Namibia – Jadi Campbell

Mom’s Favorite Critter

Giraffe. 1,000 to 10,000 years old rock art Twyfelfontein, Namibia. UNESCO World Heritage site

The one negative during our trip to southern Africa was that we couldn’t go for hikes. Heck, we couldn’t even go on a stroll because there were too many wild animals running around. We went everywhere in our rental 4WD or a game drive jeep. Most of the lodges we stayed in were in the bush and each place we checked in, they warned us not to stray outside the grounds.

I had to give up the hope of swimming in anything but a pool. If hippos didn’t kill me, the crocodiles would.

My mom’s favorite animal was the giraffe. Sandy loved them, their patterns, their grace, their impossible heights. I thought of her each time we spotted another giraffe.

Giraffe with hitchhikers, Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

The only word I can use to describe this animal is, glorious. They fit all the definitions of the word: The giraffe is marked by great beauty and splendor. They are delightful. They are wonderful.

The pattern on each giraffe’s coat is as unique as a fingerprint. A giraffe moves at a regal pace. And their improbable tallness is suddenly funny when they have to splay their forelegs like a tripod in order to take a drink.

Not being able to go for walks was a small price to pay to be able to see wildlife in their natural habitats. Some of the lodges were built on water holes, and we ate our meals along with the critters. We had the great pleasure of watching giraffes approach for a long drink of water.

Our last lodge on the trip was back in Namibia, and for the one and only time we could actually go for long walks out on the property!

Uwe and I were alone and out of sight of the lodge buildings and felt like we had the pampas to ourselves.

We spotted wildebeests, pavians (yuck, I do not like wild monkeys), antelopes, zebras,

and giraffes!

once they spotted us, they kept a wary watch

Later we surprised a lone giraffe crossing the path. When he ran off, there was nothing but the sounds of birds calling and his hooves thumping on the grassland.

My mom would have loved it. Sandy, this post about giraffes is for you.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Southern African Birds with their Friends and Foes

“A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers.” — Suzy Kassem

The bird life in Botswana and Namibia is fantastically entertaining. One of my favorite birding activities was watching them interact with other animals.

In Chobe, Botswana we spent breathless minutes watching a male African fish eagle try – and fail – to fly away with the huge fish he’d killed. A trio of monitor lizards kept on coming, and the eagle finally dragged his catch across the grasses. In the end, the lizard won.

that’s a monitor lizard in the lower right hand corner, determined to steal the fish

On our last night in Botswana, at dusk (alas, too dark for photos) we watched a pair of Verreaux’s giant eagle owls hunting until it became too dark to see them. They were hands-down the largest owls we’d ever seen and absolutely magnificent.

A Verreaux's Eagle-Owl at Tarangire National Park, Tanzania. — Eagle owl photo courtesy of Animalia. We saw a pair in Ghanzi, Botswana

We loved watching the giraffes with birds. They eat the insects that plague the giraffe, and pluck hairs from the mane for their nests. We spotted this group in Moremi Game Reserve.

5 red billed ox birds. Their giraffe host looked so serene

Even more daring are the red billed ox birds who catch the flies and bugs that land on a water buffalo’s nose and eyes.

As I said in my first post on them, This Life is for the Birds!

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Daily Briefing

My sisters were adamant. They know that when I’m traveling I prefer to go off-line. I don’t write emails, I don’t turn on the television set in hotel rooms, and I only respond to messages if they can’t wait.

Uwe sent occasional photos via What’s App to a small group of our friends, but I told my sisters I wanted to remain off-radar.

They insisted. If Uwe and I wanted to drive by ourselves around Namibia and Botswana, they wanted to know where we were staying and where we’d head next. “You can always reach me by cell phone,” I told them. But they wished to follow our trip on the map, and visualize where we were at any given time.

The request actually made a lot of sense to me the more I thought about it. The longer the trip lasted (we were gone for 5 weeks) the smarter it seemed. Uwe and I had talked excitedly about the trip as we planned it, but no one had a comprehensive list of lodge addresses and phone numbers where we could be reached if anyone needed to get in touch with us.

If for some weird reason we disappeared totally, nobody other than a travel agent knew where to find us….

Each evening I’d send a quick message to let Pam and Barb know we’d arrived safe and sound at our destination. Or, in the morning before driving off, I’d text them the name of the next national park and lodge we’d be heading to.

It turned into a rather glorious game. “Hey! Where’s our zebra of the day?” they’d text.

I did my best to oblige. Uwe’s by far the superior photographer but I snapped shots of the animals crossing the roads and included a daily photo in my daily briefing.

another roadside attraction: Botswana elephants

I tried to give them an idea of what I was seeing each day. I took photos of the metal artwork, the room we stayed in, the sunset view at dinner.

Maybe once a week we chatted in a three-way phone call. Barb was in Oaxaca, Pam was in Hong Kong, I was in Africa. My sister listened to me crow about our adventures. They told me in no uncertain terms to get medical attention the morning I reported that an insect I could only identify as a black Botswana battery-acid blister beetle had released noxious fluids on my neck. [1]

I journal diligently on trips to record as accurately as possible what we are seeing in each new place, but there was something rapturous about making quick emotional reports. My two sisters were the friends to receive a running commentary of first impressions.

Only Barb and Pam heard from me about the trip as it was happening. There’s no one I’d rather have had as virtual companions. xoxoxoxoxo

I want to end with a postscript that it’s a good idea before heading out on a big adventure to leave the particulars with someone you trust. Sisters, you are now forever on the need-to-know basis!

NOTES: [1] Go to my posts about the black Botswana battery-acid blister beetle for that story. ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Some photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. For more of Uwe’s photos from our trips and his photography, go to viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was long listed for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

ZZZZZZZEBRAS!

I’m in LOVE with zebras.

It was love at first sight. When Uwe and I were in southern Africa I sent my sisters ‘Zebra of the Day’ snapshots.

We saw hundreds of them in herds, and by the time our trip was over we’d spotted thousands.

We saw zebras in national parks in Namibia and Botswana. I was in ecstasy every day we were forced to stop to let them cross the roads.

We spotted them in the Okavango Delta from above in a helicopter.

Bathroom breaks were a gas station if we passed one. Most of the time it was just pulling over to the side of a remote road…. I took a memorable pee not 5 meters away from 60 zebras. They watched warily from behind the brush, but didn’t move away. I could hear them whickering to one another about me.

Funnily enough, (cue eerie music here), last autumn I’d decided that my next book is going to feature zebras. It’s still in the planning and thinking-about stages so I won’t say anymore than that. But to start the creative process I bought a zebra magnet at the British Library in London. I’m looking at it as I write this post: it’s attached to a stereo speaker.

I have a key chain I bought at a gas station in Namibia from the artist who was going from car to car. He carves them from soapstone and I kept turning him down until I saw the one that featured 3 zebras.

Botswana basket to the far right is Ribs of the Zebra pattern

I also brought home a basket with the traditional ribs of the zebra pattern in Maun, Botswana. *

Zebras are sociable, and intelligent, and cannot be tamed. Each zebra’s stripes are as distinctly unique as finger prints.

ZZZZZZZEBRAS!!! I shouted with glee each time we saw one.

NOTES: * In a future post I have more to say about the fine art of basket weaving in southern Africa! ©2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Wild Birds of Africa

“Tame birds sing of freedom. Wild birds fly.” — John Lennon

When you think of watching wild life in Africa, everyone talks about the Big Five. And yes, we spotted elephants, water buffalo, lions, and giraffes, everything except the leopard (which for all kinds of funny reasons makes me really happy. It means we have to go back!)

The birds in southern Africa are amazing too. We saw an array of bird life so varied and exotic that halfway through our trip we bought a book on Birds of Southern Africa. It would have been too annoying to get home again and have no way of identifying them without having to spend days on the Internet trying to find them.

African hoopoe, Etosha National Park, Namibia

At our last lodge in Namibia, Uwe and I both spent hours sitting on the little balcony to our room. We were watching the weaver birds making new nests and feeding their broods only a few meters away from where we sat.

Along the Caprivi Strip hundreds of bee eaters live on the river banks.

Southern carmine bee eaters in the Caprivi Strip

The bee eaters colonies will wash away when the rains come and the Kavango River rises.

In Chobe National Park in Botswana, we saw herons, eagles, storks, and shore birds beyond counting. We did an early morning boat cruise and literally had the river delta and the rich wildlife to ourselves.

African jacana (aka ‘Jesus birds’). They use their long toes to cross via plants and lily pads on the Chobe River

African skimmer. Lower bill is longer and used to skim the river for fish

We saw marabou storks who happily scavenge carcasses.

We smelled the dead buffalo before we spotted it. Then, like a comedy routine, the stork’s head popped up from where he was feeding on the other side of the water buffalo carcass.

More birds to follow. In my next post I’ll give you Uwe’s photographs of birds interacting with other animals.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Song of Hippos

We spent a week in November traveling across the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia. It’s this funny skinny strip of land with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the south, Zimbabwe to the east, and a landscape that shifts from the Namib Desert to the Okavango Delta.

It’s one of the greatest places I’ve ever visited.

Our lodging consisted of tents on the Kavango River. These were larger and more comfortable than you’d think. The lodges are off the grid, with electricity powered by solar energy collectors. The first tent had a fan and the second one didn’t. The tents always included mosquito netting over the beds.

The river bank was a few meters away, and I gazed across it to Bwatbwata National Park.

By far the best pieces of scenery were the hippos that live in exactly this stretch of the river.

That’s Bwabwata National Park on the other bank

I was astonished to learn this fact: Hippos can’t swim. Apparently they can hold their breaths under water for up to five minutes. Mostly they stand around in groups called pods or bloats (really!) almost completely submerged. They socialize in water up to their eyes and ears to keep cooled off until it’s time to go up on land and find something to eat.

Hippos talk simultaneously both above and below the water. I found them to be surprisingly chatty. When hippos communicate with honks, the sounds really carries.* They also talk with grunts and bellows and wheezes.

Each night I fell asleep to the voices of hippos snuffling in what sounded like quiet contentment. I slept more deeply there than anywhere else on our trip.

NOTES: * A hippo’s honk can be heard a mile away. Science Direct: Amphibious communication. The San Diego Zoo has a great article on hippopotomuses: https://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/hippo ©2023 Jadi Campbell. Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photography and his photos of our trips can be viewed at viewpics.de.

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Black Botswana Battery-Acid Blister Beetle, Part Two

The following week we join an all-day game drive which involves getting up at 5:00 a.m. and sitting in the back of a safari jeep for two hours in order to reach Moremi Game Reserve. This game reserve is where we see the pack of wild dogs I wrote about.

The jeep holds nine people. We’re in fantastic luck, because two German couples have brought a personal guide. He’s from Namibia but comes often to Botswana. Uwe and I tag along for free on a personally guided tour as he identifies animal tracks and vegetation and gives fascinating and detailed talks on every single animal we spot. (A pair of sleeping lionesses, African buffalo, zebras, impalas, fish eagles, elephants, wildebeests, springboks, and much, much more.) He has phenomenal knowledge about everything – politics, history, the land, the region, the flora and fauna.

More wild elephants live in the Okavango Delta than anywhere else in the world

We’ve tentatively identified this bird as a Wahlberg’s eagle

When we left the Moremi Game Reserve 8 hours later they were still sleeping, gathering their energy for the night’s hunt

We take a break for lunch and are allowed to climb out of the jeep for a bit. I ask him if he knows about the insect life, too, and tell him about my encounter with the battery-acid exuding bug….

He asks some questions, cautions me to keep the wound covered at all times, and tells me, “It must have been a Mopane moth, named for the endemic bush veld here.”

I’m relieved beyond description to finally have an actual name for what bit me! But that night back at the lodge I go online and the Mopane moth doesn’t look anything like I remember. Crap. My feeling of relief vanishes.

The next morning at breakfast Uwe and I stop at the table where the German couples and guide sit so we can chat one last time and say goodbye. The guide looks at me and says, “You know, last night when I returned to my room, I kept thinking about your story. I called a colleague and told him about it. He thinks the insect was a blister beetle.”

I don’t believe what I’m hearing. After a 13-hour day riding around on bone-jarring dirt roads lecturing to tourists, he went back to his room and called a colleague to consult with him about my insect attack?! Who does this sort of thing? A man who is a naturalist, a professional always curious to know more, and a fabulous human being!

Back in our room I google yet another insect and sure enough, there it is: the blister beetle. When I brushed it off my neck, it secreted a blistering fluid called cantharidin. It’s a dangerous burn agent, and in large doses it’s fatal.

There are about 7,500 kinds of blister beetles in the world (oh, joy). It gets weirder. Male blister beetles secrete cantharidin as a ‘gift’ during mating. Cantharidin is used for the notorious aphrodisiac Spanish fly. In 1772, the Marquis de Sade was put on trial after he poisoned an orgy with cantharidin.

Maybe that beetle was trying to make love to me after all.

NOTES: ©2023 Jadi Campbell. This post is for my father. He was an entomologist and I swear I can hear him chuckling. Bobbo would have LOVED this story. If for some creepy reason you need to know more, go here: Blister beetle Photos ©2023 Uwe Hartmann. Uwe’s photos of our trips and his photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.

P.S. My skin healed over without leaving a scar. Thanks for asking!

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Black Botswana Battery-Acid Blister Beetle, Part One

Okay, I’m embellishing the name a little bit, but there really is an insect called a blister beetle. I should know. I expected dangerous wildlife on our trip – but, insects?

Allow me to set the scene for you. Uwe and I left the desert landscape of Namibia and crossed into Botswana. We’re in a lodge in Kasane, having dinner at the lodge restaurant. Our drinks arrive and I watch bemused as something flies across the grounds in my direction.

The insect is dark brown or black, has really long antennae and a big wingspan. It’s the size of a softball, and before I know what’s happening it lands on my neck and begins to crawl down into my dress…. I bat it away. “Wow! Nature’s really something here!” I exclaim, or something stupid to that effect.

I wake up a few hours later and my neck is on fire. I look in the bathroom mirror and discover two spots where my skin has melted and peeled off. I remember the giant moth or bee or whatever the heck it was (it all happened so fast!) that flew a direct trajectory to where I sat. Suddenly I don’t feel as enchanted about the Nature here.

I spent the next two weeks wearing a scarf to hide the neck bandage

The next day I head out to the front desk of the lodge and ask as calmly as I can if they have a doctor or nurse available. “Something stung me or bit last night at supper,” I say, and show them my neck.

“Was it black?” asks one of the male staff members.

“Was it big? It comes every year ahead of the rainy season,” they tell me. No, it isn’t poisonous and I don’t need to find a doctor. And yes, it secretes a substance that dissolves the skin…. But they can’t tell me the NAME of the insect, just that it’s a black moth. A chemist at the Kasane drug store looks at the wound. He nods knowingly, prescribes a cortisone cream to put on it twice a day, and tells me to keep the wound bandaged. He’s just as vague as the others: it was the black moth that arrives ahead of the rains.

I spend that night googling black moths and can’t find anything that looks like the critter that either tried to attack me or make love to me….

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.

Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

The Great Tire Blow-Out

In Namibia we had to watch a short movie before they gave us our 4WD rental car. We’d never had this happen on a holiday before. EuropCar rental agency at the Windhoek Airport meant business: watch the film and sign a form saying you’d seen it, and then you’re handed the keys….

But not before you’re shown where to put the jack on the undercarriage, because chances are high you WILL have a flat tire before your trip is over.

The roads are phenomenally bad, drivers go too fast, and before you know it you’ve blown a tire, crashed, or sit stuck in sand. The EuropCar film claimed that the rate of road deaths in Namibia, a country so sparsely populated only Mongolia has fewer people per square mile, is 50 times higher than in Europe.

Oookay. Message received. We started off early in the morning for Sossusvlei and the world’s highest dunes. The main road out of Windhoek is fine, but the pavement quickly ended. It changed to a bumpy bad gravel road; most of the time we were the only car on it. In less than an hour we came across a jeep pulled over to the left (Namibians drive on the left) and a teary-faced woman waved us down. She’d flown into Windhoek a few hours ago, picked up her rental vehicle, and almost immediately gotten a flat tire.

No, I take that back. The tire was shredded. I mean, what remained had exploded. Of course Uwe helped her remove what was left and put on the spare. In the 40 minutes or so that we assisted her not a single car went by in either direction.

The black patch on the road is part of that shredded tire

I’m sorry my photo is so lousy. I was trying to be clever and use the panorama function on my cell phone camera to capture how in-the-middle-of-nowhere she’d broken down. But in any case: Oookay! The next message received! Always stop to assist a stranger, because that car could be you. We saw someone broken down almost every day.

It was a miracle we made it through Namibia and Botswana without ever getting a flat tire. When we returned the car to EuropCar 4 weeks later, they were surprised (and impressed) that it still had all the original tires.

This is my last post for 2023. Happy New Year everyone! May your only blow-out be the celebration tonight to ring out the old and ring in the new! See you in 2024!

— Jadi

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Lightning only Strikes ONCE, right?

While Uwe and I were in Namibia we drove our way toward the Caprivi Strip, a stretch of country that extends to the east like an outstretched finger. We spent a night at the Hakusembe River Lodge in Rundu. Each room is a private hut. They all have thatched roofs and are situated on the beautiful Kavango River.

The waters were too low for a boat cruise, so I caught up on my journaling, wanting to record everywhere we’d been and what we’d seen so far. No small task, that!

Uwe was (still is, for that matter) culling his photographs.

Dinner that night was a buffet in the big building, also with a thatched roof. The sunset was unusually vivid and stunning, but warned that a storm was on the way. We could see the wall of rain it would bring.

Seldom have I seen a sunset sky as beautiful and ominous

We moved indoors to eat. The storm system brought thunder and lightning, and the lightning strikes occurred faster and closer. Out one of the open doors we saw a massive flash immediately followed with an enormous CRACK!!!!!!!!!

The ground shook – the air was static – the noise was absolutely deafening.

I screamed, because it scared the s**t out of me. Everyone laughed shakily afterwards and I told one of the lodge employees, “My grandfather was a farmer, and he got struck by lightning TWICE. That was way too close for comfort.”

Then an employee ran out of the room carrying a fire extinguisher. She was followed shortly by another employee carrying a second fire extinguisher. Five minutes later an ashen-faced pair of German tourists entered, wheeling their suitcases behind them. They’d checked in late, and were just about to enter their hut when a bolt of lightning struck it….

The roof had caught fire. Some time later I glimpsed the staff carrying the rescued mattresses past the windows. The next morning at breakfast the bedding was still in a pile where it had been hastily stacked. The dining hut had a much higher roof, and we were very, very lucky that giant bolt of lightning hit another part of the grounds.

Lightning only strikes once, right?

My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.

Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.

Tag: Namibia

Mom’s Favorite Critter

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Southern African Birds with their Friends and Foes

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The Daily Briefing

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ZZZZZZZEBRAS!

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Wild Birds of Africa

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The Song of Hippos

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The Black Botswana Battery-Acid Blister Beetle, Part Two

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The Black Botswana Battery-Acid Blister Beetle, Part One

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The Great Tire Blow-Out

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Lightning only Strikes ONCE, right?

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