Dear Traveller

I thrive on the emotions and the feelings felt when in wild spaces, I know… SLOW DOWN!…this is not the typical way to start a conversation, especially not from a field guide. Khakis, a farmers tan and a sprinkle of emotions is a combination seldomly seen flaunted by bush hardened individuals. But in all honesty, this is how I experience Africa.

Her wild open spaces that shaped and inspired me has done so through the emotions I experience when visiting them. I often think back, not to events but to the feeling. There are a handful of these places, of which I’m I will share with you in the near future.

But, for now our focus turns to Botswana’s Okavango Delta, it’s 1000km journey and the lessons that it has has taught me. With only the essentials for the next 4 days, we swapped our overlanding vehicles for a cramped motorised boat.  Lifting me with ease my dad placed me onto the mixed pile of rucksacks, sleeping bags and winter jackets. The  seat for spotting animals as we slowly make our way through papyrus reed beds and blooming white waterlilies. 

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I was 7 then, and this was my first memory of the the Okavango Delta. 

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Since then I’ve been back numerous times. More often than not as an explorer in a brilliant daydream, but when I’m really lucky the delta has hosted me, my family and guests over my life time and been the destination where I’ve experienced some of the greatest lessons that Africa has to share. Within its network of islands and endless waterways, I've seen teen-age boys become men, and I've seen stubborn men rediscover their “inner boy”. The Delta has taught mothers and raised children. It has healed, changed and inspired. An influential being in the same light as the great voices of our time. 

But before being a mentor, before it could inspire or give life, the Delta had to walk a journey of its own, to be what it is today. Not that different to our own individual life journeys.

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“The source of life”.  - Lisimo Iya Mwena

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Starting it’s life deep in the highlands of Angola, the Cuito River crawls its way through local communities, farmland and protected areas. Forming part of what is now known as the Lisima Watershed, “the lifeblood of the Kavango-Zambezi basin and the world's largest transborder conservation area.” - Dr. Steve Boyes 

Go back more than 60 000 years ago where this 1000km journey through Angola as a tyke was transformed, when initiation came in the form of tectonic upliftment. This shifted the topography just enough to stop the majority of the river from flowing into the ancient Lake Makgadigadi. Over the next few millennia, the Lisima watershed that fed the great lake now carried life into the 400m deep soils of the Kalahari desert. Starting what we can call the golden era of the river's journey. A thriving green jewel in the heart of arid Africa.

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A lesson learnt from The Golden Era.

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Now, I'm not much of an artist. Especially not with mediums like ground manganese, burnt bone and Eland blood. Substances that were used for thousands of years by the early storytellers of the Tsodilo Hills north of the Delta. But contrary to the beliefs of my grade 12 English teacher, I can share these stories through modern mediums such as Blogposts or Newsletters like this one...thank god for spellcheck. 

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So, onto my lesson:

It’s easy to open any blog about the importance of natural areas, travelling to these wild places and experiencing their benefits.  You’ll be served words like “slow down”, “connect”, “authentic” and “immerse”... The list is nearly endless.  The Delta undoubtedly offers these opportunities, I’ll agree with that. But what I want to mention is something personal and a bit more practical. A perspective of life that I try to implement into my day-to-day way of thinking. 

Ever since Archimedes invented the water screw and the Romans built their aqueducts, people have known that open water can flow in only one direction and that is downhill. However, when David Livingstone reached the Okavango, he noted how the waterways seemed to flow one way one season and another the next. Channels would flow strongly, stop, and sometimes even reverse direction. The system seemed to defy all human logic. 

When Livingstone reached the Selinda Spillway and Savuti Channel, east of The Delta, they were flowing strongly. When Frederick Courteney Selous passed by some decades later he found them dry. Decades later again they flowed, and then dried again, even reversing direction of flow at times. 

See, below the Delta lies crisscrossed a fine network of faults that form the southernmost tip of the Great Rift Valley. It is in this that lies the mystery of the gravity-defying waterways. And it is in this that I took my lesson. 

Just like the life journey of the river, your journey is unique. It flows strongly one season when all is clear and motivation runs high. Pulled by our goals and dreams like a river encouraged by gravity. And one day without warning, it slows down. Months drag on without any clear progress. For some of us, it even moves backwards, defying all beliefs and dimming any view of our goals and dreams. 

But the more life you live, the more water is added to your soil you start creating a paradise that attracts people and characters that slot in perfectly with this foundation that you have set. And if you step back from focusing on the ebb and flow of life in your waterways, you will see that what is unique to you and made you come alive has created an ecosystem that in return gives life to others. 

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This is the one lesson that the river's golden era has taught me: The chance to “listen”.

As the remaining water leaves the Delta, it flows South and Westwards. To the West, it flows into Lake Ngami, described by Livingstone in 1849 as “a shimmering lake 80 miles long and 20 miles wide.” Although breathtaking then, it was still only a fragment of its previous life as the Great Lake Magadigadi. To the South the remaining life that makes it this far disappears into the cracked shadow of the Great Lake, forming the Makgadigadi salt flats. 

To the untrained eye, it might seem that this is the end of the journey. A retirement of sort. Here all the life-giving elements of the water have been spent and the rivers journey has come to an abrupt stop.

Or has it? 

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Following the dry winter season, this land is transformed. Like a grandparent sharing stories to eager children, life is given one last time through nutrient rich grasses spurred on by December rains. A phenomenon that kick starts one of Africa’s lesser-known “Great Migrations”.  The rains triggers 15 000 Zebras to move South on a return journey of over 500km between the Moremi Game Reserve in the Delta and Makgadigadi Pans. A true spectacle to observe, and thankfully without the interruption from large groups of money-driven safari vehicles…for now. 

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But this is not the only way the rivers legacy is caried on. Taking the role of a village elder the Makgadigadi pans shares its riches and wisdom with those who ask. In a language, very few are attuned to interpret. Lucky for us this centuries-old autobiography, can be translated by the last remaining Kalahari Bushman. Through their oral history, customs and culture, they share the wisdom learnt from the river's journey.  

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Unknowing to the majority, this ability to interpret “hear” the river’s language has been passed on to each and every one of us genetically. And to those that give it a chance, the faint unfamiliar tremor felt in your heart, while in one of the world’s last wildernesses wil reach out, connect and welcome you home. 

The Delta has taught and inspired people since its existence came to light. I cannot promise that my lessons learnt and the stories shared with me will be shared with you. They present themselves to everyone in their own way.

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All you need is a chance to “listen”. 

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Whether it is felt through the site of the seemingly endless salt flats or heard in the roar of a black-main lion interrupting the sound of a crackling fire, or even seen while perched on a pile of rucksacks, duffle bags and jackets, the messages shared might change, but its origin stays the same.