Navigating a Living Landscape

This scientific transect is part of work supported by the Okavango Eternal partnership between the National Geographic Society and De Beers to protect the Okavango Delta’s vital ecosystems.

National Geographic Explorer Steve Boyes reads On the Origin of Time beneath the stars in the Delta. During the expedition I noticed Steve nearly always put his tent a little farther away from the rest of us, toward the wilderness. I never asked him why, perhaps because I felt the same pull. The book on cosmology theorizes that the laws of the universe haven’t always been fixed, but have evolved over time as the universe has. The Delta is a similar reality: Seasonal floodwater arrives from Angola, termites build islands, wildlife reshapes the landscape, and all the while human understanding of the system accumulates across generations. The Okavango is its own universe, and protecting it means continuing to build our understanding of the processes that shape it.

Before setting off each day, transect team members gathered for two morning rituals. A safety briefing for the day’s journey, followed by a prayer. I came to love that moment. For a few minutes each morning, before whatever the Delta had in store for us, everyone stood together in silence. Out there in a landscape none of us could control, it felt like an acknowledgment that we were part of something larger than ourselves. Transect expeditions require the team to rely on each other for weeks at a time, forming deep bonds between the scientists as they gather data to better understand the ecosystem, and local team members whose Indigenous knowledge helps bring everyone through the Delta safely. The morning prayer became part of that shared rhythm: a moment of mutual respect, for one another and for the wild space we were moving through.

Toward the end of my time with the team, we encountered an elephant herd crossing a channel directly in front of camp, quietly waiting as the animals moved around the tents and continued on their way. Standing there while these enormous animals chose their own route around us made the idea of sharing this landscape feel very real. The Delta forms part of a much larger connected ecosystem through which elephants have to be able to move, often crossing through land used by people. For us, this was a brief and privileged encounter. For people living in and around these landscapes, sharing space with elephants is part of everyday life, with all the beauty, tension, and practical consequences that can bring.

For Wayeyi (a community native to the Delta who hold profound knowledge of its ecology) wildlife expert and National Geographic Explorer Gobonamang “GB” Kgetho, the Delta is a world inhabited by his ancestors. “They shaped this land, and the land shaped them, and we all play a role in this.” There was something in the way GB spoke about the living world that stayed with me long after we stopped talking. He is a master poler, navigator, and knowledge holder whose reading of water and wildlife helps lead the team safely across one of Africa’s most complex wetland systems. In his presence, the mokoro (a traditional canoe used in the region) becomes more than transport: it’s a way of life he knows cannot be taken for granted, and that he is determined not to let disappear.

For most of the team, the fire marked the end of the working day—except the photographers. I loved those evenings because the work and the life of the expedition started to overlap. People would talk around the fire while Laone (another local photographer on the expedition) and I edited beside them. Some of the most meaningful parts of the expedition happened in that in-between space: not quite fieldwork anymore, not quite rest either. The science had paused, but the storytelling hadn’t.

While we were moving through this enormous wetland, some of the clues to its health were small enough to sit in the palm of a hand. Moments like this kept changing my sense of scale—from the vastness of the Delta around us to the almost invisible lives that help tell us how that system is doing. Tiny creatures like this damselfly larva have different tolerances to changes in their environment. On these repeated transects across the same areas of the Delta, their presence, absence or abundance gives researchers an idea of the ecological health of the Delta and helps build a long-term baseline for monitoring environmental change.

Traveling with local guide Oreneile Yeni, I realized how differently we were experiencing the same landscape. I was often drawn first to its beauty while Oreneile was also noticing what was edible, what was ready, what should be left. I loved that. It made me feel how much I was still only beginning to understand about the place I was looking at. While gathering jackal berries to dry and take back home to his family, he stressed that taking from the landscape comes with responsibilities—plants mustn’t be damaged and it’s important to only take what you need. “We have to leave some for the animals,” he said. “We share this landscape with them.”

As it was my first time in the Okavango, I found myself gazing at animals I had never seen in the wild before. A few days in though, I noticed I was looking at them differently. They were no longer just beautiful animals, but evidence of how the whole system was functioning around us. Saddle-billed storks (pictured) rely on floodplain habitats to feed, and in the Delta the seasonal pulse of water inundates dry land, bringing insects and fish, then bird numbers follow. These storks standing in a few centimeters of water are here because of all the interacting elements of flood timing, water depth, prey availability, and the structure of the wetland around it.

Working alongside Laone Chombo, a local photographer along the transect, reminded me how differently a story can open up when someone is documenting a place they belong to. He noticed things, understood references, and connected with people in ways I simply couldn’t as an outsider. I don’t think that makes one perspective more valuable than the other, but together they felt much richer. Laone’s role on the transect team is to bring what happens on the expedition to global audiences through social media—connecting people to Botswana’s wildlife, landscapes, communities, and stories.

Laone Chombo is an alumnus of Storytelling Clubs, another initiative supported by Okavango Eternal.

Like the landscapes it’s part of, life in the Delta relies on water being crystal clear and nourishing—keeping it that way requires one of the best natural filtration systems on the planet. As we moved through the Delta, I kept seeing these almost otherworldly landscapes in the crystal-clear shallows beneath us. When I got the chance to look beneath the surface, what seemed like clear, empty water from above opened into this dense living world. We might think of algae blooms as a pest that overwhelms water systems, but here, under the right conditions, algae are part of the machinery of the Delta. Together with other aquatic plants, they trap fine sediment and nutrients, provide habitat and food for aquatic life, and oxygenate the water through photosynthesis.

I’d been warned about the hippos before we set off, so at first, I admit being slightly nervous about close encounters like this. But traveling with GB made me see them differently. He speaks of the animals in the Delta as part of his ancestral world, and that sense of connection seemed to shape the way he read the landscape around us. He would notice signs I would never have picked up on myself—a ripple of disturbed water, a sound in the reeds. This is why local guidance is so important. GB knows when to stop, wait and give an animal space, drawing on knowledge shaped by generations of people living here.

Tjadza “Pretty” Tapologo first joined the expedition team in 2021 as a mokoro poler, but for the last two years she’s become the expedition chef thanks to her training at the Okavango Cooking School. Being of Kalanga descent, Pretty didn’t grow up poling mokoro, a skill more common among the Wayeyi communities who live inside the Delta. She learned after moving to Maun, a nearby town that acts as a tourism gateway to the Delta, where she got her poling license in 2015. “It [helps] myself, my kids, and my family,” she says, as cooking and poling give her income and independence, and she also guides tourists around the Delta when not cheffing on expeditions.

I’d been talking with GB about the Wayeyi community’s relationship with the Delta and what it means to be part of a living landscape. He suggested I follow mokoro poler Lasty Kedisa (pictured) as he went to collect wood. Looking at the back of the camera afterwards, it felt like the photograph had somehow given form to the conversation we had just had. Having grown up in Boro village (situated on the Boro River on the Delta’s southeastern edge), Kedisa learned to pole from a young age as he was taught traditional skills passed down through generations.

Poler Goitsemodimo Manja’s daily water collections were one of those small routines that showed how much the crossing depended on everyone doing their part. The water was collected nearby and filtered for the team’s use, allowing the expedition to remain largely self-sufficient. Manja never formally learned how to pole a mokoro—as a boy, he watched other people and gradually taught himself. For Manja, the annual transect is therefore both fieldwork and livelihood: Knowledge learned informally in childhood has become a skill that provides paid work, while the money earned in the Delta supports the life waiting for him at home.

This content is supported by the Okavango Eternal partnership between the National Geographic Society and the natural diamond company De Beers.