One recent evening, a guest at Xaro Lodge in Shakawe could not believe her eyes when she saw a land mass with well-nourished vegetation floating down the Okavango River, a few nautical miles faster than rush-hour traffic along the Gaborone-Mogoditshane road.
“What is that?” she exclaimed.
“It’s a floating island,” the lodge owner answered.
A century or so ago, he would have given a different answer, something like “Oh, that the pantoon that runs between Shakawe and Maun.” The island itself might have been teeming with livestock, people and luggage.
British colonial officials were also intrigued by the sight of floating islands and began doing aerial reconnaissance of the Okavango Delta in 1944. From up in the air, they spotted one and monitored its movement until 1966 when Bechuanaland Protectorate became Botswana. In the new dispensation, the aerial reconnaissance was done by Brian Wilson, the first hydrologist employed by the government. Wilson’s work inspired a “Botswana Notes & Records” article titled “A Floating Island in the Okavango: Some Observations Made by Brian Wilson” by S. Child and P. Shaw. The former was deputy director in the Department of Water Affairs and the latter a senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Botswana (UB).
Child and Shaw write: “How such a floating island could originate is not clear. It is probable that it has evolved within the lagoon rather than being derived from outside, either by direct growth, or by breaking away from the lagoon margin. Once formed, it is free to drift in response to wind-derived currents until it becomes enmeshed in the lagoon margins. In all of the photographs it has contact with at least one point on the lagoon edge, and it is probable that it undergoes long periods of stability in a single position, until liberated by strong winds.”
Wilson died in 1989 but the monitoring continued until 1990 when the floating island in question firmly locked into a southern position although it was not contiguous with the lagoon margins.
There are those who like Shakawe’s headman of records, Mutemo Mbambo refute the account but centuries ago – way before motorised boats – floating islands are said to have been used as a mode of transport in the delta area. Ndunda Ushuka, a Xaro Lodge guide, says that in the past people would break off a chunk of land from the lagoon, the size dictated by the purpose for which they wanted to use the land mass.
“One that was already floating in the river was not suited for the task because it would be soft and likely to come apart were it used as a mode of transport,” Ushuka says.
His theory of a floating island similar to the one that Wilson monitored is that it would have been dislodged by hippopotamus. These islands, he says, are not road-worthy. By his account, the human-created island was used to transport whole families as well as their belongings like livestock to places as far away as Maun. Ancient communities are also said to have used floating islands to flee invaders.
Mbambo knows a different mode of transport which he personally used as a boy – the reed raft – jenje as he calls it – whose use died out in 1972. What is perhaps the only written account of this raft is from the works of Charles John Andersson, a Swedish explorer who visited present-day Ngamiland in 1857. He writes in “Lake Ngami or Explorations and Discoveries During Four Years Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwest Africa”: “All one has to do is cut the reeds (the different species of palmyra, from their buoyancy, are peculiarly well adapted to the purpose) just above the surface of the water, and to throw them in layers, crosswise, until the heap is of sufficient size to support the party. No binding of any kind is requisite; but fresh layers of reeds must occasionally be added to the raft, as, from the constant pressure at the top, the reeds get soaked, and the air contained in them displaced by water. A stout pole is placed upright in the centre of the mass, to which is attached a strong and long rope. When the voyagers wish to land, this rope is taken ashore by one of the men in the canoe that is always in tow or on board the raft, and secured to a tree, or other firm object.”
The construction of this raft that Andersson witnessed took an hour and was undertaken by “three or four men.” Up until he provides the jenje account, Andersson’s attitude towards his hosts is of racist condescension but the magic he witnessed caused him to see his black hosts with new eyes. Initially jittery about “our very primitive looking raft” he got accustomed to it and found it to be more comfortable than might have been supposed.
“It was much safer, moreover, than our own canoes, one or two which we obtained shortly after our departure. No efforts were made to steer or propel the raft, which was left entirely to the stream. As soon as we were caught by some projecting reed bed – and this was of frequent occurrence – the raft immediately swung round and thus disengaged itself; but when we came in contact with trees overhanging the river, we were more inconvenienced; for before we could get clear of them, ourselves and baggage were at times nearly swept into the water,” Andersoon writes.
The journey proceeded in that fashion “without serious accident” and the party managed to cover 150 miles in nine days “entirely by the force of the current, which rarely exceeded two miles an hour.” When a geopolitical entity called Bechuanaland Protectorate came into being, the new masters were not happy with the use of the jenje. The problem was that the raft was left in the river after use and the end result was a reed-craft flotilla clogging the channels of the Okavango River. In 1937, one colonial official wrote Resident Commissioner Charles Rey about this problem: “I know that it is not possible to forbid the natives using these rafts to transport the grain, as the hippos would smash up dugouts but … it might be possible to get the Acting Chief to request them to pull the rafts out of the river after … their journey.”
Growing up in Shakawe, Mbambo remembers riding the jenje but around this time Botswana was fast developing. Over time motor vehicles and boats gave the jenje competition it was doomed to lose and Mbambo reckons that its use stopped between 1972 and 1973.
“Today’s children don’t know and have never even seen a jenje,” he says.
However, with the belated realisation that throwing away all that cultural heritage was not a good idea as well as with the establishment of a centre at UB that seeks to reclaim lost knowledge, the jenje may make a triumphant return. This would seem a good idea for a place like Shakawe that suffers chronic fuel shortages.
