas. Snakes. Elephants. Things that creep up on you in the dark. Snuffling.

I fear my affections really are for herbivores, blackbirds and otters and paths with stiles ,and hostelries with comfy beds and well-cooked food. Can’t stay in the room if creatures are chasing and devouring each other on the tele.

Homosexuality in Botswana is a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of seven years in prison.

Bye bye blog. Hello crocodiles.

Street level and dog eats dog

On riot night in London the window of Gay’s the Word bookshop was smashed in the early hours of Monday 8 August by a group of around thirty youths. They were not looters. They pelted the shop with eggs but took no books.

The broken glass was not the Kristallnacht of 1938 but unpleasant enough. If the youths had read one or two of the books in the store it might have broadened their minds.

I like to go to the lesbian discussion group at Gay’s the Word. I get to hear life stories from women of all ages from Uganda, China, Glasgow, Italy, Manchester, Tottenham. We share a commonality. It is not always easy to be gay. We are identifiable to each other by our demeanour and the clothes we wear. The looters identify themselves by their hoods and trainers. Members of the Bullingdon Club wear tailcoats of Oxford blue with ivory silk lapel revers, monogrammed brass buttons, a mustard waistcoat, a sky blue bow tie.

‘At the end of the day it was just a window’ the nice manager of Gay’s the Word said. He thanked all those who then showed their care, and gave support.

Caring has been the bonus of these alarming days: The words of the 20-year-old Malaysian student Ashraf Hazik robbed first of his bicycle then of his phone and game console by youths purporting to help him. ‘I feel sorry for them. It was really sad because amongst them were children. It was quite shocking to me.’ Then his thanks for the donations and support that followed. The plea for calm from Tariq Jahan after his son Haroon’s murder, ‘I lost my son. Blacks, Asians, Whites - we all live in the same community. Why do we have to kill one another? Why are we doing this? Step forward if you want to lose your sons. Otherwise, calm down and go home - please.’ The fund raised for the 89-year-old barber, Aaron Biber who had his shop trashed in Tottenham.

Harold Wilson said in 1963 ‘Tories aren’t evil people, they just believe in institutionalising jungle law’.

Then came Margaret Thatcher ‘where there is discord may we bring harmony’ , then Tony (Tory) Blair ‘a new dawn has broken has it not.’

It still has not. Britain in the 21^st century has a feudal class system complete with Queen and aristocracy and a breathtaking, ever-growing gap between rich and poor. The bankers who caused the recession get even richer despite their crimes. Young looters get prison records and blighted lives for stealing bottled water, a television, a pair of trainers, a violin.

It’s way past time for realising Britain is no longer a homogeneous Anglo Saxon christian country but a global village. It’s way past time for more equal distribution of wealth and resources.

The current batch of Tories remain jungle kings : Cameron calls the riots ‘criminality pure and simple‘, says ‘the fightback has begun’, resists a public inquiry and talks of ‘reclaiming the streets’. But he and his group have nothing to do with the streets. The run-down inner city streets are the only areas over which most of the rioters have any claim. Not for them the grounds of Dorneywood and Chequers, villas in Holland Park, or holidays in the Tuscan hills.

Cameron and his friend and Chancellor George (real name Gideon, personal fortune c. 4 million) Osborne at Oxford were both members of the Bullingdon Club, famous for wild drinking parties and trashing wine bars. So was Boris Johnson. In 2005 the Oxford Student, the university’s official student newspaper, described the Bullingdon as drawing ‘its membership from Oxford’s super-rich, enticing them to a life of secrecy, champagne drinking and ritualised violence’. The Club’s uniform costs around £3000. No trainers and hoods for them.

Michael Gove, who claimed £7000 of furniture on his parliamentary expenses ‘including a Chinon armchair and a Manchu cabinet’, was a former president of the Oxford Union. As Education Secretary in frequent meetings with Rupert Murdoch he discussed creating a flagship‘Murdoch Academy’ . Gove advocates teaching Latin in primary schools and vehemently despises ‘relativising’ judgement on the riots.

At least Ken Livingstone sometimes travels by bus, advocates tolerance and dialogue, and knows we live in a global village.

Camila Batmanghelidjh’s dress code takes her beyond any gang or group. She dresses like the queen of love. She’s the founder of Kids Company and has, I think, twice mortgaged her home to keep the charity going. There are over 300 paid staff, around 5000 volunteers. She said, last Thursday:

‘those of us working at street level, we’re not surprised by these events’.

‘Check out the price of failing to care.’

‘Acquisition of goods through violence is justified in neighbourhoods where the notion of dog eat dog pervades and the top dog survives the best.’

‘In the riots the lawlessness is suddenly there for all to see. Less visible is the perverse insidious violence delivered through legitimate societal structures. ‘

‘Large groups of young adults create their own parallel antisocial communities with different rules. The individual is responsible for his own survival because the established community is seen to provide nothing.’

‘For years they have experienced themselves cut adrift from society’s legitimate structures.’

Many of us not working at street level are also not surprised by these events. We can’t hear each day of alarming hypocrisy, extravagant greed, the entrenchment of privilege for the rich and neglect of provision for those in need, the mismanagement of the nation’s money, the criminality of politicians, police, journalists, denial of prospects for the young - in all, a catalogue of failing to care, and not also hear the lid of the pot rattling up and down as the mixture boils.

Wee-Jon

Must get ready for Botswana: Deet, Imodium, major tranquillisers - all the stuff one needs for a fun trip away. Friends are lukewarm about this adventure. P says he never goes to places where there are no street lights. F says she likes room service. A asks if it’s a biog of Mma Ramotswe. Were my mother alive she might ask when I was going to settle down.

I don’t know what to anticipate. I’ve been told to take a torch. There’s mention of collecting wood for the fire to cook our dinner. I’ve been told I mustn’t leave my tent in the night. If I need to piddle I’ll have a wee-jon, a disposable urinal thingy filled with absorbent anti-microbial polymer crystals that turn the pee into a gel.

Meanwhile out there in the wide and wondrous African night the hyena’s nostrils twitch as he anticipates dinner, or if it’s me he’s after, a rather unsatisfactory snack.

Wheels and feet

I once had a Utopian dream of a car-free London where pedestrians and cyclists gently wafted along from there to there. That was then, in the era before cyclists morphed into extra-terrestrial androids that travel a zillion times faster than the speed of light.

They terrify me. They are everywhere. Many are airborne. I now view cars as friendly machines with brake pedals and indicator lights and even, sometimes, human beings behind the wheel. Often cars stop at traffic lights and zebra crossings and not all of them drive on the pavement or along the tow path.

I am of the generation that was taught to stop at the kerb, look right, look left, look right again, then run for it. Forget it. Look skyward, behind you, around and around you and behind you and around you, and none of it will help…. Half way across the road some two-wheeled, armoured bat out of hell, straight from the special effects lab of Harry Potter the Tenth will whack into you, or if you’re lucky give you a near miss. `Fxxx off stupid cow’ one growled at me this morning as I froze in the road. He was right of course but might have worded it more prettily. And I would have done just that, f’d off plenty pronto, if I’d known how or where. I swear it/he appeared from nowhere. I had no idea of his intention other than to mow me down. He clipped my kit bag. I was ambling off for my morning swim. It was only about 6.40 am.

Apparently there is a 7 percent increase in the London mortality rate of cyclists. I don’t know 7 per cent of how many then and now. Chained to lamp posts where I live, right in the city, are ghostly white painted in memoriam bikes with sad offerings of soon dead flowers. I think on every city street there now ought be Julian Opie luminous walking figures. In memoriam to pedestrians.