The plight of people of Okavango: But their land is beautiful!

Lewanika Timothy | Tuesday April 22, 2025 14:49

The initiated would know of the political manuscripts of Alan Paton famous for penning “Cry The Beloved Country,” which starts off with the narration of a road running from Ixopo into the hills etc etc etc. But Paton is also the author of a book that depicts a beautiful South Africa soiled by racial segregation entitled “Ah But Their Land is Beautiful”.

It is from this headline that the plight of the people of Okavango can be better understood.

These are the thoughts that run through the mind of anyone who has sojourned in the Okavango or traversed its width and breadth. The place is nothing short of an oasis, a land so remarkable it leaves one lost in thought with its captivating serenity.

But what benefit is this miracle of ecology if the people that stay in it don’t experience a better life or a life half as beautiful as their surroundings?

Flying into the capital of the Batawana land, the village of Maun surely gives away what is concealed in the northern part of Botswana. Maun welcomes you to a refreshing breeze of nature, with its oceanic soil.

But travel deeper, beyond the safari lodges and the glossy postcard scenes, and the picture begins to shift.

Travel to the villages beyond where nature exhilarates the soul and there the agony starts. In the villages hard to pronounce for many Batswana like Kauxwi, Takaro and Gudigwa.

Here, in the heart of this villages, poverty quietly but firmly takes root. The very communities that live among the Delta’s riches — who call this land home — are too often left behind. Poor infrastructure, limited access to healthcare, and scarce economic opportunities weigh heavily on the people of the Okavango.

It’s a contradiction that strikes hard. The landscape lifts the spirit, but the reality on the ground softens the heart with sorrow. It is this tension between nature’s grandeur and human struggle that lingers long after the journey ends.

Journeying from Maun to Seronga through a caravan aircraft is an exciting activity, as one gets to see through the lenses of the divine what nature looks like in its totality. The curved Okavango Delta that brings life to the North and its many channels from the skies look like a magnificent work of art, one carefully curated by forces of nature.

But the beauty fades as one lands in any of these villages, such as Seronga which is a village in the Okavango Panhandle. One can see in the faces of the natives that having something in the hand to eat is, a challenge. The village is a community of men and women who are clearly grateful for each day that comes, but the lack of sufficient opportunities to create wealth.

The homes here are simple and mostly built by hand. Some are traditional rondavels made of mud and thatch, others are square structures of cinder blocks and corrugated iron — often half-finished or patched with whatever materials are available. Yards are fenced with branches of trees as in the olden days before modern towns and cities. The branches are designed not to keep much out, but just to mark a piece of land that’s theirs. There are no paved streets. No streetlights. Just sandy paths that emit dust.

The people of Seronga carry the weight of their environment in their eyes. Their faces are mostly pale, not just by sun and heat, but by patience — a quiet endurance shaped by decades of being overlooked. Many of the older women sell handcrafted baskets or firewood. Young men gather in small groups during the day, not because they are idle by choice, but because there is simply no work. Opportunities are scarce, and those who find jobs often leave — to Maun, to Gaborone, to anywhere but here.

There’s a sense that time moves differently in Seronga. The village is rich in culture, in community, in stories — but poor in almost every measurable way. The irony is sharp: surrounded by a globally celebrated natural wonder, yet struggling to access even the most basic services. And as the sun sets over the floodplains, casting golden light across the land, one truth lingers unshakably: their land is beautiful — but their lives deserve better.

Going deeper into smaller villages like Eretsha is even more wounding to the soul, as if moving into another sombre chapter where the poverty gets more buffeting.

Eretsha is a couple of kilometres away from Seronga and the road there is bumpy and bad. But when you get to Eretsha, the road becomes a soil track with many stones.

This week, during the handover ceremony of two modern classrooms by local tourism giant, Wilderness Safaris, it was mind blogging to hear that a school of 299 pupils has been surviving with only four classrooms.

The chief there, Kgosi Boitshwarelo Mosenyegi, shared that the people of Eretsha were a people without proper healthcare, whose kids had no classrooms and whose sick patients had no complete health post to turn to.

He shared that the people of Eretsha were a people with little job opportunities and a people without electricity to keep the lights on during harsh winter nights.

“This village has many problems, our children don’t have enough classrooms to learn, and their teachers don’t have accommodation to stay at. Even the head teacher lives in a house without electricity,” he said. “There is no electricity in the schools and our health post remains incomplete.”

The legislative representative of the people of Okavango East, Gabatsholwe Disho, was quick to add that the plight endured by the people of Okavango has been long and taxing, an injustice sketched from the day the country gained Independence.

“The situation here is dire,” he told Mmegi. “Our people don’t live the same life others live in other parts of the country. “Yes they can get employment from nearby lodges and safaris, but it is not enough.”

As if poverty wasn’t harsh enough, the people of Eretsha and Seronga live with yet another quiet hardship; the constant tension between survival and wildlife. Here, in a region celebrated globally for its biodiversity, the boundary between human life and the wild is thin.

Elephants roam freely, sometimes crashing through fields of maize or trampling gardens that families depend on for food. In the early mornings, tracks in the sand tell stories of night-time encounters — not all of them without consequence.

“Last season, we lost almost everything,” says Kgosietsile, a farmer in his late forties, pointing to a patch of land once green with crops. “One night, just one and the elephants wiped it out.”

Predators pose their own threat. Goats and cattle, essential sources of livelihood, are often taken by lions or leopards, especially during the dry season when prey becomes scarce in the wild.

Yet communities like Seronga have few means of protecting themselves. Fences are expensive. Compensation for losses is slow, if it comes at all. And despite their proximity to high-end safari zones, these villagers live with the risk every day — without sharing meaningfully in the rewards of wildlife tourism.

It adds a cruel dimension to their reality. The same animals that draw visitors and conservation funding from across the globe are the ones pushing families deeper into poverty. And yet, remarkably, there is no bitterness in most of the voices here, only weariness.