Well above the water African Fish Eagles in white feathered hoods watch from the trees, Green Pigeons with breasts as chartreuse as a spring shoot get fat on.. sycamore figs and… Saddle-billed Storks sail on wide wings that audibly push the air aside. Both birds have a view of water lilies, deceptive flowers which define the tranquility of the surface and deny the presence of hippopotami. Tons of ill -tempered meat which levitate just below the lily pads, the hippos rise and make calls that Paul Theroux aptly describes as blasts on a tuba played under water. But these comic calls are deadly serious warnings. Male hippos are extremely aggressive about territory and will kill any male hippo, including babies that come too near. As a result female hippos that give birth to males must leave the pod and raise the young male in isolation, hiding under the floating grass and living on the edges for three years. If the baby is a girl, the mother stays with her pod. Back on the quiet surface the lily pads are deep green and they fill with water and silvery light. The bloom of the Lily is white or violet, a strange shade that seems to be from the invisible part of the spectrum. Surprisingly, the reverse side of the pads are deep vermillion. Looking up through the water from the hippos point of view, the pads look like deoxygenated blood cells floating in sky blue plasma. From the bow of a mokoro, a hand hewn boat that is poled through the shallows, the Okavango looks like a doubled world. Gliding silently in the Okavango is like drifting between parallel mirrors that touch at the horizon… confusing up with down delightfully. I spent a few days riding in a mokoro, sketch book in lap, drawing the Delta as it passed by.
“August 11, 2009: Botswana, Okavango Delta, Crane and Waterbug.” Pencil on Paper, 9″x12″.“August 9, 2009: Botswana, Okavango Delta, Grass Snake and Skull.” Pencil on Paper, 9″x12″. “August 11, 2009: Botswana, Okavango Delta, Water Lily.” Pencil on Paper, 9″x12″.“August 7, 2009: Botswana, Okavango Delta, Vervet Monkey.” Pencil on Paper, 9″x12″. “August 9, 2009: Botswana, Okavango Delta, Red Lechwe.” Pencil on Paper, 12″x16″. Sometimes Matsaudi Noga, my guide and companion while in the Okavango, would pole us through the grass to one of the protected islands of the Moremi Game Preserve to take a walk. On the soft sandy shore the islands are green and shady. But only a few steps in, the island becomes open savannah fit for grazing wart hogs. Dry conditions, sandy soil and…marauding elephants, which trample and tear at the plants, favor grasses and keep larger trees well spaced. As a result, the gestures of trees are often silhouetted against a simple ground. Line and flat shape are more pronounced than volume and shading. And rhythm is more apparent than equilibrium.One wonders what role the landscape played in forming the visual traditions of African people, whose art is distinguished by clear contour, strong shape and rhythm. The Delta is wild and to visit it is to travel back in time to the world before human ascendance. But the primacy of the landscape is an illusion. This is a national park, managed well by the government of Botswana. It is tempting to think of this place as a primal landscape—a cauldron of life that bubbles and boils on its own, assuring renewal. But it’s not. Its wildness and isolation only emphasize the fact that humankind now manages the entire surface of the earth. Every scrap. There are no redemptive Edens left. There are only parcels of wild space that are dependent on managers for upkeep. But maybe it’s incorrect to think of ourselves as the managers of landscape, since this suggests some sort of hierarchy in which people live separately, somehow above it all. Instead, maybe our actions within the land have become so critical to the maintenance of the ecosystem, that it is more correct to say that we are intertwined with landscape as never before in human history. And our fate and the fate of the Okavango are one and the same.

Near where the women once slapped and wrung the laundry, lives a Python. I heard of her at a picnic, days before I set up on Woman’s rock to paint. She comes out of her home under the rock during these winter months to sunbathe. Although innocent of eating babies and livestock, she provokes stories of deadly Python encounters like the story of the missing truck driver who stopped to pee. A policemen found his truck idling on the roadside and went to investigate. The feet of the truck driver were found protruding from the mouth of an enormous snake. The moral, said the story teller is not to pee under low hanging branches.I set up my easel on a crest of barren rock. The air was clear and bright and one could see the gentle curve of the horizon as if standing on the deck of a ship looking out to sea. From here I could see the Python should she come. In a moment of distraction, I would miss the first glimpse of her behind a rock. Silently she slid to me, condemned by god to make tracks like a river in the sand. She bit me over the kidney and threw her first coil over my shoulder to trap my arms. I fell from her weight and as we rolled she wrapped me up like cable on a spool. Her coils trapped my arms before I could reach for my pocket knife to saw at her side. She tightened her grip each time I exhaled. Her mouth opened, her jaw unhinged to put me inside her, the course lubricated with hideous quantities of mucous.
I never saw the snake, but fear of her fired my imagination like kerosene. I began to paint in earnest, wondering how I could use the willies to make a good picture. The distant horizon was placed high on the panel with a stroke of turquoise tempered by ochre. For thorn trees a few green dots were scattered across the plane and a knife on edge made blades of dry grass. I imagined the Python below my feet, huge and turning. Woman’s Rock was drawn like her side pushing up through the flat plane. To my right a man appeared on a rise of rock a hundred feet away and he called and waved as if I knew him. I returned the wave and continued to work. He paused and watched and looked around. Soon, two young men came up on my left. The older man also advanced. I was alarmed by being approached from two sides. My adrenal glands gave a squirt and I imagined a knife. They spoke to me in Setswana and I said that I only spoke English. To this, the older man said through broken teeth, “Five Pula, drink”. Pula are the local currency, so either he was asking me to give him money for a drink or he was offering to buy my water. Optimistically, I offered the water. Wrong, he wanted the money. The other men were still and watched with interest. I patted my pockets and said “no Pula”. He did not look happy and he did not back away, but continued the negotiation and brought the price down to “two Pula”. One of the younger men kept a heavy pair of pruning sheers on his shoulder. I saw the bludgeoning. The other held his body obliquely to mine and kept one hand in his wind breaker. A memory of being mugged on the Brooklyn Bridge came to mind. Something was needed to keep this engagement positive. I had a very showy new camera hanging from the easel, a big red back pack at my feet and I’d just been to the cash machine, so I offered them my lunch. They took all but one cookie, which I made a show of keeping to maintain the pretense that we were sharing and having a spontaneous picnic. The men sat to eat and I squatted with them. I was scared but also angry at losing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If only they’d asked nicely! Slightly amused by the vehemence with which I defend good manners, I kept the tone light and told them of my friendship with Rre Motsewabeng, the farmer who owns Woman’s Rock. With this information the tone seemed to change. Was it that they could not rob and injure me because I was no longer alone and anonymous? Or were they relieved, no longer apprehensive of me, a stranger, since I had proven a local connection? Fear of the unknown, the Python, made it difficult to understand.