Books I Read While in Gaborone

Before coming to Botswana I did a bit of research into the nation’s literature, wanting to read up on a country I knew relatively little about. Not particularly interested in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, I cobbled together an alternative program of novels about Botswana and Africa more broadly. I know there are many I missed, but here I wish to provide brief reviews of the eight books I did get through just prior to, during, and just after my time in Botswana, in case future students are interested.

1. When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head

This is the one book I would recommend to any student coming to study abroad in Botswana. When Rain Clouds Gather is the first novel by Bessie Head, a South African who moved to Botswana in her late 20s and became arguably the nation’s greatest novelist. This book is crucially of and about Botswana more than any other I read and could appeal to most any reader. A relatively brief and easy-to-follow narrative, the novel centers around a pair of romances at the intersection of agriculture, tradition, and climate. I picked up my copy on sale from the Van Schaik bookstore in the UB Student Centre and read it on the drive up the A1, A3, and A33 to Kasane.

“Ah, but happiness, anyway, was dirt cheap in Botswana. It was standing still, almost in the middle of nowhere, and having your face coloured up gold by the setting sun.”

I couldn’t find copies of any other Bessie Head works to read, but am interested in her novels Maru and A Question of Power, as well as her short story collection The Collector of Treasures.

2. The Lost World of the Kalahari by Laurens van der Post

This book is an account of Afrikaner Laurens van der Post’s 1957 expedition into the central Kalahari Desert in search of the “African Bushman,” also known as the San or Basarwa peoples, with whom he had been fascinated from childhood. Though at times perhaps falling prey to the paternalistic “noble savage” trope from which one may expect such a narrative to suffer, van der Post demonstrates, on the whole, a genuine respect, admiration, and affection for the Bushman, and recognition of the wrongs done against the Indigenous peoples of Africa by Europeans. I was pleasantly surprised by the generally broad-minded and reasonable perspectives exhibited here. This book provides an engaging adventure-exploration story across what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and is beautifully written throughout: 

“Just beyond the hills, the plain levelled. Three amazed giraffes in harlequin silk watched us go by, and suddenly far below we saw vast herds of game grazing up to their chins in the grass between the sparkling mopane forests and the pink and mauve mists drawn up, steaming, from the molten marshes.”

I chanced upon this book in a used bookstore in Alabama just prior to leaving the US, and this was the first I read while in Botswana. Laurens van der Post wrote many other books, among which The Heart of the Hunter most interests me, though I have not yet been able to procure a copy.

3. Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens

American ecologists Mark and Delia Owens ventured to Botswana and deep into the enormous, arid, uninhabited Kalahari Desert in the 1970s to study its wildlife. Cry of the Kalahari, published in 1984, is an account of their years living within the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and conducting their research. As a student in the Summer Wildlife Ecology and Conservation program, the subject matter of this book was particularly interesting to me. I found the storytelling often overdramatic and sensationalized, and the evident ignorance and lack of interest in the Batswana, Basarwa, or any other local peoples somewhat off-putting. However, I appreciated their descriptions of animal behavior, particularly of lions, hyenas, and jackals. During our trip to the CKGR we did not see any lions or hyenas, and did not have the opportunity to lay up, allow animals to grow accustomed to us, and observe their behavior. It was pleasant to read about that here, and to imagine myself returning to Botswana in the future to contribute to some real research. I bought my copy of this book upon seeing it on sale in the Exclusive Books in Airport Junction, and read it on the way to and from Maun.

4. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

This is a very pretty book, and a very powerful book. I first read it for English class in high school and remembered it as a very pretty book, and a very powerful book, and so revisited it before traveling to Botswana. Set in Johannesburg and the South African countryside, it was published in 1948, a few months prior to the formal establishment of apartheid. The novel deftly addresses the social consequences of the destruction of tribal society and rural communities through a tale of sorrow and hope. I love its pacing and voice:

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.”

5. Things Fall Apart and 6. No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

Though set in Nigeria, which is quite far from Botswana (all the way on the other side of the equator), Things Fall Apart is widely acclaimed as the African novel. It is not long, and worth reading, if for reason of its well-deserved reputation alone. No Longer at Ease is a sequel of sorts, set several decades later but working a similar theme of cultural conflict to an equally disheartening conclusion. This latter novel also features strong parallels with Cry, the Beloved Country. I have had a copy of Things Fall Apart since way back and read No Longer at Ease from the library prior to coming to Botswana, but could not find a copy of Arrow of God, the third book in Achebe’s “African trilogy,” anywhere. I imagine it is worth reading too.

7. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This book is set in the Congo, which is again, very far from Botswana, and furthermore totally ecologically distinct. I found a copy in Clarke’s Bookshop in Cape Town the weekend before we left Africa and bought it so I would have something to read on the long plane rides home. Heart of Darkness is of course a classic, and I had read it before, and found it once again to be rather anticlimactic. It is well-written, to be certain, but in my opinion promises more than it delivers.

8. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

This book is also set in the Congo, and I read it upon returning home because I knew I could follow it with Prodigal Summer or Demon Copperhead, something that would assist my literary transition back to the southeastern US. In this novel, the family of hard-headed patriarch Nathan Price undertakes a calamitous Baptist mission in the Congo in the months leading up to its independence from Belgium. The story is engaging and well-told. In my opinion, Kingsolver errs in detailing an exceedingly and unnecessarily drawn-out resolution, which makes an already long book even longer. A good novel and worth reading sometime, but this book did not speak to my experience in Botswana in any particular way.

On the whole, I would recommend When Rain Clouds Gather to anyone studying abroad in Botswana, The Lost World of the Kalahari and Cry of the Kalahari to the wildlife ecology and conservation students in particular, Cry, the Beloved Country as the foremost novel of southern Africa, Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease as two great novels of Africa more generally, and Heart of Darkness and The Poisonwood Bible as supplementary readings set in Africa. I did not get a chance to read Maru, A Question of Power, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, God’s Bits of Wood, A Grain of Wheat, or Nervous Conditions, but understand these to be among the best and most popular novels of Botswana and Africa more broadly.

Special mention goes to A Field Guide to the Mammals of Botswana and Wildlife of Southern Africa, the two field guides I used for the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation program. Wildlife of Southern Africa has the advantages of not being limited solely to Botswana, and of including everything: insects, arachnids, fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, mammals, fungi, grasses, wildflowers, and trees. Mammals of Botswana has the advantages of spoor (footprint) drawings, the Setswana name for each animal in addition to the English and scientific, and being well-written and genuinely humorous. I bought a copy of the former at Exclusive Books in Airport Junction but was borrowing the latter and need to find a copy somehow.