Playing With Fire

Hello again once more. Time to attempt another quick update.

So, where were we? Oh yes, heading south-west across Botswana, from the border town of Kasane to the boom-town of Maun, by the edge of the Okavango Delta. Now, the Okavango Delta is pretty much unique, as it's basically the only delta in the world which terminates inland - all the others (so far as I know, though I wouldn't be surprised if some of you go try and dig another example out...) flow into seas or, occasionally, lakes, but the Okavango flows down from Angola into Botswana, spreads out across the flat pans of the northern Kalahari desert and, through a combination of seepage and evaporation, just kind of dies away. Bizarre.

Anyways, Maun is the nearest town to the most accessible bit of the delta, and hence has become the headquarters for trips out into the waterways, usually conducted by mokoro, a type of canoe/punt made out of (traditionally) local wood or (increasingly) fibreglass, and poled along using a branch. Unfortunately, Maun is quite a way from Kasane, so we spent much of the day (yet again) on the truck. During this time, it was suggested that we could have a Punch Party when we arrived in Maun (i.e. everybody chip in and make a big batch of punch for that evening). We decided this was an absolutely spiffing idea, and pretty much everybody pitched in, such that, when we arrived in Maun, a few of our number were dispatched to the Bottle Shop armed with a large wad of cash and told to set us up for a par-tay.

This they duly did, and one of the cool-boxes/eskies/chilly-bins (delete as appropriate, based upon nationality) was washed out and disinfected before serving duty as a punch mixer. Worryingly, the stuff seemed to be made up of about one part hard alcohol to one part wine to one part soft drinks. More worryingly still, when tasted it turned out to be really rather pleasant. Some effort was made at restraint, by attempting to wait until dinner was ready, but the collective willpower just wasn't there, so people ended up already stuck in by the time dinner was up. I honestly can't remember at this remove what we had for dinner (I would guess it was probably pasta and sauce or lasagne...), but it all seemed to be going pretty well - everyone was quite happy and chilled out, and looking forward to our trip into the delta the next morning (even if not to the bush-camping the next evening). Everything had started to be cleared away, and we were all sitting around the fire, as usual, chatting away with whoever our neighbours happened to be at that point.

What happened next was slightly confusing, as most of us only turned at the sound of a disturbance, but it seems that Heetan and Jon had been joking around a bit, and somebody had started to throw drinks. Heetan swore blind straight afterwards that Jon had thrown one at him first, although Valdy and several others reckoned he had been the one to start it. Whatever happened, the next thing we realised Heetan was diving for the kettle, on the edge of the fire in the middle of the circle. As some of us looked on in horror, he seemed determined to throw the boiling contents at Jon. Luckily, Paul was rather faster on the uptake than most of us, and jumped on Heetan, forcing him to drop the kettle and pinning him to the ground. After struggling for a while, loudly proclaiming that Jon had started it, Heetan eventually quietened down, and headed off to bed. Most of the rest of us just sat there, anywhere between surprised, shocked or horrified at events.

Surprisingly, this didn't put a real downer on the rest of the evening. Everyone decided that there was no point in letting this spoil an otherwise fun night, so we cracked on, eventually finishing up the punch and heading over to the campsite bar, where matters progressed further, thanks in no small part to reuniting Valdy with a Shooters menu (the drunken table-tennis probably helped as well). Eventually, though, even the most hardened, party-starved idiots amongst us decided that enough was enough, and we all traipsed our ways back to bed.

And here I will have to pause again in the narrative, as my hour on the net is up. Until next time, dear readers, fare well!

Pat