World and I Magazine - On Safari in the Kalahari

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T H E A R T S
JANUARY 2000

On Safari in the Kalahari

By Deirdre Mcquillan

From the vast empty stretches of the Kalahari Desert to the mysterious waterways of the Okavango Delta, a safari in Botswana offers spectacular scenery and wildlife.

n African safari--the word is Swahili for journey--is an adventure that plays with the emotions in ways that have to be experienced to be properly understood. On a seven-day trip to the Kalahari desert in Botswana, our little group was to discover the joys of seeing animals in the wild for the first time, the rich treasures of the bush, and what one writer described as the "visceral thump," that link between humans and lions that "is not terror, not love, but not quite divorced from either." There were moments of trepidation, of exhilaration, fear, and sheer delight.
Old-fashioned safaris were a different proposition. "There are two classes of people who go after lions--the mugs and those who come back with the trophy," wrote Safari Sam (alias Gordon Makepeace), a popular chronicler of daring hunting exploits during the 1920s and '30s. He was just one of many who fostered enduring images of deep, dark, and dangerous Africa for impressionable readers. These days, you arm yourself not with guns and ammunition, like they did then, but with cameras and film. Now when you shoot animals in the wild, the pictures are your trophies. "Go with an open mind," advised a friend on hearing that it was my first trip to Africa.

* Elephants abound in northern Botswana.

        The safari took in three very different areas and experiences: the Magadikgadi Pans, the largest salt pans in the world; the Okavango Delta; and the Selinda floodplains, all in the north of the country. Transport between each place was by small bush planes or on the ground, in huge, open Toyota Land Cruisers that could maneuver in deep sandy or swampy terrain and even cross rivers. You quickly became used to the roar of the small, twin-engine planes as they took off from simple grass airfields for the next stopping place.
        Remote wasn't the word for it. My journey had begun with an eleven-hour flight from London to Johannesburg and from there a further three flights to Maun in Botswana, at the edge of the Kalahari. We were transported by jeep across golden grasslands to our first camp. The billowing white Bedouin-style tents, the vast skies, and the gentle sound of the wind sighing in the palm trees took my breath away and quickly dissipated any feeling of tiredness. It was the beginning of an unforgettable few days.

        Beautiful Botswana

        But to start with the facts. Botswana, formerly Bechuanaland, is landlocked between Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe and was a British protectorate until 1966. A year after independence, diamonds were discovered there, transforming one of the ten poorest countries on the globe almost overnight. Botswana is now the largest producer of diamonds in the world; its whole infrastructure has been built on the industry.
        Politically, the country is very stable, and its foreign reserves are bigger than those of South Africa. Nearly nine times the size of Ireland, it has a population of 1.5 million people and twice as many cattle. After diamonds, cattle are the country's biggest income earners, and wealth is judged by the number owned. Tourism is now beginning to boom as people discover Botswana's other great treasures: its spectacular wildlife resources.
        The Magadikgadi is an unimaginably vast area of barren flatness under a gigantic sky, a relic of Africa's largest superlake. Known as a "thirstland," it fills with water during the wet season and springs into life, bringing with it a breathtaking pink tide of thousands and thousands of flamingos. Our camp was called San after the earliest modern inhabitants of the Kalahari, the San, or Bushmen, and was part of Jack's Camp. One of the only permanent desert camps in Botswana, it was founded by a Tanzanian-born buccaneer called Jack Bousfield.

* Kalihari bushmen hold tubers from which precious water is extracted during dry months.

        Pictures of him show a craggy, sunburned face wrapped in a desert scarf, wily eyes, and a big handlebar mustache. In one photograph, he is captured holding a 50,000-year-old hand ax found in 1989 in his big, capable hands. He was killed in a plane crash in l992, from which his son Ralph, who now runs the business, escaped unscathed.
        One evening we were taken onto the ash white, salt-cracked surface of the pans on quad bikes--motorbikes with four fat wheels that can traverse its surface with minimal damage--for an engaging history lesson in which we discovered and examined Stone Age tools. Further on, we stopped and were told to walk for half an hour by ourselves, then lie on our backs and simply look at the stars and listen to the silence.
        On the way back we found a table set for dinner, complete with campfire and coals spread under the chairs for warmth. If dining under the stars seemed like a dream, the discovery that our beds had also been transported from our tents and laid out on the horizon added further magic to the night. That desert sleep under the star-studded sky was a heady introduction to Africa. It came as no surprise that the place is a favorite for honeymooners.
        Our guides, Joe and Glyn, both university zoology graduates, were full of information about the area and its wildlife. The Magadikgadi is home to nearly three hundred bird species. In drives around the camp we saw pearl-spotted owls, black-shouldered kites, and Kalahari robins. We gazed at steenbok and ostrich and springhares (resembling mini kangaroos) and learned how to identify their trails in the sand.
        One morning we were taken for a walk by two young, spear-îcarrying Kalahari Bushmen, Xene and Dobe, who dug out tubers to show the type of plants from which animals extract water, demonstrated how to make traps, and told us why the quaintly named honey badger is the angriest animal in the world. "It fights, it is afraid of nothing and it has a fart that would make you ill," one said.

* Our sanctuary from the blazing African sun.

        The other pried a scorpion from the sand with his spear, and we watched in horrified fascination as he ran it up and down his arm before returning the furious creature to its nest. Although fifty thousand Bushmen are left in Botswana, only a few hundred of them lead the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

        The Okavango Delta

        Our next destination, the Okavango Delta, is one of Africa's last great wetland areas. Filled with meandering, mysterious waterways and tranquil lagoons, it attracts all sorts of life-forms. On the bumpy ride through the swamps to Rann Camp, we passed elephants for the first time, saw a crocodile, swamp eagles, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, and herds of impala. The camp, run by Landela Safaris, is on an island and consists of thatch-covered chalets equipped with separate solar panels that provide heating, light, and even slow-cooking facilities. Swamp booboos, battery birds, and hammerkops were the source of some of the strange sounds that woke us in the morning, an exotic chorus punctuated by the explosive watery snorts of nearby hippos.
        We were taken by mokoro (a dugout canoe traditionally made of jackalberry wood but now mostly fiberglass) along labyrinthine channels filled with dragonflies and water lilies. While carefully avoiding the hippos, we learned that everything tells a story. Ebony is good for dysentery, sticks from the guarrie tree make excellent toothbrushes, and the sausage tree can cure skin cancer. The elephant, we were told, has 60,000 muscles in its trunk; the memory part of its brain is more convoluted than that of a human and, hence, "an elephant never forgets." In South Africa, when elephants have to be culled, a whole herd must be taken out or the memory of the trauma remains. And did you know that the giraffe has a six-foot-drop introduction to the world? One of the two local guides, Lenny, told us that the most dangerous animal in the bush is a buffalo--his father was killed by one--and if faced by a lion, you must not move but stand your ground. You are not the right shape, not the right smell, but if you run you are prey.

* Another welcome shelter from the sun.

        We never got a chance to prove his point, fortunately, though we finally encountered long-awaited lions in the last camp on the Selinda floodplains. The pride had just finished off a kudu bull weighing 400--600 pounds, a meal that would keep them going for two or three days. Sated, sleepy, and satisfied, some of the older ones lay on their backs voluptuously, paws in the air, while cubs with sledgehammer paws gnawed lovingly at the bloody ribs. As we watched, a jackal arrived, keeping a respectful distance, and hyenas started to circle. Vultures perched in a nearby tree, waiting their opportunity. In the distance we could hear the distinctive whoop of the hyena, the famous cry of the Kalahari, alerting others to the feast. "Tomorrow there won't be a trace of anything left," said our guide to his awestruck audience. The roar of a lion, he added, can make the car shake.

        Wilderness meals

        Bongo drums were beaten to signal our feeding times, which were more than satisfactory. Freshly baked bread was standard morning fare. In the evening, butternut squash soup, spicy chicken, and apple crumble were a typical, skillful combination of the familiar and unfamiliar. The resourcefulness of camp cooks was impressive: We saw a large gas canister alarmingly parked on an open fire one evening, only to discover that it had been emptied and cut in half to form an excellent roasting pot. Solar panels did double duty as slow cookers for items like breakfast biscuits. Salvaged bones served as towel rails, lamp holders, wine racks, or ashtrays. Porcupine quills turned into swizzle sticks at the bar. "Out here," said one of the guides, "you have to be a jack-of-all-trades, know your bushcraft, and be able to fix pipes and punctures."
        Night drives brought their own excitement and our first and only sighting of the elusive "prince of stealth," the leopard, as it slipped off through the trees. We noticed the easy trot of the jackal making its solitary way through the grasses, the bush babies snuggling into tree forks, and a family of baboons on the march. Last year a BBC filmmaker came out to Botswana for ten months to make a wildlife documentary. Within five months he had enough footage for a second movie showing that the living treasures of this country are even more precious than its diamonds.
        In winter the annual floodwaters from the Angolan highlands course through the delta, transforming everything into a lush wetland. This prompts huge animal migrations--animals can scent water from a hundred-kilometer distance--and thus the area is known as a "sea of land and a land of water." In fact, water is so vital to the livelihood of this country that the word for money is pula, which means rain and is also a national greeting. In the summer of l997, the area received one third of its usual quota, a situation so serious that the elephant herds could have died in their thousands. This did not happen, however. According to the camp manager, although trees were tough, there were no deaths. The following year they were rewarded with exceedingly good rains, resulting in lush grass growth and plentiful vegetation.

* On safari.

Elephants were to provide our farewell to Africa. On the last evening, we were taken to a viewing point over the lagoon for sundowners, an enjoyable daily ritual and one agreeable relic of the old days. As the moon came up and food and wine were passed around the campfire, we suddenly became aware of huge, dark shapes moving slowly past us. The elephants, too, were assembling for their evening drink. While making their stately, ponderous way down to the water, they emitted curious purring sounds. At first it was a bit frightening--one shove could push a jeep over--but they carefully avoided us and we watched without speaking as they bumped and splashed and rolled and played, silhouetted against the night sky. Then, as slowly and silently as they had come, they made their way out of the water, one after the other, disappearing into the darkness. That dinner with the elephants was a humbling, moving experience for us all and as an image of Africa was one that will live forever in the memory.
Deirdre McQuillan would like to thank South African Airways and Air Botswana for their kind assistance. A Botswana package similiar to the one enjoyed by the author can be arrranged through United Kingdom--based Africa Connection (0ll-44-1244-355330). The best time to visit is between August and December.

Deirdre McQuillan is a freelance feature writer based in Dublin.