Rebecca Jacobson: I Never Knew I Wanted to Spend a Night at a Botswana Truck Stop (Until I Spent a Night at a Botswana Truck Stop) (Glimpse)

Serule, Botswana is a charmless truck stop in the country’s arid east. It consists of a filling station, a sad-looking bar, and a dingy guesthouse. Lonely Planet would never include Serule. Ever.

But as we wheeled down the A1, bucketing rain and a darkening sky gave us little choice. “I’m done driving,” Charles grumbled. I didn’t blame him. He’d been behind the wheel since sunrise and had just received his second speeding ticket of the day. He’d managed to haggle down both fines (raise your hand if you love corruption!), but the cop in Botswana had been more stubborn than her Zimbabwe counterpart. “We’re stopping here,” he said. Maryan and I, the permanent passengers, put up no resistance.

A cluster of round huts comprised Sunshine Guesthouse. A barefooted woman said ours was the last empty room. And what a room it was. The floor hadn’t been swept since the colonial era. The bathroom reeked of mildew. Neither the toilet nor shower functioned. I think a large carnivore had clawed at the sheets. The mosquitoes were enormous and abundant.

“I need a beer,” Charles grumbled. Once again, I didn’t blame him. We made the muddy trek to the bar and hunkered at a picnic table beneath a thatched roof. Chickens pecked at our ankles. A nearby car, its doors propped open, served as a de facto sound system. Skimpily dressed women tried to pick up passing truck drivers.

It was there that we met Rodney. A ruddy-faced South African engineer, Rodney bought us a round before even introducing himself. He told us he’d driven his pick-up all over Africa. He’d taught in Malawi. He was on his way to Namibia. He kept a cooler of ice in his truck and added cubes to each brandy and coke he ordered. He’d joined a South African gang as a teenager and had the tattoos to prove it. He’d lost his fiancée Melissa to a stray bullet in Johannesburg.

And he was determined to show us a good time in Serule. “You guys hungry?” Rodney asked. Maybe gnawing at our bottle caps had given us away. “I know a place nearby,” he continued. “Just a few minutes down the road — follow my truck.”

As our other dining options were limited to peanut butter and the bar’s gray-tinged chicken cutlets, we seized Rodney’s offer. “Just a few minutes down the road” turned out to be quite the distance along an unlit highway, but our destination did not disappoint. The bartender stood behind a barricade of iron rods, locals played pool, and “Ally McBeal” spooled on the television. But then the ultimate diversion arrived: several cardboard boxes filled with hot, grilled meat.

Let me interject here: some of my fondest memories abroad involve absurd quantities of meat. I celebrated my 19th birthday in a small Romanian village, where my surprise party featured neither cupcakes nor ice cream but endless rounds of mici (tiny sausages made from beef, mutton, and pork) and slow-cooked chicken (and I mean slow-cooked chicken — it didn’t come off the grill until after midnight, at which point I was still forced to consume half the bird). I developed quite a liking for ostrich meat in South Africa. I studied abroad in Germany.

But Serule put these other carnivorous feasts to shame. We devoured pork, beef, and sausage, along with mounds of maize porridge. After months of Malawian cuisine, where seasoning rarely ventures beyond salt, this spicy, zesty meat assailed our taste buds. With juices dripping down our chins and fingers, we told Rodney we loved him. He bought us another round.