Botswana: like pitching a tent at the zoo, but you’re the one on display.

By Peter Mandel

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in The Boston Globe.]

Everyone is kind in the bush.

In Botswana, an African sun pours from smiles. Somebody’s wave is like a branch back and forth in the wind.

Everyone is kind. Except for, I would guess, some of the lions. I will see. And except for the customs guy at the airport who won’t let up. “Why are you here?” he keeps asking, even when I tell him it’s for a six-day safari.

My trip is run by CC Africa, now called andbeyond, I say. Camping in tents with a guide from this big tour company. Driving in jeeps to see the animals and to let them see me.

“No, no,” says the guy. “Why are you here?”

Maybe he is asking me, not logistics, but life’s Big Question. We could have tea and a talk. But at last, when I pull out my camera and a brochure picturing a giraffe he nods. I get a stamp. I am allowed to pass by.

Jeep

I meet my safari group in Maun, a town with no more than three or four stores but with a large and multi-colored herd of friendly goats.

This is my first time in Africa and everything is a surprise. The goats. Our guide, Peter, who is not Botswanian but Swiss. And our safari jeep which isn’t a Land Rover as I had guessed. It’s a Toyota pickup with comfy seating, a canvas canopy, even a fridge, bolted onto the bed.

Botswana is Africa’s big sky country and the dry horizon seems to stretch on and on. Much of the land here is desert, including the famous Kalahari, but we’ll be camping in the Okavango River delta, which lures animals and makes the desert green.

We load up our gear and Peter speeds us out of town along a dusty road. Bouncing around in the back, besides me, are Wolfgang, an Austrian from Vienna, and Andreas, a nervous German who has questions about birds, trees, African cigarettes — everything we see.

Also in the tour group is Louise from Dublin who spots our first impala — a suede-soft female who hops into the air when she sees us and disappears. And there is Anders, a middle-aged Dane who has the latest in safari khaki, a shiny new bowie knife, and a hunter’s hat.

This is almost too cross-cultural for words. It feels like a set-up of some kind, or like the start of a play.

Canvas

Andreas is whistling as we drive deep into some scrubby woods. He is still whistling as we pull to a stop by a line of canvas tents and a table set with wooden bowls of snacks and glasses for wine.

Nxabega Trails Camp will be our home for the first two nights. This may be the bush, but onbeyond stewards will do nearly everything. They will cook and pour drinks and set up cots for sleeping and clean up afterward.

“Any tse-tse flies around here?” says Anders warily, poking his head through the flap of the latrine. He doesn’t look happy, but I am. Our stewards have somehow dragged along and rigged up a porcelain toilet with water to pour in and flush. Luxury.

Showers will rain out of a bag that hangs on a tree branch and in our tents is a selection of “African Grass” brand toiletries. Shampoo, conditioner, and gel. We’ve got it all.

Camp is shaded by a fat baobab tree, and as the light begins to die, we get a lecture on animals. “Lions were here two days ago,” says Peter, “but not a problem. We postponed dinner until they went away. Hyenas, the strongest jaws in nature. They’ll be around looking for scraps as soon as it’s dark.”

We start detecting sounds.

Beep, beep, beep. (Peter tells us this is made by tiny frogs.)

Hoooomph. Hoooomph. Hoooomph. Hooooomph. (Hippos).

BreeEEEEEEeeeeeaaah-AAAMMMMPH. (Elephant!)

A campfire is crackling and Andreas has stopped whistling. “At night,” he asks quietly, “will there be guards around camp? Don’t we put up a fence?”

“Keep your tent zipper closed,” says Peter. “You’ll be fine.”

Night

Once I am tucked into canvas, I do not want to go out. Despite my three full glasses of South African wine. Despite my Botswana-brewed ‘St. Louis’ beer. “A satisfying blend of flavor and refreshment” boasted the can that I had crushed before turning in. Now I wish I had kept it. Or, better yet, that I had a jar.

Though the night is quiet, I think I hear a rustling in the leaves outside. I swing the beam of my flashlight but see nothing except the trunk of a tree.

I hear it again. It is crunching, not rustling.

Someone chewing on something brittle and hard.

Crunching or not, I’ve got to leave the tent. When I unzip the flap and edge outside the chewing stops. I do what I have to do and grab my flashlight again and shoot the beam towards the coals of the fire.

Two dog-like mottled shapes. Four electrified eyes.

I am back in the tent and zipped up before I take a breath. And I lie there making sure my cot is squeakless and that I gingerly exhale. Strongest jaws in nature, I think. Masticating. Swallowing. Probably wanting more.

It is dawn and I am awake with my still-bright flashlight clutched in my hand.

“Yes, hyenas,” says Peter blandly, when I ask. “They eat the chicken bones. The bones from the fire.”

Suddenly there is shouting — there’s a fanfare in the brush near Wolfgang’s tent. A flappy ear pokes out. Now the wrinkled rear. Elephant. A big one.

Time for our game drive.

Beasts

Each of our days of camping — at Nxabega, Savute inside Chobe National Park, and Nantanga near the banks of the Chobe River — we roar off in the Toyota at dawn.

The billboard on an ice cream machine we pass instructs us to “Get Ready to Assault Your Senses!”

We are ready.

Our lenses are out. Our shutters buzz and snap since animals are everywhere. Kicking up dust in herds. Padding along alone in-between twisted shrubs.

No one ever told us that zebras have tiny stripes on their tails, and on their ears, and that their mane has stripes, too. “Yes,” says Andreas, “and I don’t remember seeing this at the zoo.” Buzz, snap. Buzz, snap.

No brochure has warned us that the humpbacked, chalk-gray wildebeest looks like a cave painting popped to life. Buzz, snap.

That crocodiles have a crossword-puzzle pattern stamped on their backs. Buzz, snap.

Or that a leopard blends in slinkily, sneakily, in a forest dappled with dots of sun. Buzz, snap. Buzz, snap.

There is only one major animal, we think, that’s missing. One that we have not seen or buzzed or snapped.

It is the one, says Anders, for which you come to Africa.

Pride

Lion, lion, lion, lion, lion.

I am saying this to myself as if a chant. As if a prayer.

Lion, lion, lion, lion, lion.

It is our final Botswana day. We push off on a boat trip on the Chobe River and there are baboons, and buffalo, and an elephant rumbling down a hill to drink.

We’ve got it all. The day is white-hot. A monkey scampers beside us when we load up the truck and long jumps in. We want him to ride with us to the airstrip. We’ve got it all.

Except for the One.

It is Wolfgang who, in our last half-hour, notices the shapes.

Low and lazy.

Swayback shapes that are resting. Now they’re rolling in a field of grass. These are females, we know. And here’s a round-bellied male stretched out asleep beneath a tree.

“Lion,” whispers Louise.

There is a glow behind them that shows us each whisker. That somehow picks out the light in strands of fur.

Andreas lets out his whistle, soft and long.

Why are you here? I say to myself, remembering the man at customs. I want to see him again. I want to answer his question, once and for all.

Why did I come to Botswana? Listen, listen, listen.

Now I know.

Peter Mandel is a regular contributor to the travel sections of The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and National Geographic ‘Kids.’ He is also an author of kids’ books including Planes at the Airport and Boats on the River, both new from Scholastic. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.