Chobe Wetlands and Okavango Delta

After re-negotiating the circus of the Zambia - Botswana border, we drove the short distance from the border post of Kazangula to Kasane, and into the Chobe National Park.  On a warm, sunny afternoon, we cruised the Chobe River and wetlands in a flat-bottomed boat.  We shared the boat with about twenty members of a Finnish camera club, whose massive lenses made our puny digital cameras look rather pointless.

The wetlands are wide and spectacular, and there was plenty of wildlife - hippos, elephants, antelope, fish eagles, warthogs - but the experience felt a bit artificial, with the constant chatter of high-tech cameras and the presence of other boats jockeying for position at every sighting.

Early the next morning we drove on to Maun, on the edge of the Okavango Delta, where we were to enjoy a much more authentic wildlife experience.

The Okavango River has its source in Angola.  When it reaches the edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, it fans out across the flat landscape and forms the world's only inland delta - a vast network of pools and waterways dotted with wooded islands.  Every species swims here, even lions and leopards.

We entered the Delta by four-wheel-drive tray truck, bouncing over bush tracks through the acacia scrub and churning through streams and pools.  We were warned to be careful when the truck brushed through foliage: some acacias have three-inch thorns. Arriving at a village of traditional circular, thatched huts, we transferred to mokoro - traditional dugout canoes that are poled through the reed beds and narrow channels like gondolas.  In our case, the mokoro were made of traditional fibreglass.  The demand for this kind of transport would deplete the delta of large trees if the ancient dugout method was continued.

For the next two hours we enjoyed a gentle, gliding journey through beds of reeds and waterliles to our island camp.  The only sounds were the soft swish of the mokoro slipping through the water and the mellifluous banter and song of the boatmen.  It was hypnotic, lying back on our camping mattresses in the sunshine, seeing only reeds, waterlies and drifting clouds.

Our local guide was called Heaven - a gentle, softly-spoken, gracile man with peerless blue-black skin and a quietly authoritative manner.  He had learned to pole a mokoro from his father, who had learned from his father, and so on.  Bushcraft was second nature to him.  He told stories of his grandmother who was a loner, often venturing out into the bush unaccompanied to hunt and gather food or to collect grasses for thatch. Once she came across a lion with a fresh kill.  She wanted the meat for her family so she chased the lion away from its kill and carried the antelope home.  On another occasion she was charged by a buffalo - one of the most dangerous animals in the bush.  Unable to outrun it, she dived into an aardvark hole and burrowed down to safety, waiting until the buffalo had gone.

In the mornings and evenings at our Okavango bush camp, Heaven and another guide took us for walks on the surrounding islands.  We walked single file, Heaven in front and his offsider bringing up the rear, and were urged to be quiet.  I couldn't help but notice how different our version of quiet was from his.  He was able to walk soundlessly and gracefully through the long grass and spiny acacia thickets, watching where he placed his feet and keeping a sharp eye out for animals at the same time.  Meanwhile, we tourists stumbled into holes, jostled each other, apologised, laughed, cursed and barely managed to stay upright.  Despite our ineptitude, he managed to show us a large family of giraffes,  two bull elephants, an ostrich, fish eagles and storks.  The highlight was coming across a large pool surrounded by reeds and scrub.  Heaven directed us to high ground and began making hippo noises - grunts and growls and squeals.  Within a few seconds, a pair of ears emerged from the water at the opposite end of the pool and began swivelling around to locate the intruder.  Gradually, he tempted the hippo across the pool until it was less than ten metres away from us, and still convinced there was a competitor out there.

 

And it wasn't just about animals: Heaven's botanical knowledge was equivalent to that of traditional Australian Aboriginal people.  Virtually every plant had a medicinal or practical use.  His explanations of broad ecological interconnections  between plants, animals, humans and natural events and phenomena were a highlight for me - insights into the worldview of an intelligent man totally integrated with his environment.

In the heat of the day, he took us in his mokoro to a swimming spot - a pool of open water between the reeds, surrounded by water lilies.  I asked him were there any crocodiles around.  His answer: "Hmmm, yes.  Small ones."  We swam, and he sat in his mokoro fishing - catching several small bream and a catfish in about half an hour.

Our two and a half days and two nights in the Delta were over far too soon.  It will always remain the highlight of my brief time in Africa - not just because of its natural beauty and serenity, but also because of the opportunity to connect with a person of wisdom and dignity, at peace with his environment, who has no desire whatsoever for the material things that my culture is obsessed with beyond the means to provide for the modest needs of himself and his family.