Evening walks along the Delta's edge

One of the things I’ve come to enjoy most about my time in rural Africa are my evening walks on days when I’m too lazy to run. Sometimes you spend all day in front of a computer, something you could do from literally anywhere else, and a walk after the heat of the day is the best reminder of place. 

In Cameroon, I’d take Owondo on walks down to the Sanaga River. I’d throw him sticks into the slow-moving waters and let him sprint in the sand like a mad dog, frightening many people with his boldness unseen in most African dogs. Here in Botswana my walks don’t take me very far, but they transport me to my backyard, the Okavango Delta, a beating heart in the otherwise dry Kgalagadi sands. The Delta is comprised of permanent and seasonal floodplains, and having only been here for a few weeks, I don’t know which waters I can expect to disappear over the course of the year. The Delta is also located on top of several fault lines whose tremors are softened by the deep sands, changing the surface water geography all the time. In this environment, water is important, and I’ve come to take the waters directly behind the research camp as the place where my walk starts and ends. It’s with delight that I watch the hippos, monitoring their proximity to the camp and always hoping that they come camp-side so I can get a good look at them when they pop their heads out from underwater.

My favorite termite mound near camp

There’s a road that wraps around behind the research camp and joins to the main Ecoexist office, and on my walks I follow that road for a few minutes before veering off to explore the nearby islands. Islands aren’t necessarily surrounded by water, but they are little oases from the harsh shrub and grassland. These islands vary greatly in size, but are always teeming with diverse trees, including the very weird (and appropriately named) sausage tree and others that drop sweet fruits, prized both by people and wildlife. The island nearest to me has one of the tallest termite mounds I’ve ever seen. It’s around 20 feet tall, and it's shape is a reminder for how the tree used to stretch up to the sky in this mini-forest before it was completely taken over by termites. Now the termites have transformed it into hardened soil, a nutrient-rich and cement-like resource. It’s on this island that I once came up two old women cutting at the root bark of one of the trees. My lack of Setswana leaves me gesturing like a deaf mute, so I’m not entirely sure what the use of the root bark is, but I do know that it is ingested, perhaps as a medicine or as a flavoring to food. After letting me try my hand at chipping away at the bark with their small yet sharp hoe, the women covered back up the roots and went on their way back home to the nearby cattlepost: they are my neighbors.

Bark harvested from the roots of a tree

Cowboys bringing in the cattle for the evening

When I continue to the next island 50 feet from the first, I always see cattle. Cattle are an important part of the culture here, providing emergency sources of money during hard times. Cattle also support draught power for ploughing fields and are a main source of protein for the area. Beef is cheap in this part of the country because cattle owners can’t easily access the international beef markets that the rest of the country has access to: veterinary fences erected to prevent zoonotic disease transmission prevent the transport of beef across lines. This keeps the price of beef low in this area, but even still, there are families who can’t afford the meat and rely on sour milk for protein. Unlike in other parts of Africa, cattle are left to graze on their own. I’ve seen people accompanying their cattle just a handful of times, though it seems the wealthier cattle ranchers (ie. those with many cattle) rely on cowboys to keep their herds together and bring them back in for the night.

From there, I continue out past the island, but not much farther as the Delta is currently inundated with water and I’m terrified of being on the wrong side of a hippo. I meander my way back to camp, sometimes heading for the main road, a road infrequently traveled but dusty just the same, or I circle around the way I came out. This gives me the chance for incredible sunsets over the water, and I’ve taken to carrying my camera with me to capture the beauty of the red sun sinking behind the trees.

An elephant swimming to reach her friends on the island

As I took my walk yesterday, I was rewarded with a special treat: a small herd of 4 or 5 elephants! They were close enough where I could see them clearly in the late afternoon sun, but safely far away, across a few bodies of water. I watched them jump into water, swim out to an island just across from me, and delicately strip leaves from the trees. I watched them for an hour, though at times they watched me. When it grew dark and I could no longer stand the mosquitos, I headed back to camp. My spirits were at a new high, having been reminded that I’m in Botswana, living in these ancient swamps that are the raison d’être for human-wildlife interaction in this otherwise dry desert.