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 Journeys to Botswana and Zimbabwe

By Howard Wayne    (c) 2006
jewishsightseeing.com, August 8, 2006

PRETORIA, South Africa—Mary and I have recently returned from a weeks’ trip to Botswana and Zimbabwe.  We went to the former to see the elephants and the latter to view Victoria Falls.  Of course we saw a lot more.

Our flight from South Africa landed in at the Victoria Falls airport in Zimbabwe, where we joined a long line of travelers, each of whom was required to buy a visa to enter the country – payable in US currency at $40 per person that day.  Since our goal was Chobe National Park in Botswana, the visas we obtained there were immediately cancelled once our bus reached the Botswana border.

Botswana is one of Africa’s success stories.  It was organized as Bechuanaland by the British in the late 1800s to head off expansion from the south by the Boer republics and from the west by the Germans from what was then German Southwest Africa (now Namibia).  It gained independence in 1966 and is the longest-running multi-party democracy in Africa.  A small country of less than two million people and largely desert, it has achieved relative prosperity from diamond production and, more recently, from safari-oriented tourism.[1]

We stayed at Chobe Safari Lodge, where prominently post signs read “Do Not Feed the Monkeys.”  Mongooses patrolled in front of our hotel room, which featured a balcony looking out on the Chobe River.  We were advised to keep the doors between the balcony and the room closed when we weren’t there because the monkeys, which were swinging from the tree in front of our balcony, would invade the room.  Ugly warthogs burrowing into the earth were also on the grounds.

The two animal watching opportunities are game drives in an open truck in the morning and game cruises on the Chobe River in the late afternoon.  Both go into Chobe National Park, a 10,500 square kilometer (about 4,080 square miles, or a little larger than San Diego County) animal preserve.  Across the Chobe River (which flows into the Zambezi River about 12 kilometers downstream) is the Caprivi Strip of Namibia, where animals are not protected.[2]

En route to our first drive into the park we encountered an elephant on the side of the road devouring a tree.  Elephants eat an average of 150 kilograms (about 330 pounds) a day and have poor digestive systems.  Much of what they eat is not absorbed, but goes into massive piles of elephant dung that baboons scavenge through looking for food.  On entering the park we saw the results of elephants feeding – wholesale destruction of trees.  Elephants are at-risk throughout Africa, except in Chobe, where there are between 90,000 and 120,000 of them.  That number seems to exceed the carrying capacity of the park.  Culling (i.e., killing) some of the elephants is a controversial proposal to control their numbers; birth control is also being considered.

The elephant herds are composed of females and their young, led by a matriarch.  The males are solitary and seek out the herds only to mate.  Elephants have a gestation period of two years and young elephants are vulnerable to predators.  Their mothers may care for them until they are about four.  An elephant may range up to 12,000 pounds and live for 60 years.  At maturity, with their size, tusks, and thick skins, they face little risk from other animals.  

In our two game drives we saw buffalo, but only at a distance.  They do not mock charge vehicles – if they feel threatened they will simply come at you and the vehicle might not outrun them.  We saw stately giraffes eating leaves from the branches of trees.  They are about 17 feet tall with rectangular markings.  The males are usually shorn of the top of their horns because they have worn them out fighting other males.  We saw one older male giraffe (as they age the males become darker) move from eating leaves to a salt lick.  By spreading its front legs the giraffe lowered its head to the ground.

Throughout the park were antelope like creatures, mainly impalas.  A herd features one dominant male, whose job is to guard the herd, many females, and some younger males.  At a certain age the younger male impalas are forced out of the herd and form bachelor herds.  The bachelors, when not eating, spend their time play fighting to prepare to challenge a dominant male for control of the herd.  While those fights can be to the death, the challenger usually wins because he has been eating and the dominant male has been so busy watching out for predators that might threaten the herd that he lacks strength.  If the former dominant male survives he joins a bachelor herd and prepares to return to power.

Even more interesting were the game cruises.  We got onto relatively small boats and sailed up the Chobe River towards uninhabited Sedudu Island.[3]  The boats sail right up to the island for the best views of the animals.  We saw herds of both buffalo and elephants there.  During the dry season, which last until about November in Chobe, the buffalo migrate to the island for the season and the elephants will cross over to it daily.  Amazingly, elephants can swim.  Also along the island were pods of hippos and crocodiles.  The crocs sleep with the mouths open as a way of staying cool.  We got close to the remains of a dead baby elephant and some very fat crocodiles.

The river bank was redolent with varieties of birds.  One of the passengers had a book on the birds of southern Africa – the place is a birder’s delight.

As sunset approached we saw herds of elephants coming down from the park to the river to drink.  This is typical conduct during the dry season. They stand shoulder to shoulder, protecting each other, while their trunks go in an out of the water.  Some elephants frolicked in mud holes; mud is both a way of cooling their bodies and an insect repellant.[4]  As the sun went down the boat positioned itself along Sedudu Island so that we could see the sun setting behind a herd of elephants.  It was truly one of the most compelling sights of our trip to Africa.

We returned to the city of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe – being required again to obtain an entry visa at the border - and stayed at a nearly empty modern hotel.  The scarcity of tourist is in part due to the repressive political situation and in part due to the unrealistic official exchange rate of Zimbabwe’s inflated currency.  While the “Zim” dollar was officially pegged at about 100,000 to the US dollar, the real exchange rate was four to five times that much.  The official rate was a joke, but one played on visitors.  The hotel would only accept Zims if the currency was accompanied by a bank certificate showing it had been obtained at the official exchange rate.[5]  The nearby stately old Victoria Falls Hotel would only accept Zims from Zimbabwe nationals.  Everything else was payable in hard currency.  The government had a similarly jaundiced view of the Zim.  At the border a sign announced that heavy vehicles were assessed an extra fee payable only in “hard currency.”

There is an air of desperation in the country.  When we ventured down a path towards Victoria Falls we were accosted by the most aggressive hawkers I have yet encountered who offered us carved animals at reasonable prices – but only in US dollars.  When I offered to pay another group of hawkers in Zims, they laughed and told me their currency was worthless.  It is the only money I have ever seen that carries an expiration date.[6]

Many Zimbabweans have illegally immigrated to South Africa, and they often take jobs at the bottom of the economy such as street hawking and “watching cars.”  Hearing South Africans complain about illegal immigrants taking jobs away from locals is déjà vu for a Californian.  There may be as many as five million Zimbabweans in South Africa.  Many of the people we saw in Zimbabwe were unduly thin.  Some of the hawkers appealed to us to buy their goods even if we didn’t want them so they could feed their families.

Zimbabwe’s economic decline became precipitous around 2000 with the uncompensated seizure of white-owned commercial farms.  Rather than being redistributed to black peasants, the farms were awarded to leading members of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) party who had neither the knowledge nor the willingness to work the farms.[7]   The country is now required to use part of its foreign exchange to import food.  Six years of economic decline have cut gross domestic product by 40%, halved per capita income and created the fastest shrinking economy in the world outside of a war zone.  A brake on the printing of Zims is that the government is running out of money to buy ink.

Nevertheless, a local newspaper reported the sale of a twin-turbo Mercedes Benz S600, supposedly the first of its kind in Africa, for $130,000 in US currency.  The purchaser?  A former member of parliament for ZANU-PF who said he has to celebrate his success in business and “one of the ways of doing that is to buy the latest models of cars.”  The newspaper noted that due to corruption, “every evening long lines of people walk home from work . . . because they cannot afford bus fares, while a fortunate few cruise past them in expensive cars.”[8]

We did see Victoria Falls, but only after paying a mandatory $20 fee each (in US currency, of course) to the government.  David Livingstone was the first European to see the Falls (in 1855) and is honored with a statue there.  The Falls are divided into several parts.  Looking at Victoria Falls, the leftmost portion is called Devil’s Gorge.  Adjacent to it is a large portion of rock which it is estimated will be eroded away in 45 million years.  To the left of that is the Main Falls, which is bordered by Livingstone Island.  In approaching the Falls for the first time Livingstone spent a night on that island.  We saw people picnicking on it.

On approaching the Falls one is advised to wear a poncho or carry an umbrella.  The crash of the Zambezi River onto the rocks below creates a constant mist that drifts at you.  At some points it is like walking in a rain forest.  Beyond Livingstone Island is Rainbow Falls.  A spectacular rainbow is visible when the sun shrines through the waters.   Finally one comes to Horseshoe Falls where the water at the bottom appears to be boiling away.  There is a drop of more than 100 meters.  The rest of Victoria Falls is in Zambia and not visible from the Zimbabwe side.

Shortly downriver from the Falls, over a gorge, is a bridge that connects Zimbabwe to Zambia.  It is more than 100 years old and is used both by cars and trains.  It also provides an opportunity to bungee jump about 111 meters – two children of a friend of ours took advantage of this, as did the 57 year-old husband of a nurse who works at the US Embassy in Pretoria.

We left Zimbabwe the following day.  The immigration officials at the airport wished us a speedy return; tourism is one of the few sources of hard currency.  This country is going to go through some difficult times before things become better.