Life on the Floodplain

My friend, researcher, and fellow Etshan, Jamie has been kind enough to let me follow her around on some of her interviews. She is researching environmental change and how these changes affect people; more specifically, how the changing flood patterns are affecting the  livelihoods of the Etsha community members, who often rely on natural resources from the floodplain.  In recent years people have been flooded out of their homes and fields, and the government response has been varied. These interviews have been fascinating and my understanding of the Bayeii and Hambukushu cultures I'm living among has increased tenfold. They have also given me peak into the daily lives of my community and the opportunity to catch some of it through photographs. The following pictures are from interviews that occurred just outside Etsha 13 and Etsha 6 at families 'lands.' Family units in Botswana traditionally have three homes: their home in the village, their aptly named cattle post, and the 'lands' where they farm.

This is an old Bayeii man. The Bayeii are people of the Delta, a small minority among Batswana. Speakers of their language are diminishing (most Bayeii children I know speak more Setswana than Seyeii) and government policy favors moving them out and away from their 'traditional' land near the water.

This is a Bayeii woman standing outside of her molapo, or floodplain field.  Just beyond the fencing in the background is a main channel of the Okavnago Delta. Her plot is about 5-7km outside of Etsha 6 village as the crow flies, but this channel of water must be crossed, so the pathway we took in a vehicle was about an hour drive. Women are traditionally responsible for maintaining and harvesting the crops (while men do the plowing to first prep the soil). Most people dry land farm throughout Botswana and even within the villages along the Okavango Delta.Rumor has it the land along the panhandle and western side of the delta is being reserved for tourism development, meaning that these floodplain fields are less common. The thing that struck me the most about the molapo field was the color of the soil- dark brown, very different from the sand of the dry land plots.

This is a reed hut at a family's 'lands,' Reeds and grasses used for these structures are collected from the delta. While mud huts are still quite common in this area, reeds and grasses make up a large portion of shelter materials. In town, there is also a move towards cement houses, but the reeds and grasses are still quite commonly used as roofing and fencing materials. 

The kids have been on a school break for the past few weeks, and during these breaks, children often go back to their home villages, visit other family members, and/or come out to the cattle posts and lands to help their families.  

A young girl walking back from the 'lands' through the floodplain. We were walking through about 6 inches of flood water. The floods are in their upswing right now, and from what I saw last year, peak  around June/July. The water in the delta comes from the Angolan highlands, and rumors say that there has been a lot of rain there this year. But Botswana has had drought-like levels of rain this year, so flood level predictions are uncertain.