birth of the podge

For the second time in my life, I bought a one-way plane ticket. But this one wasn’t to my new home in South Africa; it was to Maun, Botswana for a two-week vacation. Yep, Trevor, Katie (one of the interns from Joburg), Audrey (from Cape Town) and I each purchased a one-way ticket to Botswana and that was the extent of our trip planning. The rest we would just figure out as we went along…

We had ideas of what we wanted to do and we sort of knew where we wanted to go, but we had no clue where we would be staying each night or how we would get around the country. Sounds like a good way to enter a foreign country, right? This utter lack of planning led me right into one of the best adventures of my life.

Our trip started at the Johannesburg airport. While our travel group (Trevor, Audrey, Katie and I) was waiting to check in to our flight, Benji (the other Joburg intern) and the Zimterns, Derek and Ali (who were both heading home for the holidays), met us for lunch. There were jokes, stories (Derek had just gotten arrested in Zimbabwe because the officials there are so corrupt), and amazement at how quickly the first four months of our internship had passed.

The crew at Mugg & Bean.

After lunch, it was time for us to hit the road. So after many “travel safe’s,” countless hugs and a few more laughs, we headed towards the Air Botswana check-in counter. The first thing I noticed after checking in was that our connecting flight (in Gaborone) was scheduled to board 15 minutes before our first flight was even scheduled to land… I was a little confused and a bit worried that there was no way we were going to make that flight, but that was the first and last time I was worried all trip.

When we arrived at our gate, we soon found out that our plane was delayed 30-45 minutes, which quickly turned into almost three hours. But the gate attendant assured us that our connecting plane would wait for us, so we settled in and began what was the first of many in-depth and hilarious conversations. And in this conversation, one of the most important things of the trip happened; Audrey was given her nickname. She shared some of her previous nicknames with us and when Trevor heard the nickname ‘Audge Podge,’ he had a field day. Lots of nicknames were tossed about, but it didn’t take long before the group fellin love with the name (and term of endearment), Podge. And in this way, the Podge was born.

Four hours after our connecting flight was supposed to take off, we landed in Gaborone and sure enough, our connecting flight had left (the plane had been ‘full enough’ so Air Botswana decided they didn’t need to wait for us after all).  But all was not lost! Air Botswana got each of us our own room and a free dinner in the Grand Palm, a five star resort and casino!

My room. And yes, there is a window into the bathroom...

We spent the rest of the night exploring the resort and joking about how our first night in Botswana was much different than we thought it would be (we were supposed to be in a tent, not in a five-star, queen-sized bed). It was good that we had made no plans. The last thing we did before going to bed that night was pick our Secret Santa’s. I had the idea that we should do Secret Santa’s so that we could all participate in the season of giving (and so that we each had something to open on Christmas). So with names picked and stomachs full, we nestled into our fluffy beds, where visions of adventures floated float through our heads.

From left to right, Katie, Podge, Me and Trevor at
the Grand Palm.