Southern Africa: Kalahari Desert — Namibia, Botswana, South Africa

Red-copper dunes beneath a sky that never switches off…

Where the far-flung voices and sounds of a million years echo in your being…

It is 42 degrees… in the shade of the camel-thorn tree. The sweat runs from my brow into my eyes and I swab it away with my upper arm, the zing of the sun-beetles pitching high in my ears. No one is in sight. I look down the sandy tracks into the heart of the desert one more time, wondering when a vehicle will come past.

I look up into the blue skies and chuckle in memory of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. The film was released in 1980 telling the story of Xi, a gather-hunter; part of the Khoisan group of the Kalahari Desert whose tribe had no knowledge of the world beyond…the Kalahari being their only one. When the coke bottle fell from the sky and they got to know what it’s like to own something that everybody wants, they encountered feelings of jealousy, greed, envy and Xi decided to get rid of the wicked thing, throwing it off the cliff at the end of the world, ridding the desert of this malevolence influence.

“And even here today that bottle still signifies ‘freedom’ from all nastiness”, I say to myself while looking down the two-wheel track again. Isolation creeps into my being… the desert has now become my only world too.

I refer to my guidebook: derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning the ‘great thirst’, the Kalahari is a place of mystery, with tales and legends that go far into the past — from when the great tribe of the Bushmen lived undisturbed and free, from David Livingstone who found Lake Ngami in 1849, to when the Herero peoples migrated into the Kalahari from the west, to today where perhaps the largest threat to the Kalahari is rising livestock populations and the associated destruction of the desert’s little plant life.

The Kalahari Desert is a large desiccated area, with 80% of its size covering central and south-western Botswana. The other 20% is shared between the eastern parts of Namibia and west-central South Africa. It is part of the huge sand basin that stretches into Angola and Zambia in the north, through Botswana into Zimbabwe in the east, south to the Orange River in South Africa, and west to the highlands of Namibia. This basin has a total surface area of about 930,000sqkm, with the Kalahari Desert covering an area of more or less 260,000sqkm which makes it the world’s largest stretch of sand.

The sand masses were created by the erosion of soft stone formations 200 million years ago when the super continent Gondwana broke up to form the landmasses of the southern hemisphere. The foundation of sandstone, shale and coal is 300 million years old, while some rocks date back to three billion years.

Only in recent geological history (10 to 20,000 years ago) did the dunes stabilise through old camel-thorn trees and shepherd’s bush, so the Kalahari Desert could actually be called a dry savannah. The parallel sand ridges (unlike the dunes of the Namib) are stable and not wandering, covered largely by reddish and brown sand, or white sand in some places. The dunes vary in height from about 6m to 60m, are separated by channels of varying width and can be up to 80km long.

I stop reading when hearing the sound of an oncoming vehicle. I jump up, pick up my backpack and camera, and flick my thumb. The Landrover stops next to me, “My word missy. What are you doing here all alone? Where you going?”

“Not sure” I scrunch my eyes from the sharp sun. “Into nowhere I guess.”

“Hop in. I’m sure I’ll find it”, he says with a smile.

His name is Christo. And Christo, a farmer on one of the farms somewhere in the Kalahari, harbours a hoarded wealth of information. I take out my pen, jotting down this knowledge as he speaks.

The Kalahari Desert is also one of the most treacherous fossil deserts in the world. While it does not always look like one, it behaves like one. During the short rainy season the Kalahari Desert transforms into a great paradise of lush colourful vegetation and lively creatures. “The moment the rains go, the Kalahari becomes dry and moody. It can rain very heavily in one day, rain that produces floods that sweep everything, while the next day; dry as a bone,” laughs Christo.

The vegetation includes dry savannah grassland and Acacia trees and scrubs, surviving long periods of drought — more than ten months every year. Some parts also support low thorn scrub, forest, giant Baobabs and even palm trees. There are over 400 identified plant species present (including the wild watermelon or Tsamma melon), which are most diverse around pans and a rich food resource for animals.

Game adapted to survive the droughts and large herds of oryx, springbok and ostrich are moving across the landscape followed by large numbers of vultures, marabou storks and other scavengers. Antelope such as eland, gemsbok, springbok, hartebeest, steenbok, kudu, and duiker are common, as are giraffe, warthog, jackal, the bat-eared fox, the rare wild dog, brown hyenas, lions, meerkats, and a host of smaller animals.

The remarkable nests of the weaver birds in the trees are a frequent sight in the Kalahari. These inconspicuous little birds (which resemble sparrows) live in huge communal nests with a diameter of up to two metres, breeding and feeding their youngsters.

The largest protected areas in the Kalahari are the Khutse Game Reserve and Central Kalahari Game Reserve (the world’s second largest protected area) in Botswana and the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park — one of Africa’s largest game paradises, combining South Africa’s Kalahari Gemsbok National Park and Botswana’s Gemsbok National Park.

The only permanent surface water in and around the Kalahari is the Boteti River. The Boteti flows out of the Okavango delta, an extensive swampy region at the northern edge of the Kalahari Desert in northern Botswana. Heavy rains in central Angola cause recurring flooding of the delta, and the Boteti carries the overflow east into Lake Xau and the Makgadikgadi Pan, a seasonal wetland on the north-eastern fringe of the desert, “the size of Switzerland” remarks Christo.

I watch him stuffing his pipe with tobacco, methodically lighting-sucking on it until the smell of maples fills the air. Then he says, “The ancient Lake Makgadikgadi once dominated the area, covering the Makgadikgadi Pan and the surrounding pans — the Sowa, Ntwetwe and Nxai — until its final drainage some 10,000 years ago. It may have once covered as much as 80,000sqkm with a depth of almost 30m. Today the pans are 12000sqkm in size, the world’s largest natural salt pans, supporting numerous halophilic species and in the rainy season thousands of flamingos.”

Ancient dry riverbeds called Omuramba traverse the central-northern reaches of the Kalahari and provide standing pools of water during the rainy season while other channels carry water south into Lake Ngami. Previously havens for wild animals, from elephant to giraffe; and predators such as lion and cheetah, the riverbeds are now mostly grazing spots, although leopard still roam the area.

“Due to the dry conditions, the Kalahari has very little people living here. In Namibia and South Africa, there are large farms, ranging from 20 000 to 40 000 hectares, raising mostly sheep and ostriches. Although in Botswana there are some private farms, the land is mainly used on a communal basis, raising goats and cattle. My farm is close to the pans. On my way there now from Windhoek,” he says while sucking on the pipe.

The Kalahari is the Bushmen’s (San and Khoikhoi) last place to survive. They are known as the first human inhabitants that lived here for more than 20,000 years who occupied the whole sub-continent long before black and white settlers invaded their territories. They survived by hunting wild game with bows and arrows, and gathered berries, melons, nuts and insects. They got water from plant roots and desert melons found on, or under the desert floor and store it in the blown-out shells of ostrich eggs. Their survival skills and adaptation to the harsh Kalahari wilderness have become legendary. But sadly today, only a small number of the San follows their traditional way of life in the Kalahari, sharing territory with the Tswana, Kgalagadi, and Herero.

In the Botswana side, major towns in the Kalahari include Ghanzi, Tshane, Tshabong, and Orapa. In the Namibian portion of the Kalahari, the villages of Gobabis and Mariental are important regional centres. Rietfontein, Noenieput, and Severn are important South African towns in the desert.

The Kalahari is rich in minerals, particularly in Botswana. Mineral companies have discovered large coal, copper, and nickel deposits and one of the largest diamond mines in the world is located at Orapa in the Makgadikgadi, which opened there in 1971. The paved Trans-Kalahari Highway connects all major mining, commercial, and farming areas.

Christo stops at the campsite which I will call home for a few days. I greet him fondly with a handshake and smile, “Thanks,” and wonder how lonely he must be. Not seeing people for months, just scattered thorn bush balls rolling across the planes passing in front of his little house on a hill.

The shadows creep closer, the last red glows of a perfect sunset cascade across the Namibian horizon. The silence is audible and tonight, I will sleep underneath the stars, a light you can never switch off. I wriggle my toes deeper into the soft sand, Amarula liquor in hand, watching the last rays disappear while the fires burn high, getting ready for a barbecue with new friends from across the globe.

Although Namibia is more famous for being the home of the Namib Desert, the eastern and southern Namibia is covered by the enigmatic Kalahari. It’s nothing like the tall creamy sand dunes associated with Sossusvlei. It’s a colour harmony of golden-brown grass and kilometres and kilometres of copper-red dunes.