Have you ever read any books in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series by Alexander McCall Smith? If not, I highly recommend them. They are the main reason that Botswana was on our itinerary. In these gentle mysteries, McCall Smith evokes a beloved land where things move at an easy pace and there is time to contemplate life’s joys and sorrows in a philosophical way. I don’t know how accurate a picture this is but it totally made us fall in love with the place in advance, and we were not disappointed.
Most of Botswana is covered by the Kalahari Desert, which is only a semi-desert apparently, because it receives too much rain to be a true desert, but 5 to 10 inches a year still isn’t much rain. The ground is sandy and the plants look like tenacious survivors. However, in the northwest corner of Botswana is the Okavango Delta, a huge inland basin that floods annually. I always thought of a delta as forming at the mouth of a river flowing into the ocean but this delta is nowhere near the ocean and has no outlet. The floods come with the wet season, January through March, and gradually retreat during the dry season, leaving behind isolated watering holes where wildlife gathers. Since we were going to be there in March, we were expecting a lot of wetness. However, the wet season that year wasn’t very wet, and we were fortunate to have mostly dry weather.
The Okavango Delta is a prime area for viewing the big African animals of my childhood fantasies: elephants, giraffes, hippos, lions, leopards. So we decided we should go on a safari. There are a zillion safari companies out there and it took hours of research before I found just the right one: Wild Ridge Bush Safaris run by Patricia Ridge, one of very few female guides and operators in the business. She and her assistant, Fifi, were so helpful when I contacted them and they arranged our entire stay including meeting us at the Maun airport and an overnight at their little lodge, a trip in the traditional mokoro boats to an overnight camp, a six night safari in the Moremi Game Reserve, a brief excursion in Chobe National Park, a trip to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and transportation back to Maun for our flight out. So, here we go.
First, the lodge. In the somewhat cool shade David is taking photos of it below.
The Jump Street Chalets include a small swimming pool and covered outdoor eating area. The rooms were designed in the traditional style of thatch-roofed huts in rural villages. The whole arrangement was charming and peaceful.
However, the next day we walked through a rural village and realized that what was charming when you are sharing a hut with just one person and you have a comfortable bed and a modern bathroom, might not feel quite so charming when you have several children, a dirt floor, and no amenities in the same space. But more about that later.
The Mokoro Boat Trip
Our hosts gave us little time to lounge around. They had us up early the first morning, loading us into a Landcruiser for a trip into the delta.
After a bit of a drive on the paved highway, we turned off onto a sandy road that got increasingly rutted the further we went. We got jostled around a bit but this turned out to be a pretty good road compared to some we traveled on later .
We were driven to a village where a team was ready to load us and all our gear into the mokoros, which turned out to be a modern fiberglass version of their traditional wooden dugout, flat-bottom boats. They had quite a system, making comfortable seats for us with legless chairs covered with what turned out to be our sleeping mats.
We had traveling companions on this excursion, Margaret and Hanika, from Amsterdam. They have been to be frequent visitors to Africa and we enjoyed getting to know them and hearing about their adventures. Long time friends, they will apparently call each other up on the spur of the moment and say something like, “I’m going to Uganda next Tuesday. Are you in?” And off they go.
Each of the mokoros was poled by one of the villagers along a narrow waterway. Our poler was KB who turned out to be our guide and the head of our expedition. We enjoyed gliding silently through the reeds, so close to the beautiful waterlilies.
KB proved to be an expert birder, identifying the myriad birds for us. Apparently, many of the birds have been recently renamed to correct mistakes in their original classifications, and he could recite the old and new names without hesitation.
The water was very shallow due to the lack of rain during the “wet” season but that turned out to be a benefit as the mokoros can be overturned and attacked by hippos in deeper water. Not fun. Eventually, we got to a place where the water widened and there was a landing spot. The team unloaded all the gear and carried it to the camping area. While they set up our tents, we had lunch and chatted in the shade.
While we were chatting, KB asked if the women who were part of the crew could show us some baskets and things made by people in the village. We were eager to see them and I bought several small pieces that would fit in my luggage.
In the late afternoon, when the day started to cool down, KB loaded us back into our mokoros to take us further into the delta for a walking safari in the grassland bordering the water. We found a herd of zebras grazing, our first view of wild African animals.
As we were walking through the grass, KB bent down to pick a wildflower and showed us how, as children, they would use the sticky sap from the stem to make earrings for themselves. I imagine that children in Botswana still do it, just as generation after generation of children here make daisy chain crowns to wear.
On our way back to the campsite, I made a little video so you could come with us, gliding silently through the grasses.
That evening we admired the collection of cast-iron dutch ovens in which they prepared a delicious feast of chicken stew, vegetables and rice over an open fire. This was the first of many tasty camp meals for us in the African bush.
In the morning, we got up in time for some spectacular sunrise photos.
KB was an avid photographer and enjoyed taking photos of us against the sunrise.
Here is KB, the very serious photographer.
When we returned to our starting point, KB gave us a walking tour of his village while we waited for our transport back to Maun. This is when we got more of an insight into the difficulties of rural life here. KB pointed out his house and the houses of members of his family.
He explained that their village was granted the concession for operating the mokoro tours into this part of the delta by the government. However, they were sharing it at that point with another group from an area where it was too dry to operate because of the lack of rain. Later in the season, both groups would have to find another waterway to use as this one was already getting too shallow. KB also told us that they rented the mokoros and so made only a small profit from each trip. The money was used to look after everyone in the village, particularly the elders, and we got the impression that there was never enough. KB was hoping to save up money to buy his own mokoros and so increase the profits, but we wondered how you save money when there isn’t enough to cover basic necessities. Despite these difficulties, KB was a cheerful person and seemed to take pride in his work as a guide.
After a bit, the Landcruiser arrived to take us back to the Jump Street Chalets where we had time for a shower before we were again loaded into the same Landcruiser for our six-night safari into the bush -- next episode, the Moremi Game Reserve.
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