Again, to them, it is an area with extremes in both landscape and weather. It is a very high plateau of hamlets, villages, townships and ports of entry, built on land that has an average height of 1,000 meters above sea level.
Measuring 2.5 million square kilometres in size, the regional Kalahari Desert is huge, so much that a sliver of it covers more than 70% of Botswana. This sandy savanna which is sometimes labelled as the world’s largest surface covered by sand, is synonymous with western Botswana.
This is because it defines it and lies along it as a natural obelisk farther than the eye can see. And it is a place scorchingly hot in summer, frigidly cold in winter and dry almost all year round.
Despite the vagaries of its geography, to its people, it is home. For the rest of us, able to peer at it as a compelling place, it may be the truest measure of where Botswana was and has become as a nation. These matters, about a place and our relationship to it, may prompt us to think anew about our nationhood, particularly every time our republic marks its birth.
Depending on your choice, there are many ways of experiencing western Botswana. I did mine by driving right through it, leisurely and mindfully. But each time I made a planned stop, I felt a slight unease of the area not just being too calm to be true but of the whole world (my familiar world at least) being left behind, the more I drove into the Kalahari Desert and its inhabited portions. Then when the scenery was quiet for what one can expect from a vast and sparsely populated land area, for the first time doubt slipped through the cracks of my resolve and I questioned if I should continue forward. Yet I did, propelled by curiosity and a desire to stretch the limits of my reflection in one of our country’s unlikeliest places.
When traversing western Botswana, I find it difficult to avoid feeling a subtle sense of wonder mingled with pleasure. How different it is now for the barren, isolated and impassable place it used to be before it became what it is! Now, it appears to be slowly becoming a preferred place, typified, among others, by the number of tribal land applications by members of the dominant tribes that reside on the peripheries of this hardscrabble area. As if in perpetual defiance, year after year, it keeps giving us its thunderbolt flower and sore eye lily that respectively and marvellously bear blossoms of red and light yellow. Indeed, out of its hardiness has crept attractiveness and desirability to meet it on the way.
Sixty years after dismissing western Botswana as having the ‘least development potential’ (their words), the elite of the colonial powers has revised itself and recast it (in their words again) as a ‘major underutilised resource’ of the country. Try to recall the parallel with how Botswana itself was viewed by the colonial elite and then had that view revised just after independence. Try to imagine how the rest of this country would be if this ‘underutilised resource’ was harnessed. To me, to understand this country now is to continuously see its western part with eyes that dart between the old and the new and also to make the connection between this particular area and the rest of Botswana.
Of course western Botswana is not a paradise any more than other parts of the country. Climate change is affecting the quality of life there, in a place where living in, perhaps even loving it, is hard enough, especially for those not born into it. Droughts there are becoming common, longer and more intense. Wildfires are prone to be widespread and burn large patches of its savanna. This burning, deliberate or accidental, is surely making its air toxic and it may only be a matter of time before its adverse effects on the health of its residents are felt. Then through the scenes of everyday life, and the apparent displacement of some of its residents and the conversations of people there, it becomes inevitable to be appalled by the levels of poverty and inequality in that area. Unavoidably heartbroken, you realise that these levels are a repudiation of the promises of this nation, of a better life for everybody everywhere in Botswana. After this realisation, it becomes natural to extrapolate these levels to the rest of the country. While this extrapolation is easy, it nonetheless still haunts.
An American friend often tells me that irrespective of the purpose of his visits to Botswana, every one of them is a holiday for him. I always tell him that I believe that his view is deducible from western Botswana or at least that the area is the backdrop for his impression. Picture a sandy expanse of land with unobstructed views unique to the place; an enchanting stillness stretching for kilometre after kilometre; and the simplicity and functionality of most of its homes, with few overwhelming the area’s topography, and you will always have vacation time in Botswana! In its unique and improbable ways, paradoxically nature has been generous to western Botswana. In turn the area has become an open book for the rest of the country.
For the urbanite, the deep sounds of the Kalahari Desert may unsettle you until you become accustomed to them. The leisurely pace of doing things there will not only stifle your sense of urgency but will spontaneously call on you to escape long enough to catch your breath. Anyhow, the area’s cultural dancing and religious observances will offer you a surrealistic romp through how others live their lives. The boldness of some of the area’s attire and how it unfurls on each wearer is a visual recharge. Actually, if you allow it, western Botswana will show you that revelry, cultural rendition and worship are more than an antidote to the anxieties of life. They can be performed in ways that do not require bright lights and in languages that are not the official language of a country.
Transmit, adapt or remould these to the rest of the country and you have Botswana.
Western Botswana takes you right to Botswana! Happy Independence Day.
#Radipati is a regular Mmegi contributor
