Kagiso kneels over spoor in the fine grey sand and whispers: “Lions! Very fresh!”
I scan the shoulder- high scrub around us. Kagiso Molefe and his fellow guides at Oddballs’ Lodge in the Okavango Delta don’t carry guns – they rely on their knowledge of the bush to deal with dangerous situations.
I swallow and try to breathe deeply. It feels as if 10 pairs of yellow eyes are looking at me.
“Look, here they heard us and started running,” Kagiso says, pointing out the spoor as large as
my hand. He tracks it for another few metres. “And here one of the two turned away.”
We’re standing on an island, one of more than 1 000 in the delta. Every year, millions and
millions of litres of water come pouring through the delta from the highlands of Angola. The
Okavango has no outlet to the sea and the water slowly evaporates until, by October, most of it
has dried up again.
Kagiso has brought myself and photographer Lawrette McFarlane to the island in a mokoro, a boat made of a hollowed-out tree trunk.
Yesterday we met four Spaniards at Oddballs. They proudly showed off their lion pictures. They had taken so many, when one held down the “forward” button in viewing mode it looked like a video. We oohed and aahed jealously.
But now I’m not so sure that I want to meet a lion on foot…

The distances are daunting, but fortunately most of Botswana’s roads are in excellent condition. Lawrette and I had a comfortable trip on tarred roads all the way from Pretoria to Maun, a distance
of about 1500 km.
From Maun we had to fly 75 km to Oddballs’ Palm Island Lodge, where we’re booked in for four nights. The only way to get there when the delta is flooded is by air.
At the airport in Maun, a light aircraft filled with tourists takes off every few minutes, transporting them to various game reserves and other destinations in the delta.
We’re soon in the air – looking down on an endless network of water channels and green reeds. It’s a bumpy ride in the heat of the day.
“I don’t feel well,” Lawrette groans, beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. Fortunately it’s only a 20-minute flight, so we land before things gets ugly.

First encounters
Our smiling host Jack Drew is waiting for us at the airstrip – under a large tree that has a buffalo
skull nailed to it and a sign that reads “international departures”. Next to the tree are buckets of sand and a fire extinguisher.
“This morning there were elephants on the runway,” Jack says. “When that happens while a plane is coming in to land, the pilot just flies low over the animals’ heads to chase them off, and then he tries again.”
In this part of Africa, where five-star accommodation is as common as impala, Oddballs is
one of a few camps that are still relatively affordable.
You sleep in an ordinary canvas tent, raised a on wooden deck. Bathrooms are shared. It feels like real camping, because the small bar, lounge and dining room don’t have many walls or any doors.
Lawrette is feeling much better, so we join the other guests on our first mokoro outing. There’s a guide for every two guests. Ours is Kagiso, the guy with the broad grin on the cover of the Oddballs brochure. Kagiso uses a pole, called a ngashi, to propel his mokoro – it feels like being in a gondola.
We land 15 minutes later at an island the size of a helipad. Only metres from us we spot a huge crocodile in the water, looking fixedly at us.
“He heard us and then slipped into the water,” another guide says. He points at the ground at our feet: “You can see from the drag marks that he was lying right here…”

The sights and sounds
In the late afternoon we are on the lookout deck above the dining room. Three cameras on tripods
click away as a blood-red sun dips behind the horizon.
Four hippos take turns sticking their heads out of the water. Below us, a kingfisher flits through the reeds. Baboons start barking on the other side of the channel, and we hear the liquid call of the Burchell’s coucal. And then two fish eagles start to call to the accompaniment of the grunting hippos.
Jack walks through the camp to light the torches along the footpaths – it’s a scene reminiscent of Survivor. It feels rather as if we’re on our way to a tribal meeting when we gather around the fire right at the water’s edge.
“The hippos are on my payroll until 8 pm,” Jack says when the hippos stop snorting. “After that I have to pay them overtime, and that’s too expensive.”
He tells us about his predecessor’s experience with a leopard – almost exactly the same thing
that happened to Oom Schalk Lourens in Herman Charles Bosman’s story In the Withaak’s Shade.
“The man was reading in the lounge at 3 am when a leopard walked in and lay down on the cement floor. For an hour, he sat dead quiet, too scared to turn the page. Then the leopard got up and left just as quietly.”

Island for three
I awake to the rumble of thunder – or that’s what it sounds like. It is, in fact, Elijah the elephant walking through the camp and shaking every palm tree to bring down the fruit, his favourite delicacy.
Yesterday morning, a Spanish tourist couldn’t get to the loo because Elijah was blocking his path.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask Jack outside on the path.
“Here? Always!” he says.
We watch a couple in a mokoro silently appear from the reeds. It’s an Italian couple who camped
in the bush for two nights. That’s what we’re going to do tonight and tomorrow night.
“We saw lions!” the Italian woman calls out.
Now it’s our turn. Two tents, mattresses, lanterns, two cool boxes, a spade, three chairs, a dish
and our clothes are packed on board the mokoro.
For two hours Kagiso soundlessly poles the mokoro deeper and deeper into the delta. The nose of the boat parts the grass in front of us, and behind us it closes up again, as if nobody has ever passed this way. Water lilies dot the open stretches of water.
“It’s easy to get lost in the delta,” Kagiso says, breaking the silence. “But I use the termite mounds
as markers – they always point slightly to the north.”
We’re now in the Moremi Nature Reserve. We set up camp on White Island, which is about the size of a cricket field. Its name refers to the island’s white sand, which you see just about everywhere in the delta.
Kagiso does an inspection of the island and comes back with a pair of kudu horns.
“The kudu was caught by the lions,” he explains. The horns become the toilet roll holder and get a place of honour next to the lower jaw of a hippopotamus, a giraffe skull, two tortoise shells and an elephant tusk Kagiso and his colleagues picked up on previous trips.
I pick up the tusk. It’s the first time I’ve held ivory in my hands.

Close calls
Going for a walk in the bush is totally different to a game drive. You feel much more vulnerable, and
small. Your senses are sharpened; the slightest rustle makes you jump.
Kagiso shows us the wild sage that you can use as mosquito repellent and we see a bachelor
herd of impala and a brown snake eagle. And, of course, lion spoor.
In the evening Kagiso tells us about his cousin who was eaten by lions two years ago.
He himself has stared down a lion standing 2 m from him. The American tourists who were with
him ran off as fast as they could and Kagiso had to track them for an hour before he found them.
“We’re very careful, because every year there’s an incident in the delta,” he says. Fortunately
Oddballs has only had one incident. One of the guides surprised a hippo, which took a bite out of the mokoro… and a tourist’s leg.
Bed time. Overhead, a scops owl makes its gentle prrup-prrup and two separate frog choruses start up. In the distance I hear a lion roar.
“You must keep the tent zipped up,” says Kagiso as we go to bed. “The lions might see you move and come and investigate. The netting isn’t that thick.”

Do you know what a whole chicken looks like?
Kagiso had TB when he was 16 and, when he wanted to go back to school after his treatment, there
was no place for him. That’s how he became a guide.
To work at Oddballs you have to have your own mokoro. Kagiso bought his for 2000 pula (R2700). It’s made from a sausage tree and took six months to carve.
Most of the other camps in the delta use fibreglass mokoro in order to preserve trees.
When you go camping in the bush, the guide takes you out early every morning on the mokoro to go walking on one of the islands. Then you eat brunch, take a nap or read a bit and then go for another walk in the late afternoon.
This morning we had to change direction twice when we ran into a breeding herd of elephants.
Before we go walking in the afternoon, Kagiso bangs on a rock with his spade.We hear splashes as the frightened elephants move off.
“I don’t want them to come too close to our island,” he says. “If I beat the rock like that, they think
it’s a gunshot. They won’t come back quickly.”
We go walking on Baobab Island and see giraffe and zebra, and find a warthog’s tooth. “A giraffe has very good eyesight – up to 2 km,” Kagiso says. “They also kick so well that they can defend themselves against leopards and lions.”
In the evening we grill steak over the fire and make stuffed butternut for dinner. “The Americans don’t know how to cook on a fire,” Kagiso says.
One woman was apparently very surprised when she saw the whole chicken that Eve, Jack’s wife, had sent along. “I didn’t know chicken came like that,” she said.
We hear lions roaring. It sounds very close by. “I think they’re on the next island,” Kagiso says.
Then another lion roars.
“That one isn’t far at all, perhaps 100 m.”
I brush my teeth quickly under the nearest tree, dive into the tent and zip it up firmly.

Therapy for tourists
On the last morning in the bush the wind is blowing and it’s cool – not good conditions for spotting
lions. “Even if the tracks are fresh they’ll look old because the sand will have blown over them,” Kagiso says. “Besides, the lions can smell us for miles.”
Oh no. The Italians and the Spaniards get to see lions, but the South Africans have to go back
without a sighting. Yet we do find something special: the horns of an impala caught by a leopard.
“You can see it’s very fresh,” Kagiso says, “because there are still bits of meat on the horns. The
leopards eat the whole thing.”
As if nature wants to help him make a point, we discover another impala horn. “Feel this; this one is a lot lighter, so it’s much older.”
Just after brunch another eight tourists disembark on “our” island. We find out they’re psychologists from Austria, Canada and the United States, among other countries, who’ve just attended a conference in Cape Town. (This has the beginnings of a joke: “Did you hear the one about the eight psychologists stuck on a deserted island?”)
We pack quickly and head back to Oddballs. On our way, Kagiso makes two beautiful necklaces of water lilies for Lawrette and me.

All alone in the wilderness
For our last outing Kagiso takes us to the village where he grew up and still lives. It’s on Snake Island, a half-hour trip by mokoro from Oddballs.
About 350 people live on Snake Island, completely cut off from the outside world. Yet Kagiso has to lock his mokoro to its mooring with a padlock so it won’t be stolen.
“You know my hips don’t lie…” blares a Shakira hit song from a boom box in one of the mud huts.
A solar panel powers the sound system.
The huts are ingeniously built from cooldrink cans and plastered with soil from termite mounds.
For us it was fun to live among the wild animals for a few nights, but for the villagers it’s a way of life – where you hope that an elephant won’t trample your mielies or a hippo capsize the mokoro your children are taking to and from school.
Despite the sobering visit, while packing my bags I can’t help but wish that I had seen those lions. Next time…

The Makgadikgadi Pans and the Okavango Delta were once part of a super-lake, almost three times their present size. Scientists have surmised that movements in the earth’s crust, which redirected the Zambezi River’s course over the Victoria Falls instead of into the Limpopo River, also changed the course of Botswana’s waters.

18th century.
The Bayei tribe move from Barotseland in the west of Zambia to the delta and bring the first mokoro with them.

30 September 1966
Botswana gains independence from Britain. The British Protectorate of Bechuanaland becomes the
Republic of Botswana.

1967
Diamonds are discovered at Orapa in east-central Botswana. This sets the country on a course
to prosperity. In the same year Botswana proclaims the Chobe National Park, its first.

Early 1990s
Botswana introduces a new tourism policy to attract fewer tourists for more money, so that the impact on the environment is minimised.

1998
Alexander McCall Smith’s first novel in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is published. It
features Mma Ramotswe,a woman detective in the capital Gaborone. The book puts Botswana on the international literary map.

FLY
Gunn’s Camp
Gunn’s Camp, near Oddballs in the delta, also offers affordable mokoro trips.
Cost: Between P4205 (about R4800) and P5845 (about R6700) per person sharing for four
nights, depending on whether you’re staying at one of the bush camps or the main camp (with the
“deluxe tents”).
Contact: www.gunnscamp.com

DRIVE
Audi Camp
Audi Camp, which is about 12 km from Maun, offers mokoro safaris that depart near the town.
Cost: P520 (R640) per person for a day; P1170 (R1 440) for three days and two nights, if you supply your own food and gear.
Contact: www.okavangocamp.com/audi-camp.htm

Plan B*
(*B is for bargain)
Okavango Kopano Community Mokoro Trust
We haven’t tried this ourselves, but you can also spend your rands with the people of the delta – where it’ll make the most difference. The guides working for the trust depart from the Boro or Ditshipi boat stations, and you have to drive there yourself. (You can only reach the departure point by 4x4, however.)
Cost: About R130 per person sharing per day. (P40 per person + 10% tax + P150 a day for a guide).
Take your own food and gear.
Contact: +26 77 219 2995

581 730 km²
Far and wide.
Botswana’s surface area is 581 730 km², half the size of South Africa.

28 000 km²
Water for Africa.
In a good year the delta covers 28 000 km², making it slightly smaller than all of Lesotho.

1,85 million
Spread wide.
Botswana’s population is 1,85 million – that’s three people per km², one of the lowest population densities in the world.

3 million
Scores of steak.
The country has between 2 and 3 million cattle, depending on the rain.

65 %
Easy going.
About 6 500km of the country’s 10 000 km of roads are tarred.

941 species
Rich land.
Botswana has 164 mammal, 157 reptile, 80 fish and 540 bird species. Look for
species such as the sitatunga, slaty egret, Pel’s fishing owl and wild dog.

30 million
Stones galore.
Botswana produces 30 million carats of diamonds per year, twice as much as Kimberley’s Big Hole delivered during its entire production life.

700 m
Keep it short.
The Botswana–Zambia border is only 700 m long. It’s the shortest international border in the world.

Source: This is Botswana by Peter Joyce and Botswana Tourism.