Okovango and Pom Pom Camp

We encountered a gradient of awareness of Americans and American culture in Botswana. At one extreme was the guy I sat next to on a combi in Gaborone who asked me if I was from the U.K. I told him I was from the U.S. and he responded, “U.K., U.S., all the same.” At the other extreme was the woman we met at the Bahurutshe cultural village. When she asked us where we were from, we gave our stock answer of the middle part of the U.S. When she asked which state and we told her that we were from Minnesota, she said, “Minnesota is on the Great Lakes, isn’t it? I so want to visit the Great Lakes. When I am seventy in two years, I am going to retire and travel. Then I’ll visit the Great Lakes.” She now has our phone number.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. cultural influence here is definitely less than the British. It is obvious in a number of ways that the Brits have put their stamp on Botswana, from driving on the left to the manner in which the Batswana speak English. On this morning, Partner held up a water bottle and asked us what it was. “Water,” Kathy and I both responded. “Waterrrr,” he repeated, emphasizing our American “R” sounds. Everyone laughed. In Botswana, of course, people pronounce it “woe-tah.”

This day we spent the morning on the woe-tah. The traditional way to get around in the Okavango is via a shallow draft dugout canoe called a mokoro. These days the government is encouraging people to use a manufactured fiberglass version to save the trees, but regardless of the material, they are still mokoros. Our morning activity was to explore the delta in this traditional way. “Poled silently, the mokoro glides gently through the waterways, parting dense reed beds with perfect stealth so that animals and birds are caught totally unaware,” is how the promotional literature describes it. Kathy and I rode while Dalton stood at the back and propelled us forward with a long pole. At times, the water was so shallow that a pole made a lot of sense—it would have been too shallow for a paddle. At other times, there was a strong current and the pole could barely reach the bottom. Standing up to pole obviously requires a good sense of balance and lots of practice. Dalton learned as a child from his father. He said at first he would lose control and fall in the water and then his father would beat him.

Mokoros - The manufactured kind

 Although we did see an elephant from a distance and the back half of a hippo as it disappeared into the woods, the focus this day was not on large animals, but rather on small animals, insects, and plants at extremely close range. Dalton pointed out tiny reed frogs clinging to the sides of reeds that were so well camouflaged that they look like part of the reed. He also showed us areas where bream had cleared an area of reeds and laid their eggs in the sand at the bottom of the water.

Poled silently, the mokoro glides gently

Water Lily 

Above and Below:  Reed Frogs 

After a couple hours, we landed on an island so we could stretch our legs. Elephants obviously congregated on this island because there were many piles of elephant dung. The volume in one pile of elephant dung is truly amazing. Think of what your dogs produces each morning on his morning walk and then imagine he was the size of an elephant and you will begin to see the picture. While elephants are herbivores, they are not ruminants like cows. Since they lack a four-chambered stomach, they can’t digest vegetation as thoroughly as cows. Thus, they need to eat that much more to get the nutrition they need and much of what they eat comes through undigested. The amount of vegetable fiber in elephant dung has been put to good use—it is used to make beautiful paper. I noticed that the elephant dung on this island was filled with round lumps about the size of a golf ball & asked Dalton about that. They were the fruit of the marula tree. These small fruit are similar to lychee nuts in that they have a very small layer of fruit over a large central pit, but the fruit is very tasty, a fact to which the elephants will attest. This fruit apparently sometimes gets over-ripe and ferments while still hanging on the tree. When this occurs, we were told, you have to deal with the problem of drunken elephants. As much as this story appeals to me, it may be an old wive's tale. The fruit is used to make candy and a liqueur called Amarula. Kathy and I sampled Amarula later that day when we were back at the lodge. It is a cream liqueur and is every bit as smooth as Bailey’s Irish Crème, but with a unique fruit flavor. I understand now why elephants like the fruit.

Our post-siesta activity on this day was another game drive. We spent most of the drive tracking a leopard, but never did catch up with it. So the day ended with no lion or leopard sightings, but it was nonetheless, another fine day.