The safety message served its purpose, I had been warned about a specific danger and how to manage in “the unlikely event of a water landing”. More importantly, I had been given notice that I’d entered a new sphere of knowledge about which I knew very little. Over the course of a week, Matsaudi and…

the manager of Delta Camp, Lenamile Baikgodisi, provided instruction in bush literacy. Listening to them, I often thought of the people who over centuries through trial and error had created this useful body of knowledge, and I wondered what chapters had been lost to time.

After a week in the Okavango Delta, I traveled a few hours to the Tsodilo Hills, an elbow and knee of bedrock that sticks out of the Botswana sand sheet. Inhabited by humans for over a 100,000 years, the hills have been consecrated with 5000 rock paintings and a three dimensional image of a Python, believed to be one of the world’s first sculptures. These artifacts are a trace of people who lived lives with days that had a rhythm filled with actions that had a reason. What were their lives like? How did they get through the day? And again I wondered what knowledge has been lost? Perhaps there is an echo of an answer in the following images from Tsodilo Hills and fifteen tips on bush survival provided by Matsaudi and Lenamile.

1. If you find a warthog hole in the morning, do not stand in front of it. Knowing that lions have a habit of waiting outside for their morning debut, warthogs back into their holes at night. In the morning the hogs shoot like cannon balls out of their dens, breaking the legs of anyone unlucky enough to stand in the way.

2. If you surprise a leopard, do not make eye contact. It will pounce on your back for the offense. Pretend not to notice, look away and slowly move out of the area.

3. If an elephant gets a whiff of you and is feeling grumpy, he will charge or mock-charge and you must make a quick determination of his intentions. If it is a mock-charge, the animal will raise its head and flap its ears as it moves toward you. If this is the case, slowly back away. But if the elephant trumpets, lowers its head, tucks its trunk between its legs and flattens its ears, it is a real charge and you will be lashed with the trunk, gored with a tusk and stomped into chutney.

4. If an African buffalo charges, there is nothing to do but run. Old male buffalo get tired of roaming with the herd and live a sedentary and solitary retirement. If disturbed, the old male will either flee or charge. If he charges, run and climb a tree, but be sure to climb the side of the tree opposite the charging beast, since he may not stop but slam full steam into the tree.

5. If you need to improve your scent, the San people, aka Kalahari bushmen, recommend wild basil as an excellent perfume.

6. If you love a girl, go directly to her and tell her how you feel. She will say come back tomorrow. When you return the next day, she may say, “I forgot about it” and tell you to come back again tomorrow. This may go on for months, if she is too shy to tell you how she feels. You may need to send an emissary to get an answer.

7. If you urinate and it’s too hot (a sign of STD) use the wild asparagus plant, called Mabele, translated from Setswana as “tits of the goat” because of its utter like shape. Dig the root of the male plant, which is thinner and longer then the female. Chop and boil while fresh. Mix with the bark of the jackalberry tree or the feverberry tree and add wild sage. Boil together and drink for three days.

8. If you have an infected wound, use the buffalo thorn (Ziziphus Mucronata) to heal it. First, choose a leaf the size of the wound and place it over the sore. Leave it on over night. In the morning there will be a little hole. Squeeze the wound to remove the infection. Boil the root of the same tree and drink half a cup of the tea once a day, until the infection is gone.

9. If you have the flu with a fever, collect cough grass with roots attached, the leaves of the rain tree and broad leafed “Tappington” grass. Take the tops off the grass and boil all three in a big pot for one hour. Pour the hot liquid into a metal basin and breath the vapors, using a blanket to create a tent to capture the steam. Repeat once a day until the fever is broken and the sinuses are clear.

10. If you get lost in the daytime, look in palm trees for the nest of the Red Billed Buffalo Weaver, who always build on the west side of the tree. You can also take a census of termite mounds, whose tips most often lean to the northwest. Termites work only at night raising the mound with spit and sand. The sun, which travels across the northern sky in the southern hemisphere, dries the new construction more quickly on the sun-facing side bending the nest.

11. If you are caught in a lightning storm, find shelter under an umbrella thorn or the African mangosteen (Garcinia Livingstonei).

12. If you are hungry for antelope meat, dig a hole 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep. Collect branches of silver cluster, sharpen into stakes, harden in fire, dry in sand and sharpen. Line the pit with the stakes facing upwards and cover the pit with twigs and grass. Sit by the hole downwind from the prey. When the prey is on the upwind side of the trap, walk around behind them and run toward the hole.

13. If you hear the Black Plover at night, there may be predatory cats in the area. The Black Plover has only three toes and can not hold a branch, so it must nest on the ground. Baboons also give helpful warnings of predators. A “hoo” indicates the presence of humans, a cough warns of a cat and a high pitched squeak chased by a bark is a sign of a snake.

14. If you hear the Fork-tailed Drongo before sunrise, the time is 4 am. By 5:30 am the coucals start with a sound like water coming from the bottle, “glug, glug. glug”. After that it’s the fish eagles by 6 am.

15. If a bird craps on you, it’s good luck. So be happy.

(all drawings are gouache on paper, 9″x12″)

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.

Fifty years ago I religiously watched re-runs of Tarzan the Ape Man and the star, Johnnie Weismuller, presided over my initiation to exotic Africa. Unlike the recent tongue and cheek incarnations, Weismuller’s Tarzan was sincere. On Saturday afternoons we moved expeditiously through the jungle swinging on a network of vines. Our physical prowess was matched by our profound practical knowledge. For information we read the forest floor and conversed with elephants and chimps. Our intimacy with the environment was unsurpassed and together as super-primal-men we patrolled the jungle and enforced the natural law. Once we witnessed a fiendish native execution. To the wild beat of sweaty drummers, native villains bent and tied two adjacent saplings to the ground to form overlapping arches. Next, they hung a victim upside down in the heart-shaped crotch, one leg lashed to each young tree. The drums reached an unsustainable fury and stopped. A machete rose in the frame. It fell, severing the ropes that bound the saplings ripping the man in half. Cruelty like this was not in the natural order of things, so Tarzan and I called the elephants and directed them to trample the fiends. Africa was my manliness.

Like many small cities, there is a statue in the park. In the middle of Gaborone near Parliament, there is a likeness of the first democratically elected president, Sir Seretse Khama. Fortunately for Khama and his young country, diamonds were discovered in Botswana in the late 1960’s only a few years after independence. Khama returned this new wealth to the people by building basic infrastructure and a free educational system. Today, Botswana has a literacy rate near 80% and by African standards, supports a middle-income economy. Botswana was a British Protectorate instead of a colony, so the land was never apportioned to white settlers, but remained in the hands of the original population. Today, the government offers citizens free land, provided it is used for farming or housing within three years of taking ownership.

Forty-five years ago I was sitting in the pew of an Episcopal Church in Kentucky waiting to drop an envelope of cash in the offering plate that was being passed. A picture of an African child with flies was printed on the envelope. The stomach of the boy was round but his limbs were very skinny. His eyes were enormous in his boney face. He sat cross legged on a patch of dirt and looked up at me, as if I were standing above him deciding his fate. Africa was my righteousness.

Botswana is a consumer society. The River Walk Mall in Gaborone offers a good cup of Americano and a quick internet connection. I bought an organic cotton shirt at Woolworths, hiking socks at the Cape Union Mart and the best oranges I’ve ever eaten at the Pick and Pay. At a local fast food restaurant, I had a good piece of chicken for about the cost of a meal at Colonel Sanders. But food isn’t as cheap for the Batswana as it is for working Americans. The minimum wage here is a 50 cents an hour, so a fast food meal would cost a low wage earner a full day of labor.

Thirty years ago I saw a PBS special that presented the African landscape as an epic novel crowded with well-drawn characters. The adventure began with an aerial shot of the open Savannah; abundant game moved across the plane. The camera moved in and I was so close. Right there. I felt as ruthless as the hyena, as graceful as the antelope, as defensive as the water buffalo, as stealthy as the python and as flamboyant as the flamingo. Africa was not a foreign place. It belonged to humanity. It belonged to me. Africa was my heritage. My teenage cousin felt the same and collected plush lions and monkeys for her bed.

Domestic life in Botswana is the usual. There is a solid home-owning middle class that commutes to work five days a week and comes home to feed the kids and goes to bed only to start up again. Unlike the West, however, where homes are segregated by degrees of grandness into neighborhoods of varying degrees of exclusivity, suburbs in Gaborone are mixed income. Very modest homes with swept earth yards are situated next door to…

upscale homes with well tended gardens. This is in part due to the free land policy of the government. As a result the eclectic suburbs give the impression that Botswana is largely a classless society.

Although there is an egalitarian spirit, the majority of home owners believe in the adage that good fences make good neighbors.

The family I am staying with has a small child who is cared for by mom, dad, aunt, uncle, grandma, grand uncle and baby sitter. Even the gardener takes a turn watching over her. This extended family model is typical of Botswana and it is a very sane way to raise children. Paradoxically, homes are walled and guarded, but family networks are extensive and fluid.

The repetitive work of keeping house is the repetitive work of keeping house. But there are interesting difference in the details of keeping an African home. Brooms, for example, have no handles. To use it one bends at the waist and moves across the floor like a gleaner in a Millet painting. But the stiff bristles are very effective on packed earth yards and low nap carpets.

Fifteen years ago there was genocide in Rwanda. I read about the political and social forces behind the killing, but the causes did not stay in my mind as clearly as the effects. I remember the hackings and severed limbs and a river full of bloated corpses bleached white. I remember a building full of people set on fire. Africa was my psychopathology.

Last week a black African man with whom I had a polite conversation, was compelled, after I left his company, to say that all white people care only about money and that they will do anything for it. He wasn’t, I am told, speaking specifically about me, but my presence was enough to elicit this bit of racism.

Ten years ago I started collecting African music both traditional and Pop. Since I was a teenager I’ve listened to all forms of African inspired music like Soul, Jazz and R and B. So collecting African music was a natural direction. When I need a break from painting, I put on a track from Africando or even the wildly sexy, Jamaican homophobe, Buju Banton, and dance with abandon. Africa was my rhythm.

Today, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” opened in Gaborone. Now Africans can watch the movie and together with Americans, Europeans, Asians, and everyone else go to the exotic world of Hogwarts.

We are not a contrary people. We are a nation of introverts. We keep quiet and don’t complain a lot. But people are becoming more opinionated. Our first President Khama had a proverb that sums up our people. He said, “Ntwa Kgolo ke ya molomo” which means, “The best way to fight is by talking”.

Khama had a way of bringing people together. To me that’s his greatest achievement. If you can bring people together, all the other problems just fall off. He was a traditionalist in that he had a good connection with his ancestors. As a result he was a visionary person and could see things others could not see. People respect you when you have good relations with your ancestors. People say he went to caves and saw massive snakes and with the snakes he would pray to his ancestors. Khama said, “Tshaba e e senang ngwao ke tshaba e e latlhegileng”, which I translate as, “A nation without culture is a lost nation”.

We are a politically stable, land-locked country that has never had a civil war, but we’ve had a few misunderstandings. We are the number one exporter of quality diamonds and the number one importer of beef to the EU. Education is free in Botswana and everyone can get a piece of land for free from the government. But you have to develop it– plant a crop or build a house on it– within three years or it will be taken back. I have three farms now, which helps to diversify my wealth and provides some security for my four sons.

The land is two thirds desert with interesting vegetation and animals. The Morula tree has a yellow juicy fruit that is very sweet. Some clever person, some white guy, made a proper, brewed, alcoholic drink from it called, Amarula, which is now very popular. The Mopane worm lives in the Mopane tree and you can eat it fresh or dried. It is full of protein and someone is now trying to can it. Dried, it tastes like a salty biscuit and it’s good when you are drinking.

Be careful when you are driving at night, since the animals are often in the road. People think elephants are nice, but when you see one, it’s so big it is terrifying. If an elephant gets in your way at night, don’t honk your horn, since the elephant will think you are stealing a baby elephant. Instead, flash your lights. The elephant will see it’s own enormous shadow and run away in fear.