A summer safari in Botswana

Tuesday. 18:30. Warm but breezy. Short, light showers bring a coolness to afternoons in the Okavango. The early rains have arrived and so have the red-billed quelea that migrate here every season to feed on the grass seeds. Individually, quelea are tiny; barely distinguishable from the vegetation; but in flocks of a hundred or more, they flutter into existence like beauty marks on the horizon. A flock shimmers across the late afternoon sky, which is bubble gum pink but burning in rouge where the sun cuts through the clouds. We were on the lookout for leopards concealed in the thickets, but the quelea have drawn us out of some future sighting and into the current moment.

In, out, in, out; the flock seems to breathe like an organism. It swells and collapses, the individuals moving as one, low and slow over the sand. The shape is reminiscent of a sound wave, or a strand of DNA, coiling around itself infinitely. ‘The formations confuse the reptiles, their predators’, guide John explains. Of course, I think to myself. Beauty in the bush always serves a purpose. 

As we bounce along the sandveld, raindrops collect on the windscreen of the car. A light wind sends droplets to our cheeks and the air cools from balmy to breezy. ‘Do you smell that?’ John asks, slowing the vehicle to a halt. I do. The scent of death resurrected by the rains, mixed with the earthy aroma of wild sage. In moments we spot its source: a juvenile hyena toying with a bone. ‘Impala. Recently killed’, John reckons. Somehow that scent doesn’t bother me out here. It’s a reminder of where I am.

Saturday. 17:00. The muggy air is being misted with a light rain. The dry Savuti Channel, now the colour of golden grass, will, in a few weeks, be brilliant and green. 

‘Roll it up! Roll it up!’ Elvis urges Frank. I’m in the vehicle with some of the Savuti staff, with Elvis as our guide. Earlier when the showers began, we unrolled the clear tarp to keep ourselves dry. But now that there’s a pride within our view, no-one could care less about getting a little wet – including the lions. 

Elvis ties the tarp in place and the dusk light, with motes of dust in its rays, shines into the vehicle. I hear Rachel and Linda giggle as the rain hits their cheeks. A gentle tshhhhh engulfs us as the rain falls. 

The matriarch of the Channel Pride awakens from her snooze and saunters right in front of the vehicle. Behind her, the rain has refracted a faint rainbow onto the sky, hazy behind the foggy curtains of drizzle.  ‘Ten, eleven, twelve’, says Elvis, counting the felines as they follow their ‘babysitter’. The number keeps going up as their tawny forms take shape in the turpentine grass. 

We follow the pride to a circle of bluebushes, where they flop down to rest, the adult females drifting in and out of sleep. The rain draws the smell of petrichor out of the earth and the cubs roll about in the damp grass. 

The sun is glowing a violent pink now, dipping slowly towards the horizon, and thunder begins to rumble in the distance. For a moment, I’m so distracted by the sky that I forget about the lions entirely. Until – 

‘A male’, Elvis breathes quietly. A large-maned beast pads towards his pride, presiding over them like the king that he is. One sub-adult plays a little too roughly with a cub, and a female has to step in and hiss at him to behave. As the rain pours out of the sky, their fur becomes spiky, each hair rising to a fine, wet tip. The slow bubble of thunder in the air sounds remarkably similar to the rumble working its way up the male lion’s throat. He shuts his eyes against the rain, drops his head against his chest, and falls asleep.  

Sunday. 19:00. A storm is forming in the far distance. Clouds roll in slowly over Vumbura’s green floodplains and unpredictable rains punctuate the game drive. 

‘Hang on!’ guide Tsono yells over his shoulder. Wads of thick, grey cottonwool are pouring their contents out over the distant plains. We bound towards the airstrip in search of the Kubu Pride, racing against the fading evening light. 

‘I feel like a storm-chaser’, Mikkel, another guest laughs, looking at me through raindrop-covered glasses. Tsono reminds us of the ponchos in the vehicle and we lose ourselves in their folds for a good minute or two, before our heads make it back to the surface. 

Flash. A bolt of silent lightning splits the distant sky in two. Jagged electric orange light shoots off from the first bolt like fault lines in the earth. ‘Did you see that?’ Tsono asks. How could we not? In between our attempts to capture the lightning on our phones, Mikkel and I stare at the sky as though we're seeing the ocean for the first time. 

Then, there they are: three adults and four cubs, running along the dirt road towards us under a mosaic of broken sky. A voice crackles over the radio ‘Kudu. Chh. South side. Chh.’  We follow the pride into the thicket and find their prey standing to attention. 

‘They’re disoriented’, Tsono whispers, as the kudu look from left to right. ‘The rain and breeze have confused their senses. They don’t know where the lions are coming from’.

‘There! There!’ Mikkel points to an opening in the thicket. The kudu scatter in front of us, but the lioness is nowhere to be seen. A cub bursts out of the trees, sprinting clumsily towards the long-gone kudu, and I see Tsono laugh and shake his head knowingly. ‘Really?’ he says. ‘You ruined the hunt, little one. You have a lot to learn’. 

Tuesday. 18:00. The rains come down then disappear, over and over in the space of a few minutes. 

I’m alone with Tsono this time, trying to outrun the lightning. We’re headed for a small lagoon where a mokoro is waiting for me. Once again, I lose all sense of direction inside my poncho, and Tsono has to reach in to pull me out by my K-Way hat. 

Another guest is nearby, headed to the mokoro station in a separate vehicle. She has a huge smile on her face, and a poncho too, laughing as I attempt to make notes on the wet, bumpy ride. As we pick up speed to beat the storm clouds, we glance at each other conspiratorially, two explorers in the rain. 

Sand scrapes against the underside of the mokoro as we push off into the lagoon. The water splashes as the poler, City, skilfully turns the dugout. The grey-blue clouds overhead sigh with a light drizzle, and I hear the tick-tick-tick of raindrops falling onto the brim of my hat. As it nears sunset, rays of yellow-pink light cut through the clouds on the horizon, their light reflecting off the ripples made by the boats. The slosh made by City’s nkashi, the long wooden pole he uses to steer, lulls me into a daze. 

As Tsono cruises past us to lead our fleet of two, the thousands of lily pads around us rise and fall with the wavelets. I reach my hand out to brush the reeds as we pass by: thin, green towers with clinging Angolan painted reed frogs so tiny I mistake them for leaves. 

City’s fingers dance over the lily pads and he gently lifts a stem from the water. He shows me the clear, gelatinous substance around the roots that the BaYei would use as ‘sunscreen’. I wonder how many millions of stems are lurking beneath us; how many mokoros have crossed this very lagoon; how many BaYei and Mbukushu have poled to the islands to harvest the fruit of the jackalberry trees. When City places the lily back in its place, I watch the undulating ripples for as long as I can as they move towards the shore. 

When the rain stops, the absence of its sound is immediately felt. We disembark from our boats and I watch as the water settles, mirroring the clouds above. The sun smoulders from behind the tree-line, and I’m surprised to learn that only fifteen minutes have passed while on the water. Looking back on the lagoon, turning black as the light fades, already I long to be back in the mokoro, gliding slowly between the waters below and those falling from above.