In my 20s, I believed in two things very strongly: adventure and the assumption that bathrooms would somehow appear when needed.
This belief did not survive Botswana. Or Namibia, but let me tell you about what happened in Botswana.
I was on a 24-day safari through southern Africa with fifteen other people, mostly complete strangers. There were girls from Germany, a man from Switzerland, a woman from New Zealand, a Dutch couple travelling in a custom adventure truck, and my two Canadian friends, the only people who had known me before this trip, slowly stripped us all of our dignity.
By the end of the journey, we’d shared meals, long drives, once-in-a-lifetime landscapes, and experiences that ensured we could never again pretend we were sophisticated.
The Okavango Delta: Five-Star Wilderness, Zero Doors
The Okavango Delta is one of the most breathtaking places on Earth. It’s the world’s largest inland delta, a place where waterways cut through tall grasses and wildlife appears without ceremony, like it owns the place. We flew in on tiny planes, paddled through reeds in mokoros, hiked for hours, walked in elephant poop and carried everything ourselves, tents, food and sleeping bags.
Our camp was beautifully, brutally simple.
So simple, in fact, that when someone asked where the bathroom was, our guide gestured vaguely and said, “Over there.”
Over there turned out to be a chair.
Just a chair.
Someone had attached a toilet seat to it and placed it above a hole dug straight into the ground. To the side, a roll of toilet paper hung proudly, waving like a flag planted in conquered territory.
That was it.
No walls.
No door.
No sink.
No illusion.
I remember staring at it thinking, This is the boldest toilet I have ever encountered. Where is the privacy?
What if an elephant wanders through during this deeply personal moment?
What if a lion locks eyes with me and thinks, Ah yes. Fear. Vulnerability. Excellent timing.
Like, I actually made sure I wouldn’t have my period on this trip so a lion wouldn’t smell my menstrual blood and think I was fair game to eat. You haven’t truly confronted your own mortality until you’re sitting on a toilet chair in the African bush, exposed on all sides, trying to be quick without looking suspiciously quick.
The view, I will say, was incredible. Which somehow made it okay.
The Drive to Maun: When Desperation Creates Bush
After a couple of days in the Okavango Delta, we loaded back into the truck and began the drive toward Maun. It was early. The road was rough. And sixteen people slowly realized that optimism would not save us.
We held out as long as we could. We bounced. We shifted. We made eye contact, which said, If you say something, I will say something too.
Eventually, someone cracked, and we collectively convinced the Guide to pull over. The truck stopped, and we dispersed into the landscape with the urgency of people who had waited far too long.
A few of us found a large boulder slightly off the road and decided this was as good as it was going to get. I’m no stranger to doing my business off-road, so no big deal, or is it?
Once we have finished the bush loo, is when someone asked a cultural question.
“What about Bushmen?” someone said. “Do they live around here?”
Our Guide nodded, completely unfazed, and explained that yes, this was absolutely an area where they might be nearby.
Watching.
Observing.
Laughing quietly.
“But you’d never see them,” he added. “They’re masters of their environment.”
So there I was, crouched behind a rock, shorts dropped, and there was a very real possibility that I was being silently observed by someone who had lived in this landscape their entire life and who was likely finding our group of frantic travellers with full bladders deeply entertaining.
To this day, I do not know if I exposed myself to a Bushman.
That unanswered question has lived rent-free in my head for decades.
This is an elephant in Botswana in Chobe National Park. I don’t have a picture of us peeing behind boulders, obviously.
What Your 20s Teach You
That safari taught me many things, respect for the land, humility, patience, but mostly it taught me that adventure doesn’t care how prepared you think you are.
Travel in your 20s has a way of stripping you down to your essentials. Your assumptions. Your ego. Occasionally, your sense of privacy. And when that happens, laughter becomes the only reasonable response.
I went to Botswana expecting wildlife, sunsets, and stories I’d tell forever.
I did not expect to gain such an intimate understanding of myself and a group of strangers, and to realize that the Botswana bush does not care about your bladder or your bush loo.
