Dispatch from the Delta: �Re ja ngashi Mister�
Thalefang Charles | Friday August 18, 2017 15:50
Navigating the Okavango Delta waterways with a mokoro is an advanced skill and only few men alive possess that skill. These waterways transform everyday because of the stomping elephants and hippos. Both of these animals that have found a sanctuary in this incredible wilderness are responsible for creating, opening and blocking these waterways, so even with a GPS it is not simple to navigate the Okavango Delta on a mokoro. That is why travelling through the Okavango with mokoro one needs a human GPS as a guide.
So in 2012 when the Okavango Wilderness Project leader Dr Steve Boyes, who is now a fellow at the National Geographic Society, decided to transact this wilderness on an extensive research expedition, he asked for a guide from the Bayei.
Bayei, who are said to have arrived over 300 years ago in the Okavango, hold the secrets of this wilderness. Over generations, they have learnt to survive through this wilderness and that is why Boyes even after working in the Okavango for years, knew that he needed to get an old timer, Moshupa Sayuruku from Jao Flats inside the Okavango to show him the way through these treacherous waterways.
Sayaruku, who is popularly known as Comet by his protégés, is one of the last generations of the Bayei that knows the Okavango by heart. Like many old men from this area, he is unsure about his age but he was born and bred on these islands. Sitting around the campfire Sayuruku, still full of life, narrates his roots: “Ke tsholetswe mo dikhuting tse, nkase timele, gope, le ha nka tsamaya bosigo,” (I was born on these islands, even at night I can’t get lost).
Sayuruku’s age mates have passed on with their rich Okavango wisdom, and it is now up to him to pass his vast knowledge to young people.
He says that the younger Bayei are not very keen to learn their roots in the Okavango Delta. But luckily there are people like Boyes who are dedicated on documenting the knowledge of the Bayei in the Okavango. Boyes has led four Bayei polers to the sources of the Cuito, Cuanavale and Cubango Rivers in the Angolan highlands so that they could understand where their water comes from. And every year since 2009 he has been crossing the Okavango Delta with mekoro on an uncharted route that was only known by the Bayei and he has amassed great knowledge of this area from its people.
Polers, Tomeletso ‘Water’ Setlabosha (my poler) from Jao Flats, the Kgetho brothers, Gobonamang ‘GB’ Kgetho and Leilamang ‘Snaps’ Kgetho, and Thopo ‘Tom’ Retiyo - the music man all from Seronga, are the only four known Batswana men that have ever travelled the entire Okavango River basin from its river sources to the mouth of Boteti River at Lake Xau using mekoro. The major transact they did in 2015, which was a comprehensive biodiversity survey covering the entire Okavango River basin, has been made into a National Geographic film that would soon be released.
But even after many years of crossing the Delta, these relatively younger polers and their counterpart pale river men from the National Geographic, still need the services of the older men to show them the way.
On this current expedition, there are seven Bayei river men, with Sayuruku’s son Nkeletsang ‘Ralph’ Moshupa and another old-timer, Moetiemang ‘Judge’ Xhikaebora.
Just after Jao Flats, the old timers Sayuruku and Xhikaebora, shot up front and led the way through the tricky route to a place called Mmadinare. This is the route that only expert guide could master and the old men says they know it by heart. They are the trailblazers and when it gets tough ahead they rise up and pole together, in what Bayei call ‘Four-By-Four’. Even the tough blockage we found on the Jao channel when we crossed over to Mmadinare could not stop them.
These river men, the polers, do not just push mokoro. After days of watching them maneuver narrow channels of shallow and deep waters, I have observed that their poling could be described as a work of art. There is an astonishing flair in how they sway and swing their ngashi (pole) that makes it a marvel to watch. It is a flair they say they have learnt while they were still children because all of them began poling mokoro when they were still children before they even started school – their school was the river and the lesson was poling mokoro, which is a life skill in this part of the world.
When they are busy pushing their way through the papyrus on wide open waters they usually say, “re ja ngashi Mister!” describing their art of poling. That is when they bring out their super physical strength and their impressive flair on driving the mokoro.
A key thing on travelling with mokoro through the Okavango Delta, infested with territorial hippos, monstrous crocodiles and, sometimes, unfriendly elephants, is the ability to detect lurking dangers in the water well ahead of the way. Understanding wild animals behavior is what separates expert polers from the chancers. This crucial skill is almost spiritual on expert polers because they would sense a hippo under calm waters before the animal could even find out that there are intruding humans nearby.
And even when they accidentally wake up the beast, they are physically fit and strong enough to outrun a hippo with a fully loaded mokoro. And when the confrontation gets desperate and the beast is not retreating, they have a scare spear to chase it away – but I swear some spears look like they would only tickle the hippo. Encountering a mad hippo attack is an unpleasant experience, but I always feel safe when I have an expert river man is steering because I trust them with their ngashi.
The National Geographic Expedition Team expected to reach Maun by August 21. You can follow the team’s real time updates at #okavango17 across social media.