Bottle The Bliss

Spending time in the bush teaches you what you can do without, says Toast Coetzer. And it teaches you about what you really need to be happy.

I’m in the departure lounge of Kasane International Airport in the north of Botswana. Soon I’ll fly to Joburg and from there I’ll connect to Cape Town. But besides looking forward to seeing my girlfriend Alice later tonight, there’s very little else in the city that I’ve missed.

A TV is blaring and the noise is getting to me. Maybe I’m getting old. During the past few weeks camping in Botswana and the adjacent Zambezi Region of Namibia, I hardly saw a TV. Television tells you what to think; it feeds you advertisements. You just sit there, passive. I haven’t missed TV. If you’re huddled around a fire at sunset and you’re thinking about Game of Thrones, then you’re probably not a camping person to begin with. I like watching TV, don’t get me wrong, but I could easily live without it. If you told me tomorrow that I’d never be able to watch TV again, I wouldn’t cry myself blind.

Time spent around a crackling campfire, with the chirring of nightjars and fruit bats around you, is precious, private time. Thinking time. Without the distraction of a TV, you can let your mind take each little footpath of thought, strolling along until the path disappears into tall grass. You decide when it’s time for an ad break, whether that means getting up to add another mopane log to the fire, or topping up your glass of Amarula.