Reflections on Summer Wildlife Ecology + Conservation in Gaborone, Botswana

The Summer Wildlife Ecology and Conservation program provides numerous opportunities I count myself incredibly lucky to have experienced: witnessing wild elephants, ostriches, zebras, giraffes, hippos, and others in their natural habitats; speaking with researchers, natural resource managers, and other conservation professionals; seeing the Milky Way rise above our campfire braai in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve; watching the sun rise and set on game drives in the Okavango Delta; and many more. In my opinion, however, the most impactful aspect of the program was the opportunity to learn from three knowledgeable and engaging local experts: our professors. Dr. Matsika, Dr. G., and Professor Mahupeleng are all experienced and respected conservation scholars, and it was a real honor and privilege to learn from them for two months. Our field trips to the CKGR and Delta were especially enriching, and it was wonderful to have professors accompany us on both.

Professor Mahupeleng (second from left) and Dr. G. (second from right) instructing my peers in the use of camera traps near the Tsau waterhole in the CKGR

Dr. G., as the instructor of the four-hour Introduction to Wildlife Resources, Ecology, and Conservation course, joined us for both field trips. Perhaps his most memorable moment was leaving us all in hysterics, weeping and gasping for breath, over dessert at the Xaoo Safari Camp in the Delta. But we will all dearly miss his jolly “hello guys” each day at the start of class as his low-top chuck taylors padded softly down the steps of our cavernous, lecture-hall classroom to the front row where we six students awaited the day’s energetic lecture. We will miss the patience in every “is it fine?” as he reiterated the basic principles of metapopulations and island biogeography, the earnest “are you winning?” as we wrestled with the petulant projector, and the half-sung “well done, well done, our clever boy” at the conclusion of a successful presentation. Ever-amiable, Dr. G. was central to our education and experience in Botswana.

Dr. G. (center) and Dr. Matsika (right) preparing to load back into our safari vehicle after fixing a flat tire in the Okavango Delta

However, it was Dr. Matsika, instructor for Wildlife and Society, whose charge we were in on the day the mystery alarm rang in 247, the alarm no one, not even the security guards and other building staff, had ever heard before nor knew what it meant. She would bound up the stairs of the classroom two at a time, and not only when an alarm was sounding. But most memorably, she led us around the village of Ditshiping in the Delta, translating the songs of the community choir: diphologolo ke makgabisa naga, “animal decorate the wild.” Animals ornament nature, animals decorate the landscape, animals beautify the countryside. I still haven’t decided my favorite way to translate my favorite Setswana phrase.

Professor Mahupeleng, myself, and Prince scanning the bush for the next waterhole

Last but not least was our dear Uncle Mahupeleng, our last-second, late-started substitute for Field Techniques. His lectures were enthralling, heavy with the poised potency of experience and received with enormous respect. This is a man who has held the head of a lion in his lap as its ears danced the telltale same-direction twitch of awakening from sedation. Who, on his first day teaching the class, disregarded the now-defunct syllabus of our originally intended instructor and instead described and diagrammed, among other topics, the boma method of passive hippo capture which he had used countless times in his various employs prior to professor. And, without another mention in the intervening five weeks, quizzed us about it on our final exam. He accompanied us to the CKGR, where he schooled us in spoor, the footprints and scat that serve as evidence of animal presence. Though back home I will never have to tell the tracks of a springbok from a steenbok or the scat of a kudu from a gemsbok, attempting to decipher the stories imprinted around each waterhole was one of the most enriching components of either field trip.

Our trip to the Delta was cushy and luxurious, almost mortifyingly so, but the Kalahari was beautiful and fascinating in the stern, arid manner I had expected. We rode out to and around within the CKGR in two separate vehicles, with Dr. G and three students and Philip, their driver, in one SUV and myself, two other students, and Professor Mahupeleng occupying the seats of Prince’s truck. Prince’s response to a woman in Kuke, as we started down the A3 on our way home from camping on the vast, vacant reserve, inspired an attempt at summarizing the experience:

Nnyaa, mma, ga ke na madi
We are just from the bush

We are just spun our isuzu d-max 4x4 spoor
     Into the sandy two-track
     Spanning from the Tsau Gate to Ghanzi

We are just broke camp
     Rolled down the windows, folded the tents
     Stomachs still full of last night’s moonlit braai
     Pap and chakalaka, perfect steak, grilled wings
     Eaten in the dim and flickering firelight with my
          bare hands
     Beneath a sky crowded with stars
     In the midst of the desolate Kalahari winter

We are just from the bush

We are just stood in the dust, at dusk
     Watching the soft molten sun melt into the veld
     And the sky against each low-slung horizon come
          tender pink and blue
     While the west holds fast to orange
     Below the setting sliver moon

We are just watched the gold savanna glowing
     When the low sinking light shines through
          the inflorescence of my favorite grass
     It looks like a field floating blonde
     With the empty halos of some ancient giant quinoa

We are just from the bush

We are just cut slices from the bush melon, tsamma
     Standing in the saline mud of Passarge Pan
     Watching the haughty gemsbok run off
     And the red-crested korhaan dive
     The lilac-breasted roller and bee-eater in the sky
     Little steenbok couples sitting side-by-side,
          batting long doe lashes
     Kori bustards, black-backed jackals, herds of
          springbok in the grasses
     The noble kudu bull rising solid from the veld,
     great corkscrew horns piercing the dawn

We are just straightened up from reading the spoor
     The giant wrinkled disks of elephant
     The unsymmetrical spotted hyena
     The great halved oval plate giraffe
     The twin Ds of the elusive eland
     Split spearhead kudu, dainty steenbok
     Raised spade in the center tsessebe
     The clawless three-heeled feet of cats, and
          the lion the largest of all
     The lion paw, as large as my hand
     The elegant dotted arch of man

That’s as good as I’ve been able to put it so far. I’m thoroughly grateful for the experiences I was able to have through this program, the professors from which I was able to learn, the peers I was able to learn alongside, and all of the staff and volunteers working hard to ensure we were well taken care of. These are only little glimpses, loosely focused, at what was really eight full weeks about which a lot could be said. But the best way to understand it is to go.