Seronga community loots own tourist camp
Thalefang Charles | Friday November 20, 2020 17:11
“Owaii! Mbiroba bae nyombile!” This was the response we got from a friend in Seronga when we were looking for a place to stay in the area recently. The saying is Ngamiland’s equivalent of “they have totally looted the place”. And now there is no accommodation, no campsite, nor guesthouse in Seronga – a big village where the Okavango Delta starts.
About a decade ago Seronga had a booming tourist camp called Mbiroba Camp named after the location next to it. With its lush green lawns under the shades of cool giant acacia trees, cosy chalets with thatched roof, big ablution area with hot showers accommodating overland trucks, large common area with a kitchen, and fully serviced campsite, Mbiroba was beautiful.
The camp was a successful community venture that was becoming the posterboy of the possibilities of what could happen when the community joins forces and ventures into the tourism business.
The place belonged to the Okavango Polers Trust (OPT), which was a 75-strong group of polers from Seronga, Gonutsoga and Mokgacha villages. OPT was established in 1998 when each member contributed P50 to uplift themselves from poverty through a tourism venture.
Tawana Land Board gave the Trust a nice prime riverfront plot on the eastern end of the village near the airstrip. The location was perfect for the main activity of the camp – mokoro excursions by the expert local polers, who were the trustees of OPT.
The Trust had received a ‘messiah’, a travelling New Zealander called Susan Sainsbury. She saw the potential of OPT and stayed in Seronga to become the Trust’s trusted business development manager. And most of the successes of the Trust were credited to her selfless hard work in uplifting a distant rural community far away from her home.
She applied for funding for the Trust and they received grants from European agencies and even the good old government’s Financial Assistance Policy (FAP).
The money was put to good use as they built chalets, ablutions, offices, and maintained the camp. They also acquired two vehicles, a Land Rover game-viewer and a truck.
Mbiroba Camp offered a very affordable Okavango Delta safari experience. The trustees (polers) earned money by taking tourists on mekoro excursions and taught them about their culture and tradition. The camp soon became popular with overland tourists who wanted to experience the Delta on a bargain budget.
According to one of the board members, Tom Rethio “the business was booming”.
“The community was learning a lot from Susan. She taught us customer service and we became good mokoro polers,” Rethio said.
But one day, one of the polers fought with Sansbury and the case ended up at Seronga police. Everything had started to die.
“Susan abo a thaamana le leloko. Kgaa ya teng ebo ere senyetsa sengwe le sengwe,” Rethio revealed.
The case between Sansbury and this one member, who Rethio is still scared to freely name, is the root cause of the rot at the Trust. Apparently, when the matter reached the police, eyewitnesses were so scared of the member and they all decided to not tell the whole truth.
After the fight, business manager, Sansbury gave the Trust a choice that it was either they kick out her attacker or she quits in protest because she could not work with the person.
No one in the Trust had the audacity to tell the controversial member to quit because apparently they were scared of being victims of black magic, so they let Sansbury go.
Initially after Sansbury’s sad departure, the 75 trustees thought they could run the Camp by themselves, but it was a complete disaster.
They then employed managers but no one had the patience and skills Sansbury possessed. They tried both expatriates and Batswana managers and things could not work out.
Rethio said Mbiroba went from bad to worse when they employed “bana ba mo motseng”. The trustees suddenly became more hands-on and too controlling of the day-to-day activities in the camp. And as the adage goes, too many cooks spoil the broth, the camp collapsed.
Rethio claims that they tried to lease the Camp, but the Tawana Land Board never gave them the original lease. He said all potential investors demanded the lease but they could not produce it and the deals fell off. Finally, tourists stopped coming because the place was chaotic and no longer hospitable. So they closed shop and waited for a miracle or another messiah.
But then came the coronavirus (COVID-19) and its lockdowns. And that is when the community finished off the camp. In the absence of human traffic, people came and vandalised the property, stealing everything that could be stolen.
When nothing was left to steal, they broke down the concrete to steal the doors, window frames, and staircases. The place currently looks like a warzone, bombed, shelled and left lifeless.
The two vehicles, the Land Rover game-viewer and truck, are at the homes of two trustees and they too are just dilapidating shells with nothing inside. Ba di nyombile.