The two seasons we had earlier spent at the famous sites of Toteng, had given us the earliest bones of domestic cattle and sheep in Southern Africa. And there was the earliest pottery in Botswana known as Bambata, which was used by some Late Stone Age people. The information acquired from these excavations required that we continue searching for herding traditions around Lake Ngami. There were many questions that the evidence from Toteng raised. For example, we had to address the question of how the environment of the Lake Ngami region was at the time that domestic cattle were introduced in Toteng. We had to derive how it was possible for cattle to be introduced in an area that is historically recalled as a tsetse fly zone. We knew that the bones of cattle and sheep at Toteng told us that the region had managed, somehow, to sustain herding.
Upon arrival at Mogapelwa near Toteng that winter, we were met with flies and the smell of the river. "Lake Ngami is filling up. The river has become alive again," exclaimed Kgosi Nkakobang of Toteng during exchange of greetings with his makgowa friends, Alec Campbell and Larry Robbins. The fish eagle, kingfishers and other birds had followed the river together with the flies. Cattle herders descended on the river with their stocks and fishermen with their nets. The region around the lake became a harbinger of forthcoming fortunes and disaster for the people of Lake Ngami. Herders became worried at the prospect of Tsetse fly and predators that would be attracted by the lake's water. The river also ushered in a new delicacy to the local people; fish, particularly the predatory cat fish and bream would become a new addition to the diet of the people around the lake. Fish soup would provide proteins to children and adults.
