A ship’s voyage can be a metaphor for our journey through life. Sometimes ships pass within hailing distance of each other. Sometimes they pass unseen in fog or darkness until sailors learn they missed an interesting vessel from gossip at the next port. This sums up a feeling I had on a visit to the Moremi Game Reserve of northern Botswana.
I traveled with a local guide and camp cook through the Kalahari sandveld into the Mopane forest. It had turned green after seasonal rains and abounded with wildlife. Zebras and Red Lechwe grazed. Vervet monkeys and Chacma Baboons clambered on branches. Lions lazed in the shade until sundown when they began roaring before a hunt. Cape doves and hornbills called from every grove, announcing the breeding season. Life revolves around Africa’s seasons in one of the richest wildlife habitats on Earth, where the Okavango Delta looks from the air like a lush, green mirage hemmed in by arid land.
We often stopped to watch animals at close quarters. One day we paused on the edge of the forest where it meets a finger of the Delta. The guide pointed at a semi-circle of bleached skulls at the base of an ancient tree. Skeletons are common sights, often the remains of kills by big cats, so what was special about these specimens, apart from the carefully laid display? The skull of an elephant, buffalo, hippopotamus, lion, antelope, and more. The guide shook his head when I reached for one of them. I felt as if a museum curator slapped my hand for touching a precious exhibit. But why?
Behind the tree that overlooked a reed bed stretching to the horizon, I noticed a raised wooden deck about 20 by 20 feet square. A human artifact in a protected wilderness is rare. I wish I had taken a closer look or a photograph or asked for an explanation. We returned to camp as the heat became oppressive and didn’t venture out for another game drive until late afternoon.
When I came home to Virginia, I read that an author and artist had lived there. The same as published the field guides I used.
Veronica Roodt was a math teacher in South Africa before guiding visitors in the Kruger National Park and taking her first degree in biology. She moved to Botswana as a young, single woman in the 1980s to devote the rest of her life as a naturalist and talented artist to record the pristine wilderness in and around the Delta. She lived in a tent on the deck almost year-round for 34 years.
In the early years, big game hunters took trophies from this wildlife magnet in the center of the continent. Other hunters decimated the crocodile population for people to flaunt fine leather handbags (the reptiles have recovered). After a hunting ban, tourists come with cameras instead of guns, escorted by guides with local knowledge. But no one had mapped the trails or recorded plants and animals (except the most iconic beasts) until Veronica filled gaps with her beautifully illustrated books for the Shell guide series. She traveled around the region to research the traditional medicines of Bushmen and Bantu tribes. This continued earlier studies for the army in South Africa and Namibia so that troops lost in the bush would know how to survive on native plants.
Her books are staples for wildlife guides and visitors, as well as the best introduction to the region for field biologists. Perhaps no one knew the ecology of Moremi better than Veronica. How could they without that much immersion in its depths?
Far more than regretting I didn’t explore her camp, I am desperately sorry I missed meeting her by a few months. Our ships passed out of time. How I wish I could have had a lesson on the deck and listened to her stories. Someone found her in her chair, but no longer alive. She was 65 years old. Considering the hazards of living alone in the game park, it is amazing she died there of natural causes but has left a moving image seated in a beloved place.
Roger musing about Peace with Nature 