Boteti river flood welcomed by villagers

GALE NGAKANE
Correspondent | Friday June 11, 2010 00:00

 

But my exhilaration has got nothing to do with making a discovery, but the long awaited flooding of the Boteti River, for I grew up marvelling at its majesty, as it meandered along a previously dry riverbed and the miraculous change of life for everything and everyone next to it thereafter.  It went dry for the last time when I was 20 years old.

Everything changed for the worse. No more fish, except Lucky Star pilchards in their red tins. I could only glimpse the bright flowers and broad leaves of a tswii on tourist guide materials with a heavy heart.   A hippopotamus had to be shipped all the way to the Okavango after it failed to follow other animals, which went back with the river. 

Now, a middle-aged man I am reliving the years of my youth. Indescribably ecstatic is how I would sum up my feelings.

This year it is said to be 20 kilometres from my home village of Rakops and very likely to pass the village up to Lake Xhau that sprawls north and west of Mopipi village.

Lake Xhau can be a beautiful spectacle once the river is in flood. For bird watchers it becomes a paradise with a variety of bird species including the pinky flamingoes. The greenery is an endless expanse as if the turfs of all the FIFA World Cup stadiums have been stitched together by a master seamstress. 

The Water Affairs official at Letlhakane, who declined to make an official comment, referred me to his seniors in Francistown, who were not in the office, told me however that the river is now at Sukwane Two, about 20 kilometres from Rakops on the Orapa-Maun Road.  Most Rakops villagers with livestock travel on donkey back every now and then to tend to their cattle. That is how close the place is to Rakops.

My age-mates whose parents farmed at the cattlepost rode donkeys to Sukwane One and Two at weekends and during school vacations to imbibe creamy cool milk from the udder of a cow and perform tasks delegated them by either their parents or herd-boys.  As for the herd-boys, as soon as they have milked the cattle and ensured everything is in order with no animal having gone astray, they prance to Rakops on donkey back for pints of chibuku or scale of khadi and return before midnight.  The Water Affairs official said the water could have cascaded into Rakops by last week, but it was still filling up some by-pass streams and waterholes that were dug up by pastoralists in the dry riverbed. 

It is quite possible that the road constructors may have dug up sand on the riverbed too, leaving gaping holes that are now delaying the river from moving ahead. 'But there is plenty of water beyond Sukwane. It is just a matter of time before it reaches Rakops and moves past,' assured the official. 

In Rakops, the assistant sub-tribal authority, Diane Jacob is equally elated that the river is just about to make its presence felt in the village. 

Already he is thinking ahead. 'A lot of things are going to happen. Our lives are going to change very dramatically as used to be the case a long time ago when I was a boy. 

'There was plenty of fish. No one ever knew a thing called hunger. The river came every June. Around September it would be time for shisha (when crops in the fields have ripened and ready to be eaten).  'I believe it will be just like those days, even though these days to fish one will have to have a licence. We will buy the licence anyway,' said Jacob by phone from the tribal offices in Rakops.  He said as for the cattle, they were already  living it up with such plentiful water. No longer are they surviving on salty water that characterised the hinterlands west of Rakops.

A pastoralist to the hilt, Kgotaganang Kgakololo also from Rakops, is more than elated that at last the river has come at a time when Boteti, from Mokobaxane up to Makalamabedi has been declared Foot and Mouth disease (FMD) free. 'Good news for me though it (the flooding river) took longer than I expected and this will enhance the economic value of cattle in our area,' he said.

Boteti River, was a source of livelihood for residents. In the decade that the River has been dry, hardship was the order of the day for these people. While before they did not have to depend on rain to water their animals, this time they had to because the riverbed was bone dry.  

Before it dried up, Debswana drew water from Mopipi Dam using a pipeline to service Orapa. Because of its vast waters, holidaymakers used to visit the dam for recreational water sports.  It was also a source of livelihood for residents who caught fish in the dam. But nowadays the dam looks like a fossilised dusty patch and because of that, the new Orapa-Maun road has been constructed across the dam. Interviewed about the river in 2008, one of the researchers based at the University of Botswana's Harry Openheimmer Research Centre (HORC) in Maun, Dr Lapologang Magole, said the river could go up to Mopipi in two years (this year).  'You will realise that the river bed has been dry for too long and whenever the water comes, it gets sucked in by the parched earth. If it continues to rain the way it is doing, the soil will get soaked and when the river comes, it will not be swallowed by dry land,' she said then. 

According to Dr Magole, the first recorded flooding of Boteti River, especially at Rakops, was in 1849 and it was like that until 1899 when it dried up again. It was dry for one year but started flooding again in 1901, and for the next 27 years the Rakops riparian community lavished the water and its products, fish and tswii. 

The river dried up again in 1929 until 1940 when the flow was a mere trickle,  which saw the river drying up for the next eight years. In 1948 it flooded until 1972 and then it went dry in 1973. But between 1974 and 1982, it was flooded again. 

In the subsequent years, it was an on-and-off affair as in previous years. But between 1991 and now, it had been a painful period for residents of villages between Rakops and Mopipi who will sigh with relief once the river is in flood.