Ladina declined the offer, though, really, I have no idea how you could not be interested by such a thing.

“Want to try one of these worms? That for sure is a once in a lifetime experience. Well, except if you like them, I suppose”

I might have to further work on my persuasion skills.

It started quite Frenchy with cocks doing their oh so ungrateful jobs of living alarm clocks at God knows what hour, as if they knew we had not, for once, set one. We refused to listen.

So when we went out of the tent – not ours but a huge pre-erected tent Selim, the manager of the Camp Itumela in Palapye, had assigned us for the same rate as camping (“I feel so sorry for you guys. These bags look so heavy”) – we were, actually, not that surprised to find chickens languishing nearby.

 

After breakfast, the sun made it absolutely clear that it was too hot to do anything else than reading under the shade of a tree.

We decided to walk into town a few hours after noon, in a mighty quest to find something for lunch. The sun had apparently been as clear to everyone as it had been to us. Except the goats.

After a quick investigation of the few buildings composing Palapye, we entered a supermarket and ordered at the take-away counter. We ate sitting near the entrance, a surely strange sight for countryside inhabitants. That was where that woman was selling worms.

She kept telling me it was free to taste, looking at me as if it were inconceivable someone would find her boiled-and-sun-dried worms so exotic and adventurous. When I asked if I could take a picture, she finally concluded I was really a strange human being and turned to her phone.

 

When we came back into the camp, Selim decided a huge tent was not enough and gave us an en-suite room, still at the camping rate. I got Gill, the travel guitar we had found in Paris before flying to Africa, out on our new terrace and Ladina settled to writing in her travel diary.

And that night, while Ladina was cooking under the stars, I could not but try and take some pictures of the starry sky of Botswana.