My view from a window seat hardly changed on the flight from Johannesburg to Maun in northern Botswana. I rarely saw a farm or lodge in the khaki-colored plains below.
A few gulleys ran irregular courses like the veins on the back of my hands. When filled in the wet season, they drain to rivers that snake away to the Indian Ocean a thousand miles east. Tracks in the sand (hard to call them roads) pointed to destinations over the horizon in lines as straight as a compass bearing. A truck plowing through deep sand created a dust cloud behind, like the wake of a motorboat.
I visited the country in early December when it should have an annual rain quota. Wildlife and farmers depend on it, but the land still looked parched. Waterholes had shrunk to muddy puddles or dried up completely under clear skies in 100-degree temperatures. I imagined people looking up every afternoon, hoping for clouds to appear in billows like the puffy sleeves of a Victorian bridal gown.
A “Horse Latitude” is an odd name. It is a region of high pressure where prevailing winds and the cold current offshore of Namibia keep the rain clouds away. The matter is more serious in an El Nino year. If there is not enough groundwater accumulating at the interface of sand and underlying layers of clay or alluvial soil, the trees will suffer in the nine months ahead that guaranteed dry. Only the original occupants of southern Africa, the Bushmen, know how to survive in a desert. The Batswana people are so conscious of dependence on seasonal rain that they put the word Pula on their national coat of arms and adopted it for Botswana’s currency. Pula means “rain” in the Setswana language.
On the next leg of my journey, I flew out of Maun, a bustling town in northern Kalahari. Since we didn’t ascend above 5,000 feet, I saw large animals gathering around waterholes. Looking ahead through the invisible propeller spinning at 2,500 rpm on the airplane’s nose I saw the landscape change dramatically from khaki to green, from dry to moist, like a mirage on a torrid day. After journeying for over 40 hours, I knew my destination was near. We circled twice around a dirt runway before landing to check no elephants or buffaloes crossed.
I stepped out on the Okavango Delta—a great wonder of nature—6,000 square miles of wetland surrounded by aridity. This oasis of vegetation attracts some of the highest densities of large herbivores in the world and predators that follow them.
The bowl of land capturing water in the middle of the continent is at the southern end of a branch of the Great Rift Valley where tectonic forces rend a tear in the Earth’s crust. A river from the Angolan highlands crosses national borders to replenish Delta water that evaporates in the heat. If climate change reduces the flow or an upstream government dams the river, the consequent loss of biodiversity will be catastrophic.
I left southern Africa expecting the rains to arrive, if a little late. But, alas, it is in drought. Crops are shriveling, livestock going thirsty, and wildlife roaming for waterholes in Botswana. Malawi and Zambia have declared a state of disaster; Zimbabwe will be next. The United Nations declares populations in these nations are at risk of going hungry.
When I came home to Virginia, I grumbled at the cool, wet spring. I groaned at too many choices for a meal from our pantry and freezer. I know I shouldn’t. I should cast my mind back to Africa.
