At every conference, the consultants each lead two six-hour institutes. Mine, of course, focus on things I've learned, as an educator and a writer, about tapping into the power of language. Leonard and I have managed to wrestle a heavy suitcase full of my books to Gabarone, and the teachers are excited to see them. "How can we expect children to write about their real experiences and memories," one teacher asks me, "when their libraries are full of books with characters named Karen and Peter, not Saba or Mboto or Uko?" I describe some of the Africa-connected books I know, and we lament together that few of these books have made their way even to these excellent international schools.

At every conference, the consultants also have a "light day." In Botswana, a wealthy diamond merchant who has ties with one of the schools generously picks up the tab for us to go on a game drive.

When I was young, my family often vacationed on the Ethiopian savanna, rolling in our jeep through the tall grasses among so many ostriches and such giant herds of zebra and antelope that eventually my sisters and I stopped paying attention to the animals and made up games or squabbled with each other instead. But I've never been on an organized safari before. In Botswana, we enter Mokolodi Nature Reserve--a place where 12,000 local school children come every year to learn about animals and the environment--and are greeted by a ranger who (it turns out) also serves as a consultant and helps train guides for Disney World in Orlando.

This is an opportunity for close encounters with amazing animals. Three elephants amble near the road. They have jobs, the driver explains, helping clear brush. Soon they'll go back to the stable for lunch. In a big enclosure, we visit two cheetahs stretched under a tree. As we cautiously approach, we hear rumbling, which turns out to be the sound of big cats purring. These particular felines were rescued as orphan cubs, and one is happy to have his head stroked.  Near the end of the ride, we get a good look at a white rhino with a calf. The pair wandered over the Zimbabwe border, the guide tells us. And they aren't white. Their name comes from the Dutch word for "wide"--a description of their mouths, which are designed for grazing, not browsing-that (confusingly) happens to be the Afrikaans word for "white."