However, with the hills that have been around for thousands years and also possess beautiful artefacts, one would expect to find residents of Tsodilo living better and using their heritage site to change their lives. Tsodilo remains a settlement with a handful of people. Recently, the Tsodilo Trust in collaboration with the National Museum, the Ministry of Youth, Gender, Sports and Culture, the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Chobe Holdings and other stakeholders hosted the Tsodilo Hills Heritage Walk in order to promote tourism at the village.
Addressing the gathering, the deputy permanent secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) Masego Mooketsi, urged the Tsodilo community to preserve and look after their heritage sites. Mooketsi applauded them for this year’s theme that focused on conserving their heritage. She said it is a good thing that the residents through their trust and leaders united nearby villages such as Etsha 1 to 13, Sepopa, Xamasere, Ikoga and others. They came up with management strategy as a way of conserving and removing risks that would negatively affect their heritage sites. She encouraged them to continue with such strategies so that they could earn a living through those heritage sites. “Also bear in mind that people from the museum are there to help you conserve these heritage sites with the regulations and guidelines that are already in place to help take care of these sites. You are on the right track of taking care of your heritage sites because they are too many. I have been told that there are about 4,500 rock art paintings found in 400 locations. This is a great task that needs knowledge, researchers who will help with knowledge that you convey to tourists. That knowledge should be able to be traced back. That information has to be preserved,” she said.
She also said it was important to learn from other organisations that deal with the similar project as the Tsodilo Trust. She called them to call on researchers, to share their knowledge with them so that they could document and give them relevant information. Mooketsi also said they must add value to existing information. She also told them to add value adds such as record centres, statistics, product diversification, restaurants and other places so that people do not just know the venue with the walks. She said that would increase tourism in the area, as everyone was not interested in walking. She called them to increase their teachings about Tsodilo Hills.
She further called on them to be more independent saying when they seek assistance; they must seek better aids than taps and others. She called them to benchmark on other trusts. For his part, Kgosi Kelebetse Keasheta explained that Tsodilo was linked to many villages. He said lack of roads hindered the growth of the village and developments as they were in a very bad state. He called on the government to build better roads so that more tourists could visit their heritage sites. Furthermore, he applauded the Trust members for hosting the event with the little funds they had saying he was confident that the event will be bigger and better next year.
