One late afternoon, while staying at the Baobab Safari Camp, we drove into the nearby small town of Mabele. The reason for going to Mabele was to visit the Lwaavo Art and Culture Center to see and experience some local basket weaving, for which this area is well known. We saw the entire process in demonstrations and we even got to try our hand at basket weaving. Afterwards, we purchased some baskets from the ladies that made them.

On our way out of town, heading back to our camp, we stopped at the end of town to visit a local watering hole. It’s not a misspelling, the name of the place was the New Kanini Kanini High Life Bar and General Dealer. You can see Cory and me in front of the bar with the setting sun in our faces.

The bar was much smaller inside than it looked from the outside. The bar portion was small at least. I guess the General Dealer portion took up most of the space. At any rate, the local drink of choice was called Chibuku. It was fermented sorghum. They kept it chilled which made it a little easier to drink. The Chibuku was yeasty, sour, and hearty. You can see Cory downing a gulp in the next photo while our tour guide, Lloyd, looked like he couldn’t believe that we would try it.

So, how was the Chibuku? Well, the next thing I knew, Cory and Vicky had started dancing and were leading most of our group in dancing. Of course, the bar was so small that they couldn’t do much dancing inside, so they took the dancing outside. They had everyone moving and shaking…

How much were they moving and shaking? Vicky eventually got down into the dirt to lead the group. It got so wild that, as you can see, the local towns people started to come out of their houses and come over to the bar to see what all the commotion was about. You can see a few of the first locals arriving behind Vicky in the photo.

What about me? I’m not saying just how much Chibuku I drank but I will say it was tasty and interesting and really hearty. But the drinking and dancing was not a problem. The problem for me came when we headed out on safari the next morning at 6:00am. As you can see in the last photo, it’s not getting any easier….