30 Mar 2020

 Excitement, joy and happiness are in the air for the people who live along the banks of the Chobe River, which has started flowing; thanks to the heavy rains that swept through Angola, Zambia and Namibia in recent months.

The flow of the Chobe River, a tributary of the mighty Zambezi River, has now gone past Kavimba village, about 78 kilometres south of Kasane, on the Kasane/Parakarungu road.

There is hope therefore that this time around, the water will reach the outskirts of Parakarungu, given the high speed.

“The Chobe River has a special place in the history of Basubiya people of Chobe and to my own heart, as it is the river of my homeland, it is a source of life,” said a jubilant Khido Poniso of Kavimba village.

Mr Poniso said people were excited and soon, they would  start fishing in the river, which was last seen flooding in 2016 or so.

He explained that the last three years of no flooding brought a lot of misery to the people of Chobe, especially those living along its banks.

Another resident of Kachikau, Mr Good Mohinda also said that there was so much excitement because the river was a source of life for them.

Apart from being a source of life, he said, in the 1970s, the river was a mode of travel, for commerce and pleasure, but now rivers have been largely replaced by highways, railways, and air travel.

“We used canoes from Ntjenene lands on errands to Kachikau to buy sugar and other basic commodities and it was lovely,” he reminisced.

Mr Mohinda explained that it was probably fishing and hunting on floating logs that led to boat-making and that boat-making increased the mobility of the people.

At Ngoma Border Post, where the river attains its name Chobe, some children were spotted taking hesitant dips into the river in excitement to see an expanse of water.

Kgosi Richard Mbanga of Mabele said there was much excitement in the village because of the water, which started pouring into the village last week.

He said the river brought along joy because water was the primary source of life.

“Besides domestic purposes such as drinking and sanitation, it is also used for watering livestock and wildlife, and for food by fishing in the shallows and hunting the birds and mammals drawn to the banks by the water, especially that the hunting ban has been lifted.

Kgosi Mbanga also explained that the river would boost the agricultural sector in the district, even though it would destroy some of the fields located in the rich deposits of its banks.

“The river will provide drinking water for our livestock.

Most of us here in Chobe are pastoral farmers who do not own a single borehole, so it is a blessing in disguise, to have the river flowing,” he said.

He cautioned that although the river was important to livelihoods of all who lived on its banks, it could just as easily bring death, citing a number of incidences where people were killed by wild animals that had gone to the river to drink. In 2014, a woman was trampled to death by a buffalo at Lungara old police station.

“The river brings with it crocodiles, hippopotamus and venomous snakes.

People have also been known to drown when the river is flooding,” he added.

Kgosi Mbanga said in most cases, it was children who perished, playing in the water, and it was incumbent upon elders and law enforcement officers to keep an eye on the developments, lest excitement turns into sorrow.

Kgosi Peter Chika of Parakarungu expressed the hope that the water would reach the outskirts of his village due to the fact that Angola recorded heavy rains in the recent past, while Namibia and Zambia also received good rains.

Kgosi Chika said it was exciting that the river was flowing once again, even though the waters had not reached Parakarungu.

The Chobe River flows from Angola as Kwando (a Hambukushu name), becomes Linyati River (a Subiya name) and then the Chobe River, which flows along the northeast border of the Chobe National Park in Botswana.

The river begins as a small mountain spring in Angola, then it travels great distances through the Kalahari sands, before reaching Botswana.

The Chobe River is indeed a stunning and life-giving natural resource, which is also teeming with life; baboons, elephants, monkeys, crocodiles, buffaloes, giraffes, all call it their home. ENDS