Visiting Botswana 4

We drove past this vintage railway carriage in Gaborone quite a few times. It is on display at the National Museum, even though I didn't make it into the museum itself. The carriage is viewable from the road.

This Rhodesia Railways coach was donated to the Botswana Society by the then National Railways of Rhodesia in 1975. The coach was built in 1931 and is still in good condition, serving as a historical exhibit that allows visitors to see a piece of the era when Rhodesia Railways operated through Botswana.

Rhodesia Railways operated a vital railway line through Botswana (then the Bechuanaland Protectorate), connecting it to the sea via Cape Town in South Africa. This line facilitated trade and transport for both Rhodesia and Botswana. The 1931 coach is a tangible link to that period.

This railway line was an extension of Cecil Rhodes' ambition to connect Cape Town to Cairo, aiming to solidify British imperial control and facilitate the transport of resources. Construction began from Mafeking (in South Africa) in 1894, travelling north through Bechuanaland (Botswana) before reaching Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) in 1897. It provided a crucial link for the fledgling colonial territory of Rhodesia.

 

Visiting Botswana 3

According to Tripadvisor, "Flame of Africa offers fishing trips both along the Chobe River and up the Kasai Channel towards the Zambezi River."

There was even a floating restaurant on one of the boats, although, if I'm to be frank, none of the activities offered here was to my taste. For starters, even the floating jetty wobbled under my feet as we walked across towards the boats. No surprises then that my visit lasted for just a few minutes before terra firma beckoned; but it was enough time to memorialise the moment in rapidly snapped photos.

Maphorisa, my guide, suggested that he book me on what he described as a "game ride" on one of these open-deck vehicle things, the better for viewing wildlife out in the wild. But I declined. I'd had enough excitement for one day by then.

Moreover, I find myself more inclined in my thinking towards the ancestral African's attitude to the wildlife he shared the land with. Wildlife do not exist for the purpose of human entertainment, or human amusement. Save for studying them or hunting them for food, the animals should be respected and left alone. I have not and still do not consider myself to be just another run-of-the-mill safari tourist. So there isn't much appeal there. I already saw elephants, baboons, meerkats (for the first time in their natural habitat), and hippos, which were easily mistaken for logs floating in the river.

 

 

Visiting Botswana 2

Made the journey from Gaborone in the far south to Kasane up north, in the Chobe District, by road. Mainly for the chance to see the entire country, but limited of course to what was observable from the window of a vehicle proceeding at high speed on the A1 Highway, the main north-south artery, with stopovers in towns like Mahalapye, Tonota and of course Francistown, the country's second largest city. 

It was a whole day's journey, but well worth it when I caught sight of several herds of elephants as we approached Kazungula, only a few kilometres from Kasane. Our van came to a halt when a huge bull elephant stepped majestically into the middle of the road in what seemed like a show of declaring who the real boss is around here. Our guesthouse is in Kazungula where the bridge across the Zambezi River (constructed in 2014) is located. To walk on this bridge to the Quadripoint where the borders of four countries meet was always intended to be one of the highlights of this trip.

The Bridge

In the first photo is the confluence of two rivers. The Chobe River on the left and the Zambezi River on the right. In the middle is the Namibian island of Impalila. On the far bank of the Zambezi is Zambia. I took this photo from the Kazungula Bridge.

The Chobe River

The Chobe begins in the highlands of Angola, where it is known as the Kwando River. After entering Botswana, the Kwando becomes the Linyanti and forms the Linyanti Marshes. Near the Ngoma Bridge, the river emerges from the marshes as the Chobe River and flows east to join the Zambezi River near Kasane.

In Kasane itself the driver took me to some marshy land on the bank of the Chobe River that is rich in salt, which was clearly visible on the ground in its white form. And it was clear from the large hoofprints and the large amounts of dung in the area that it was frequently visited by elephants and water bufallo. Elephants and water buffalo are drawn to mineral-rich salt deposits for essential nutrients like sodium, calcium, and phosphorus, which are vital for their health and growth but often scarce in their regular diets of vegetation. (I took some photos of this marshy area and intend to do a different post on this. In this marshland, I saw bubbling springs of fresh water coming out of the ground and then flowing into the Chobe River. It is clearly one of the many similar sources of the river's water).

The Zambezi River

The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The river starts in Zambia, flows successively through Angola, Zambia again, borders Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, through Mozambique where it enters the ocean. The Zambezi River source is a bubbling spring in a marshy bog located near the town of Ikelenge in the Mwinilunga District of north-western Zambia.

Walking across the Kazungula Bridge from Botswana to Zambia.

And there I was, in person, right on the bridge, walking across the mighty Zambezi River, walking from Botswana to Zambia, across The Quadripoint. Seeing the four countries all at once was surreal. I had dreamt of this moment for years. First it was the Namibian island of Impalila to the left, then ahead of me was Zambia (the border posts for both Botswana and Zambia are on the Zambian end of the bridge). To the right was Zimbabwe, and behind me was Botswana where I was coming from.

I had not expected to see the amount of pedestrian traffic that I saw on this bridge, mostly Zambians who had crossed over to Botswana on foot, and by bicycle, and were returning home. They weren't very many, in truth, but they were more than I had expected. The majority of the vehicular traffic was composed of Heavy Goods Vehicles transporting cargoes across the continent. The Victoria Falls Bridge downriver from here has an 18-tonne axle load limit for vehicles, so the vehicles that come this way are huge, and as they drove past the wind swirled around me in the middle of the bridge. I nearly lost my balance several times and learned for the first time that I perhaps suffer from vertigo. There were also some smaller commercial vehicles, mainly from Botswana, ferrying people across to Zambia and back. I saw a few Zambian taxis too, but it was the individuals whom one said hello to on the bridge as we passed each other in the middle of having a shared experience that was the more memorable part.

 

A confluence of two rivers.

Visiting Botswana

I finally arrived in Gaborone after more than the 30 hrs it took to get here. There were delays by Air Botswana that meant I remained in Johannesburg for longer than expected. But I arrived last evening around 7pm Central African Time. My host at the lodgings has gone out of his way to lay on everything almost to excess. What I have seen of this city so far has lived up to my expectations.

Clear blue sky from horizon to horizon with not a hint of a cloud anywhere. I am informed by two reliable sources that no rain has fallen here since March of this year. This, now, is September, 2025, as the southern hemisphere is emerging from its winter. Daytime temperatures can top 33°C (91.4°F), but night-time temperatures plummet to 10°C - 11°C (50°F - 52°F). This is a difference in temperature similar to what obtains in other arid, or semi arid, regions with low humidity (dry air) and no proximity to large bodies of water to mitigate the heat loss - (water traps heat and cools more slowly than land). The absence of clouds also necessarily implies that the heat of the daytime freely escapes into the atmosphere at night, with no cloud cover acting as a blanket to hold back the heat from escaping. Overall it's hot and dry here, but not too harsh; nothing like what we see, for example, in the Sahel regions of West Africa. Here, after all, is outside the tropics; it is south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropic of Capricorn passes near Gaborone, the city is just south of the line, placing it just outside the tropics. Taking this drive out of town was only one of the items on our itinerary today. We did lots of other things besides, including my first solo adventure into a wineshop to make purchases while trying out a new language. Suffice it to say then that I'm having a lot of new experiences that I hope sometime to talk about.

The South Rift Valley, Bomet, Narok, Masai Mara, more.. and Naivasha (4)

The sun rising from behind the hill in the distance still shrouded in grey in the dull light of the dawn was the view that greeted me early the following morning when I partly pulled open the curtains of the window in the room at the guest house. Peter's slow, long steady breaths from under the covers in his bed in this double room we had shared indicated that he was still fast asleep, curled up in the foetal position. Neither of us had had much sleep the night before - there had been so many things to say to each other, to do together; so many things to laugh at and be joyful about; things to express sadness about, that the entire night had been barely enough to get through all of it. So not wanting to disturb him, I pulled the curtains close and stepped out on to the balcony gently shutting the door behind me.

Birdsong together with the fresh still cool highland morning air came as an absolute delight, highlighting for me why the early morning is my favourite time of day. From my vantage point on the upper floor of the building we were in, the views were stunning. I caught a glimpse of the Nyangores River glistening in the early morning light tumbling across the rocky terrain as it made its way towards the Mara River, of which the Nyangores is a tributary. The Mara is the major river in the region hence the famous Masai Mara Reserve. I had read somewhere that "mara" is the Maasai word for "spotted" or "mottled", a reference to the patchy covering of trees and shrubs that cover the landscape.

I was in the Rift Valley and Peter was only a few feet away. The feeling was one of sheer contentment and I couldn't help thinking how far away from the frustrations of job searching in London all of this seemed. If heaven exists, I thought, it must feel something like this. It was a moment in time that will remain with me for a long time.

Breakfast at the guest house was full-English. Toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, baked beans, cereal, coffee, tea, the works. It was the second time I was seated across a table from Peter over a meal, but this time, unlike the excited chatter over our late lunch the previous afternoon, we sat and ate in silent contemplation, staring at each other as we did so.

Perhaps he too was like me, marvelling at just how fortunate we were to be physically present with each other on this day, given that our association had begun when we were each located on different continents, separated by seas and deserts, by forests and mountains and plains, and by thousands and thousands of miles.

The journey from Bomet to Kaboson was done by each of us riding pillion on two separate motorcycle taxis known locally as boda boda, my rucksack strapped to Peter's back as we rode along. The riders manoeuvred the motorbikes down this unsurfaced road that meandered through brushland, farmland, villages composed of traditional homesteads made up of those uniquely beautiful Kalenjin huts, more brushland, up and down and around hills, with a hint of the odour of dung always faintly present in the background. And then there were the cattle, everywhere. Cattle, I was told are a very important aspect of the lives of the Kalenjin people, the native people of this place. Every man, including Peter, owns cattle.

As we climbed off the motorbikes upon our arrival at the family homestead there was a sense of homecoming that I found hard to explain, even though I was quite certain that no person born in Nigeria, as I was, had ever set foot in this place in Kenya that I was arriving at for the first time. The surroundings were unfamiliar, the language was one I did not know, but I felt at home nonetheless. Perhaps it was because I had been born and raised in Africa myself, (even if not in a rural setting such as this), but I was easily able to identify with everything I saw. Things were unfamiliar, but they were not strange. I must admit also that the fact that it was Peter's home made it that much easier.

As is typical anywhere in Africa I was warmly greeted  by those whom we met. I was welcomed and treated with the great respect that is customarilly accorded to visiting strangers. I too am African and the showing of respect and consideration for others, which is customary, came naturally to me also. I was pleased to see that all those decades of living in Europe had not robbed me of nor eroded that respectful nature intrinsic to all who have been raised in an African setting. True, I did not know their language, but they themselves were aware of this, acknowledged it, and spoke only in English whenever they spoke to me or addressed me.

It was easy to fall into the welcoming embrace of these gentle people and enjoy their warm hospitality. I felt almost as if I was one of them, a new member of their family.

We were in one of the several scattered homesteads that surround the small town of Kaboson. We had driven straight to the homestead so I had not seen Kaboson itself. Tomorrow, Peter said, he would show me around his farm (he insisted on calling it a shamba) and we would go and see Kaboson. And of course the Masai Mara  too. The evening  meal was ugali and vegetables with roasted goat meat.

Peter and I settled in for the evening, his room illuminated by the solar powered lamp standing on a small table in the corner. Outside, the evening air had become quite cool, but in here it was warm. And it was very cosy. And it was peaceful. And then we slept. And in this room I felt truly at home.

To be continued 

Tea crop

Nyangores River

Kalenjin hut

Author's note: Although some of the photos in this section are not mine, they are in fact a true depiction of the scenes that I have attempted to describe and are indeed photos of the very same places that I was describing. I experienced some difficulty in keeping my phone/camera well charged while I was in that area, and was unable to take as many photos of my own as I would have wished to. My sincere apologies to those whose photos these are. I did not know how to go about seeking permission to use the photos. But I've only used them to help tell my story.

The South Rift Valley, Bomet, Narok, Masai Mara, more.. and Naivasha (3)

An hour after leaving Narok we descended a hillside as the road wound its way steeply down into a broad valley. Down below in the valley ahead of us was the sprawl that was Bomet. I knew this because a few minutes previously, the young man seated next to me had in response to my query informed me that we didn't have much further to go. Approaching Bomet, we pulled up at a police checkpoint where a stern faced policeman clutching his rifle, paced down the side of the vehicle peering through the windows, strangely staring down towards the feet of the passengers, probably searching with his eyes for some contraband that may be concealed beneath a seat. But this didn't interest me as much as the conversation that was taking place up front between the driver, still seated in his cab, and a policewoman, who, also armed, had sidled up to him. I observed the driver hand to her for inspection a small bundle of documents, which I presumed to contain his driving licence and other official documents for this commercial vehicle.

The policewoman shuffled through the documents, seeming to closely scrutinise one or two of the papers. Then a currency note suddenly slipped out from the bundle and dropped to the ground. It was clear that the driver had placed some money among the documents to be discreetly extracted by whomever it was who was police officer who asked to inspect them. This policewoman seeing that her treasure had dropped, moved her foot gently to step on the currency note, moving her leg as little as possible. A fairly strong breeze was blowing so I understood why she would have been determined to keep the money firmly pinned down with her foot until we had driven off. Seeing this, I chuckled involuntarily, and I saw that some of the other passengers too had noticed what had happened, given that the man seated behind me had gone very quiet. He had since the commencement of this journey been talking ceaselessly into his phone, but now with stretched neck, he too was silently watching through his window to see what this policewoman would do next. 

And then, as if to get us out of the way, the policewoman quickly handed the papers back to the driver, and with a wave of her hand signalled that we were free to go.

So we drove on further into this valley, surrounded on all sides by hills splendidly covered with neat farm terraces that made for some spectacularly beautiful scenery. I was somewhat annoyed that by this time the battery power on my Blackberry, which had so far doubled faithfully as a camera, was so low that recording these lovely scenes in pictures was no longer possible.

Shortly afterwards, finally, we entered into the quaint little town of Bomet, the capital and largest town of Bomet County. This seemed a smaller town than Narok, but it exuded an aura that accords with its importance as an administrative capital. Just a few hundred metres down the one main road in the town and the bus turned left into the crowded bus station. We had arrived at last, this was where I would be getting off the bus before it continued on its journey to Litein and then onwards to Kericho. And Peter would be here somewhere close by, awaiting my arrival.

Except that he wasn't.

It was only after a nervous 30 minute wait seated on a bench outside a cobbler's stall by the dusty roadside that I spotted Peter in the distance approaching. He had seen me before I saw him, I could tell this from his intent stare in my direction. The battery on my phone was now completely flat, and it had been impossible for me to inform him of my arrival, and of my location. In truth he had arrived at the bus station even before I did, but he had been waiting at the opposite end of the bus station from the end at which I was seated. He had been waiting at the exit, while I was seated by the entrance, across the bus station from where he was.

We were meeting for the first time, but it felt more like meeting a long-lost old friend. The handshake was firm, the smiles were warm, the glint in the eyes was exciting and told of many exciting experiences ahead to be shared. But first things first.

I had omitted to make a certain payment at the hotel in Nairobi before I left, and had received notification of this by text message during the journey. I was to make this payment by M-Pesa, the mobile-phone based money transfer service pioneered in Kenya with which I was unfamiliar. It fell to Bernard to put me through my paces, so the first thing we did together was to cross the road and enter into the Bomet branch of the Agricultural Finance Corporation, the government credit institution in Kenya that provides credit solely for the purpose of developing agriculture. They are also a M-Pesa agent. Having successfully carried out the transfer, there was the opportunity for me to have what turned out to be a very informative chat with the official who had attended to me. In our conversation he gave me some real insights into the work that they do financing local small-scale farmers. It was a predominantly agricultural community, he explained, and I left  his office with a greater understanding of the agricultural scenes that I had observed on my journey here.

When this was all sorted out it remained for us to find a place to retire for the remainder of the day. The plan was for us to spend the next several hours in town here.  Tomorrow, we would relocate to his home in a small community off the main road about  43 kilometres from Bomet, close to the Masai Mara Nature Reserve. So we checked into a guest house in town that Peter had recced beforehand, but found to my mild annoyance that on arriving at the room we had been allocated, the cleaning lady was still in the process of completing her task. Proceedings, therefore, were to be postponed until later, so we put down my rucksack and set out to find lunch.

Saruni Camp Masai Mara

(To be continued)