Botswana Beauty

We finally got to see some Botswana beauty last week. Cathy, the regional director of WUSC, was nice enough to take all of us up to Maun and Shakawe for an “educational trip”.

I got to see Jason and Sabrina again, the 2 volunteers that I met at the beginning of the trip. They went up to Shakawe to work with TOCaDI after first week of orientation and it was really nice to see them again. I also met a new girl, Giulia. She is from Sicily, studies in the UK, and currently working on her master thesis trying to find out whether developing tourism will have any impact on the San communities.

The whole week has been so eventful. We visited a San community and bought jewellery made by them; we climbed the Tsodilo Hill, a World Heritage Site full of rock paintings drawn by the San people thousands of years ago; we visited Shakawe, the northest part of Botswana bordering with Namibia, we hiked on a trail that TOCaDI is working on, rode on a donkey-cart from one village to another, watched villagers perform traditional dances, slept in tents right by the Okavango Delta with the sounds of hippo, woke up the next morning and depart on a Mokoro boat right by where we slept, and ended the trip with a game drive in the Moremi safari.

The purpose of this trip was for us to experience Botswana culture that we wouldn’t be able to see otherwise in the capital city. At the same time, it was also for Sabrina and Jason to get feedback on how the whole trip itinerary would be like. ToCadi is an NGO developed to help with community-based tourism in the delta to ensure people in the villages know their rights as well as using their resources appropriately. What we did last week, would be what the tour operator would bring tourists through in the future.

It is so interesting to be able to see the beginning of all of this. I remember one of the guys saying to the villagers, “This is what tourism means. People come visit our village and we show them our culture.” There are awkward moments when both sides didn’t really know what to do or what to say. But that’s okay, we are all learning. The community we visited felt as though they weren’t as prepared as they could to show us all their culture. We were also worried whether we were acting appropriately and wanted to make sure we weren’t intrusive in the way we entered the community. Everything on this trip was so real and raw. No other tourists, no tourist traps, no people getting drunk. Being in the middle of villages and the wild just felt so surreal at times. In a way, it’s sad to know that this place might not feel the same anymore after tourists start visiting from all parts of the world.

As a country that has depended its last 40 years of development on its mines, the government of Botswana has come to realize the importance to diversity its economy. Expanding its tourism industry is one of the biggest areas that they are focusing on right now. Some guys from the Department of Tourism were on the trip with us. It was very interesting to hear them talk about the need to have Maun accept international flights, to have BTC to be able to route international collect calls, to ensure communities are protected and not exploited by tour operators, yet not too controlling such that they give enough room and freedom for the private sector to thrive as well.

All in all, it was such a good experience and we all had so much fun on the trip. We owe it big time to WUSC and Cathy for giving us this opportunity to see parts of the country that even the locals have not had a chance to.