Day 3.

Sleeping is hard when the three people with you wake up at 3am and break out dancing and singing. The mozzies don’t help. Neither does the fact that this place rarely cools down. I’m exhausted when I wake up but the altitude might partly be to blame.

More beading. A drive to Ramotswa to buy ingredients for traditional marula beer. Much organising as other doctors start to arrive and do shopping for food, goats and chickens. Everything needs to be in order by tomorrow when our Great Grandmother arrives from South Africa. She is our big Cahuna, a Sangoma of great stature and knowledge, the oldest living member of our lodge and by far the highest ranking. She is also the smallest. (When she sits on a chair her feet don’t touch the ground.)

When jobs are doled out I offer to go and fetch her from her home in a small hamlet across the border the next day. It entails an hour and a half drive there, getting cross the border and getting back, and possibly waiting around for Granny to finish packing for an hour or two. But that’s tomorrow.

Uncharacteristically we attend a cocktail party at the University of Botswana in Gabarone to witness my teacher’s father honorary doctorate ceremony. He delivers a moving presentation and lecture about his work over the past 40 years and we all marvel at the astonishing life he has lived. Everyone living at the lodge is surprisingly clean which is fun in itself.

By the time we get back it’s 22h30 which is way past the witching hour when you live in the sticks. We fall into bed immediately, knowing full well that sleep will not be indulged over the next couple of days.

This is it people.  It's all going to become blurry from here.