Islands of the Okavango Delta

Swollen by November rains, the Okavango River floods south from Angola, arrives in Botswana in May or June, fans out, and then stops when it bumps into a barrier of fault lines near Maun.  Landlocked, the river penetrates deep into the Kalahari Desert before it dies in the sand.  Not a single drop reaches the sea.  

As the river pushes south, it creates an oasis, a floodplain the size of Massachusetts, containing an ark-full of animals: the Okavango Delta, a flat maze of islands and water.

The river descends less than 200 feet in 300 miles.  Bracketed by fault lines, sediments deposit elevation changes of less than seven feet.  Islands that rise above the floodplains tend to be long and sinuous, following old channel routes, linking to other uplifted channels, and creating large dry fingers of land that will be outlined by next season’s floods.  Water loving trees such as the Jackalberry, Mangosteen, Knobthorn and Sycamore Fig fringe these larger islands.  

The Delta contains more than 50,000 islands; their landmass roughly equals that of water.  Paths cross some of the islands; roads cross others; water surrounds the rest.  All of the islands carry the mixed vegetation of the Kalahari sand plains.  Approached by foot in this maze, every island looks like the next one and the next one and the next, especially during the low flood season, when boundaries between them evaporate with the water, when footpaths end in walls of thick bush, and roads take every opportunity to wander off in a new direction. 

Near the southern end of the Delta, some of the islands are larger sand-veldt tongues, extensive areas of the Kalahari that penetrate deep into the flood. In the Okavango’s vast delta of islands, a few inches here or a few inches there separate wet lagoons from dry land.  

If I turn one way, I’m lost in a maze of floodplain islands, now high and dry.  Turn the other, and I’ve entered into a maze of Kalahari woodland.  Until I’ve gone a few miles, it’s hard to tell the difference since the same vegetation covers both.  

When the sun sets, magic begins.  The sky turns orange; water lilies fold into perfect imitations of floating candles; papyrus along shorelines become golden sentries; and the spell of water over a desert casts its memories into my dreams.