Chobe District (6)

In our last instalment, we had noted that in 1896 the Chobe area was rocked by the arrival of Rinderpest from East Africa. While this resulted in an immediate decline in hunting and pastoralism, it also had the short-term positive effect of reducing the prevalence of tsetse fly, which opened up new areas for grazing.

Between 1896 and 1902 the Swiss missionary the Rev. Edouard Jacottet published a three-volume collection “Études Sur Les Langues Du Haut-Zambèze” (“Studies on the Languages of the Upper Zambezi”), which provided grammars and extensive folklore collections in Chikuhane and Silozi languages, with French translation.