Unforgettable Experience

TWENTY 2
So many times travelled, I could almost in my absence tell you where every tree was placed, the road to freedom, that’s what I call it. Although freedom lies only on the one end where to most, that are animals adapted to the concrete jungles, it is constricted, limited, a cage. However, if you opened your eyes, wide enough to open your mind, you would see, you would smell the sacred beauty of the Kalahari Desert, a beauty so tangible you could touch it.
22, it is almost ridiculous that I have been a virgin to this kind of ecstasy until the age of 22. The first time the Kalahari made sweet love to me, an unforgettably magical experience. The Trans-Kalahari: the road that led to my first passionate experience with the desert. The serenity is inexplicable, you would have to experience it first-hand. As you go down and around the curve at Gachibane, you are met by greenery so enchanting you wouldn’t relate it to a desert. As you go along you will find yourself driving on what used to be the bed to a river that acted as a border between the then Bechuanaland and ‘Afrique du Sud’ as the Frenchman would refer to it. Now, it’s a road and the only remaining evidence is that the one river bank is on the South African side and the other on the Botswana side. You won’t be driving for long when the greenery, in a very smooth transition, is replaced by sheets of unequally distributed orange sand that is to this day, the most prominent feature of The Kalahari Desert. I was hypnotised and found myself surrendering all to this gem of a place and that is why, I’ll never forget the day that my white gown was stained and after years of being married to a place by origin, I finally let it have its way with me.