Where and How I Live: The Okavango Delta

Hello everyone, I am sorry that this is coming so late.  Things have been hectic here, over the last few weeks I have been out of my site or have had visitors, consequently not leaving me with much time to blog.

But without further delay, let’s keep moving with the theme Where and How I Live and talk about the Okavango Delta Region.  Now before I began I want to apologize for this post brevity.  Pretty much everything that could be said about the Okavango Delta Region has been said because Botswana’s Delta is one of the most pristine and preserved natural habitats in the world, and being such attracts thousands of tourists, scientists, and wild game enthusiasts every year.  So instead of giving you the Wikipedia version, which I would recommend reading anyway, I will give you the Okavango Delta through my eyes. 
 
First, the thing that immediately jumps out at me, and even a year later still leaves me awestruck, is the presence of wild animals.  This was too be expected because Gumare does border the Moremi Game Reserve which is home to wild animals like Lions, Giraffe, Zebras, Elephants, Buffalo, etc., but what was not expected was how much these animals are a part of people’s lives here. 
 
I mean the stories I hear are almost akin to the stories back home of a neighbor complaining about rodents.  I swear it’s like hearing a next neighbor telling you how a rodent keeps getting into their vegetable garden, but in this case it’s elephants, hyenas, and wild dogs getting doing the damage. 
 
For example, the volunteers up here this region befriended a guy who manages a game farm just outside of Gumare, maybe like 15miles out in the bush.  The first time we went out to the farm he is showing us parts of the fence around his game farm (when I say game farm it is an area of land that is fenced so people can come and hunt wild game like Kudu, Impala, etc….don’t worry it’s all licensed and regulated by the government) that have been torn down by elephants.  He is telling us how he goes back and forth with the elephants in trying to figure out ways to keep his fence up.  One time he even cemented the poles down so the elephants couldn’t push them over, but the elephants just broke the pole in half and walked through the gate!      
 
Another illustration is just today I heard that the Wildlife Department was auctioning off all types of animal skins like Leopards, Lions, Zebras, etc.  This is not something I am used to everyday so I naturally walked up there to see what’s going on and maybe buy a Lion or Zebra skin for my sister’s wedding gift (I thought it would be a nice rug for their new house or maybe up on the wall as a story about how they went hunting in Africa).  Unfortunately the auction was last week and everything was gone (don’t worry Jocie, there might be another one a few hours south so the hunt is still on).

But while I was there, I asked the Wildlife Officer where they got the skins from and he said they people shoot the wild animals when they kill their cattle or become a nuisance on their farm.
 
These stories are pretty specific and don’t even take into account the handful of times I have seen elephants on the side of the road just casually eating from a tree or the countless stories people tell me of elephants raiding their farms and buffalos crossing the game fence to mate with their cows (which by the way causes a disease that essentially has shut down this areas beef industry).     
 
So I kinda mean it literally when I say that Lions, Elephants, Buffalo’s, etc. are the Okavango version of annoying rodents.   
 
Other than the animals, the only other aspect of the Okavango that I should mention which you won’t get on Wikipedia is how spread out and small the villages are from one another and the resulting difficulty of people getting even the basic resources.  For example, Gumare is the largest town in my sub-district, and it only has 8,000 people.  The average village in this area, by my very crude estimate, is probably around 1,000 people if not less.  And most of these tiny villages are tucked away in hard to reach bush areas only accessible by dirt roads.  To make things worse, some villages are “overseas” (just over the river) and only accessible by a very slow moving barge and very rocky roads.

With this type of geographical layout, just getting to people in these villages is an all-day adventure, I couldn’t imagine trying to figure out logistics of building clinics, schools, water and power utilities in these areas.  I am not saying all of this shouldn’t and can’t be done, because it very much can and should be, but only to paint a picture of the vastness of the Delta region and the difficulties it creates in really every aspect of life. 

Yet, I am really enjoying being up here and couldn’t have asked for a better region in Botswana. Again, I recommend doing some google searches on the Okavango Delta to see just how beautiful it is up here.

That’s pretty much it for this post, I know it was short and not really detailed, so if you have any questions or comments please feel free to email at jefflyle30@gmail.com. Hope everyone is doing well.  

Oh, one more apology, sorry about not getting the pics up.  Flickr’s slow uploading has not been going well with my lack of patience, but I am going be home all weekend so will try to get some pictures up then.