bushy

Botswana, 2019

Most of the time, we plan our own travel and don’t go on group tours. However, for our family vacation to South Africa and my 50th birthday celebration trip to Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, we worked with tour planners. Our feeling was that these were scenarios when it was best to work with organizations that would handle all the planning and daily logistics so that we could focus on seeing new places and learning new things. And there is no way we would have seen or learned as much if we had done this on our own.

Also, traveling with a group is fun. Mostly.

When we met up with our group in Namibia, we traveled together on a large truck named George. There was the driver, two other guides, and 16 travelers, including us. The truck was large, seated around 20 people behind the cab, had storage lockers for everyone’s gear in the back, and other storage compartments running along the bottom of the truck and accessible by exterior hatches.

What George did not have was a toilet.

In the meantime, we were encouraged to drink a lot of water and stay hydrated in the hot, dry climate.

And it should be mentioned that many of the roads were so very bumpy and rough.

You can, of course, see the issue with this combination of circumstances.

When we were driving to a new location, we’d usually stop for a break every 2-3 hours. In Namibia, these stops always had at least an outhouse of sorts. The most rustic ones would have no toilet paper or running water, so we carried toilet paper and hand sanitizer in our pockets.

Early in our trip, we stopped for a hike somewhere between Brandberg Mountain and Etosha National Park. The toilet situation was the most rustic kind, basically outhouses, with the added issue that the individual stall doors did not lock or even stay closed. This was so early in our trip that not everyone had learned to carry TP in their pockets. Those of us who had TP shared it with the others and we all took turns holding the stall doors shut for each other. Then we passed around hand sanitizer.

In other parts of Namibia, toilets would be slightly grander. There would be a woman at the door accepting payment to use the facilities, usually somewhere in the range of 5-25 cents. Upon receiving the fee, the woman would hand you some toilet paper. Usually 2-4 squares.

As I said, pack toilet paper if you ever go on a trip like this.

I mentioned earlier that driving breaks were usually 2-3 hours apart. If, however, you needed to go sooner and couldn’t wait, you could yell, “BUSHY BUSHY.”

What is bushy bushy?

Bushy bushy means going behind a bush, plain and simple.

The men in our group shrugged when this was explained to us. We women all looked at each other and I’m sure every one of us was thinking never would I ever.

Trust me, yes you will ever.

Pro tip: Prepare for a trip like this by doing squats and lunges at home. Build up your strength and balance.

The first time I did bushy busy, my husband went with me. We both scanned the area for animals and the ground for snakes.

Then I unzipped and started to squat…

… and almost fell over. Luckily, my husband grabbed my arm.

But then we both started laughing, which makes squatting and aiming correctly even more challenging.

Eventually, I got the hang of it. Especially once we got to Botswana, as we rarely saw public toilets anywhere, not even in national parks. I even mostly stopped worrying about encountering wildlife while in an awkward position.

Side note: Yes, I know that female travel urinals/funnels exist. Bushy busy was not something I knew about or expected for this trip, so I was obviously not prepared. Even still, had I known, I don’t know if I would have packed one because packing space was very limited. TBH squats, lunges, and yoga are already part of my daily exercise practice so really it’s just a matter of getting used to going bushy bushy.

Toward the end of our trip, we had a long, long travel day and we were pushing hard to get to our next lodge by a certain time. At one point, it became clear that we would need to make a mass bushy bushy stop. We were on a long straight road, with a cleared area about 20’ wide on each side of the road, then the start of trees and shrubs. Lots of good places to go bushy bushy. The driver pulled over and parked and we started to prepare to head for the trees.

All of a sudden, someone in our group yelled LION!

This was actually really exciting because we had not yet seen a single lion on this trip. But hey, there’s a lion out there where we had just been planning to go bushy bushy.

We all crowded to one side to look out the windows. I do not know how that one person spotted the lion because it was not immediately visible. What to know how not visible this lion was? Look at the photo at the start of this post.

The lion shifted its position slightly and then we could see that he was a majestic male with the mane to match. We all watched him for a while, then we started driving again.

We all still needed to go bushy bushy, but we held it for a while longer for obvious reasons.