By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
A lone cowbell rings out through the African night. Its sound reaches my ears across the dust and lagoons of Botswana’s Okavango Delta. I stare at the flames of my campfire. They illuminate a ring of chairs, all empty. The rest of my company are drifting off in their tents behind me. I am alone, just me and the crackling logs and the sleeping hippos a few hundred meters away through a thicket of trees. I can’t bring myself to go to bed. Surrounded by swathes of wetlands, I’m too stuck in my own swamp of anxiety. All because of a stupid cat. At the border crossing from Namibia to Botswana, she’d approached me. The sweetest thing, she’d walked across the Kalahari’s hot sand to rub an orange cheek against my leg. Instinctively, I’d reached down and stroked her between her ears. My fatal flaw. This was Africa, not Michigan. I’d been told this place is dangerous. That every man wants to rob me. That every mosquito bite can kill. That every mammal has rabies. Of course, petting a healthy cat, no matter where you are, won’t give you rabies. Yet the thought of a slow death at the disease’s hands was one I’d been unable to rest from my mind. Having only traveled across Europe’s cobblestones and America’s interstates, this country, this whole continent was, for me, the treacherous unknown. Yes, that includes the cats, rabid or not. For two nights, my ignorant anxiety had kept sleep from me, forcing me to stare at the canvas ceiling of my tent until dawn. Do you know what Africa is like? It’s marvelous. My day had been filled with wild wonders. We’d poled mokoros, traditional dugout canoes, across the Delta’s channels and pools. Wandering between skyscrapers of grass, my eyes had found egrets, crocodiles, and a family of elephants pushing through the reeds for a drink. You can’t comprehend the size of an elephant until you’re floating on a piece of wood in their immense shadow. It makes you feel so vulnerable, so small. But my mind had been elsewhere. On the cat. Which brings me to now. To sitting with only flames for company as miles of untamed African wilderness stretches out through the night’s inky black. “You are like us. You like watching the flames.” Startled, I look up and see Titi, our guide, sit down next to me. The campfire’s colors make warm shapes on his dark Botswanan face. He stokes the logs before settling back in the sand. “In Africa, we call it nature’s television. Each night we make a huge fire in the center of town. People come from all over to just sit and watch.” He gestures to me, “You do the same, yes?” I take a second’s breath to respond. “Back home, we build bonfires on the beach. It makes for the best summer nights.” A look towards Titi finds him smiling at me. His kindness relaxes me, bringing my mind to the here and now. “I could watch fire forever,” I confess. “I’ve been doing it my whole life.” Just like that, the cowbell rings again, and we both look into the darkness towards its sound. Titi turns back, his smile gone. “She has been searching all day,” he mutters, eyes locked to the flames. “Who?” “The cow with the bell.” He turns back to me. “She lost her calf last night to a pack of hyenas. All day she’s been searching across the Delta. But she will never find him.” “That’s so sad,” I whisper. Then, together, we peer into the depths of the fire. The silence feels like a monument to the grieving mother and her lost baby. A monument built by two men from opposite ends of the Earth. “Alex,” Titi says after the next ring of the bell. “Do you know any words in Setswana?” “No,” I say. “None.” “Then I will teach you one.” He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “The word is dumela.” “Dumela,” I repeat. “What does it mean?” “It is a greeting. We Tswana say it whenever we meet someone.” Chuckling, he looks over to me. “Dumela, Alex.” “Dumela, Titi.”