Goodbye Machaba, Hello Mwandi--Ari

Ari Day #60

5/15/2022

Simba House, Mwandi, Zambia

We made it to the next leg of the journey…well, barely. We are now in the place that served as the catalyst for our circumnavigation around the globe. About 7 months ago, Peggy Schrieber, one of the Kaiser surgeons, came to our house to tell us about this small town in Zambia where she has been going annually for the last 22 years for a week at a time with a team of surgeons and anesthesiologists to perform as many surgeries as they can in that time period as this area of Zambia has no access to surgery otherwise. This served as a starting place to plan the remainder of our trip, and we are finally here. But before I talk about the voyage here, I need to catch up on day #3 at Machaba.

Day #3 at Machaba started off slowly as we opted to forego the game drive and take a ride in the mokoros, another name for the dugout canoes. Of course, we were a bit apprehensive to head into the water because nearly every body of water that we had seen in the delta was inhabited by a menagerie of hippos and crocs. They reassured us that the area we were going to was too shallow for the hippos and crocs. So, we went. After a relatively uneventful 30 minute drive to the mokoro drop in point, we arrived. We had 2 mokoros, Linden and Cris in one with OP being the driver (aka “poler”); and me and Asher in the other with Sullie driving. We saw tons of birds and some of the tiny culprits that made the bell-sounding ruckus at night: the miniature frogs that hung out on reeds in the river at night. These tiny creatures are about the size of one’s fingertip, yet provide the constant music at night which covers the entire delta. Although many people are lucky enough to see elephants wading in the water while they are gliding in the mokoros, we only saw flying and amphibious creatures. The silence of gliding through the still water in the middle of Africa, devoid of any human-made sounds, was quite magical. We had the obligatory calorie fix during the tea time break, then headed back.

The kids were excited to be back at camp so they could swim with Nala and Khan. I am truly amazed at how quickly these four became good friends. Nala and Khan have almost never worn shoes, have never seen snow, and have never been to school despite being 11 and 10 years old. Their education comes from daily game drives, interacting with the people who visit the camp, and a very small bit of online learning. Their lives couldn’t be much more different than Asher’s and Linden’s, yet the four of them were tackling each other within 2 hours of meeting one another. If adults could just do the same…

The evening drive was back with Albert and 2 Belgians who were photographers and owners of a travel agency, JP and Jane. We revisited the pride of lions feeding on the elephant. Despite the smell of rotting flesh worsening, the sight of the 6 of them playing, eating, and mothering (the cub was always trying to nurse) was more than worth tolerating yet another 30 minutes of foul smell. We then headed out to see what we could see. Albert received a call on the radio and after a muffled conversation that none of us understood, he punched the gas pedal and we were flying through the bush, obviously in a hurry to see something. Our questions to Albert regarding what the heck we were rushing to were carried off on the wind, never to reach his ears. So, we just sat back and held on. After 20 minutes of fishtailing around the delta, the mystery was solved. We arrived at a larger road, at which time 2 vehicles were approaching us and in front of them were ~13 animals that, at first glance looked like skinny hyenas, and then we all realized that they were African wild dogs. As I had never seen these animals before, I was taken aback by how similar to our dogs they acted. They were playful with each other and very social. What a treat to see them. After watching them for 10 minutes, we headed up the road and saw a lone dog which was stumbling around. We noticed that a park ranger had just left that area and realized the dog likely was tranquilized for research and was trying to shake off the martinis and find his pack. We then had the sunset drink overlooking the setting sun and a large open space that had wildebeest, giraffes, elephants, impalas, and zebras—a picturesque last sunset in the Okavango Delta for the Ballonoff clan.

We then headed back, had yet another insanely good dinner which rounded out the 6,000 calories that is consumed in this camp daily, and headed to bed. Just before going to bed, we informed the 2 newlywed Spaniards who had just arrived that they should not be scared nor alarmed if they hear loud noises, hoping to prevent them from going through the terror we experienced the first night we were there. Rather than seeing a sense of relief, they were wide-eyed and alarmed—maybe we lost something in the translation… To make matters worse, literally at the end of the conversation, the staff (Albert, Sean, and Christian) informed us that the large bull elephant was back in front of our tent. We thought they were joking, but lo and behold, that dude was literally at the entrance of our tent once again. He was grabbing ahold of the 50 foot large tree and shaking the entire tree to release seed pods that he would then pick up and eat. So, we delayed for ~30 minutes and then snuck past him to go to bed. For another hour, this dude was going around our tent, eating branches, shaking trees, scratching himself on the tree trunks (we were sure he would push one of the trees down on the tent), and he then went to the outdoor shower which was attached to our tent and put his trunk and tusk over/into the shower. The whole B clan was watching from the inside shower, about 2 feet from the tush and trunk—not really our brightest moment as human beings. He proceeded to knock his tusk against the shower, but luckily did not hurt it. He eventually left and we were able to sleep.

The next day was moving day. We had a game drive in the morning, something that Cris and I realized after the fact was probably something we could have foregone. We were all a bit overwhelmed from the previous 3.5 days of safari and we had a long moving day ahead of us. The last thing we needed was more time in a vehicle. We did a 2 hour drive, then packed up and had a 20 minute drive to the airstrip, followed by a 1 hour flight to Kasane. A driver picked us up there and drove us 30 minutes to the Botswana/Zambia border in Kazangula. She was convinced that Lawrence (our contact from Mwandi) would go over the border and pick us up in Kazangula. This didn’t make sense to any of us, but we believed her and waited for ~30 minutes and then got a call from Lawrence that we needed to go to the Zambian side to meet him. We then went over the bridge over the Zambezi River to Zambia, where you pass the four corners of Africa where the countries of Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana meet. We met Lawrence and then went to the immigration office. That’s when the wheels began to fall of the Ballonoff Buggy… We were all spent, Cris, Linden and I uber annoyed, and Asher expressing his fatigue by literally wandering in circles in the immigration office until he became so dizzy that he would almost fall down. He would get his bearings, and then repeat. As Linden is beginning to notice any bodily function or movement of Asher by the 60th day of being together, she almost jumped out of her skin. It was not a pretty picture at all. After ~1 hour of people looking at our passports, stamping them about as fast as the sloths in Zootopia, and then going to the “next window” for someone to do the exact same thing, we were off to Mwandi. Lawrence is one bad ass driver as the road is a completely eroded paved road that is so bad that most people drive on the dirt shoulders. This causes the vehicle to be tipped to the right for the entirety of the 2.5 hour drive. I was in “bitch” (the middle seat) and was thus shoved into Linden’s lap for the entire drive. Linden continues to amaze me as she did not mind this AND she was scratching my head because I, of course, decided it was a good time to get a migraine. Thanks to Lawrence, we arrived in Mwandi safe and sound. What was perhaps the biggest surprise of our trip was that the house in Mwandi that we are staying at is GORGEOUS, especially after the last 2 months of our travels. This is the house that houses the physicians and other visitors of the church mission here. It has several bedrooms, multiple bathrooms, a rocking kitchen that is staffed by talented cooks, and is situated literally on the banks of the Zambezi. This surprise had invigorated us and brought us all back to relative normalcy. We slept great and then did nothing today as it is Sunday and the hospital where Cris will be seeing patients and the orphanage where the rest of us will be working, are not operating today. It was perfect.

The next 3 days, we will be volunteering and are all looking forward to it. I am excited that the group here are working on a proposal to build a cancer center here (including radiation oncology—believe it or not), and really want my help to write the proposal and help with the planning. So I will be working with them over the next 3 days looking at their plans, and I assume I’ll be taking the plans back to Colorado and see if the smarter people at St Joe’s could help with the plans and I could help with writing the proposal. It would be a miracle for the people in this part of Zambia to have a cancer center as currently less than 30% of people with cancer get any treatment whatsoever.

Lastly, we have decided to head home a bit early, on 6/3, and we are excited for France and excited to get home….