28 Jul 2022

About 3 100 hikers, both local and international are expected to swarm the mining town of Jwaneng for the annual Desert Bushwalk this Saturday.

The event was last held in 2019 owing to the COVID-19 challenges.

In an interview, one of the event organisers, Archibald Ngakayagae said that all signs were there that this year’s event would be a resounding success.

“Preparation wise we are ready.

Tickets have long been sold out, but even now people are still calling requesting for them, and this just shows how big the event has grown since inception in 2014,” he said.

Ngakayagae said that the high number of participants had even forced the organisers to move the starting point from Jwaneng Community Hall to the more spacious rugby club grounds, which would also allow them to accommodate stalls for different service provisions.

Ngakayagae also indicated that they had outsourced most of the side events such as pre-concert build ups, food stalls operations, merchandising and others to mostly the youth as a way of empowering them.

Highlighting on the past successes of the event, he said that they had so far managed to assist about 30 000 pupils in the Jwaneng/Mabutsane constituency.

“After the last event in 2019, the board then decided that we should look farther than the education sector, as well as farther than the Jwaneng/Mabutsane constituency, and that is why our last donation covered the Boteti and Ngamiland areas,” he said.

He said that in total, the event had raised more than P2 million in community project assistance.

Apart from community assistance, Ngakayagae said that the Jwaneng Desert Bushwalk had also seen the birth of hiking clubs in Botswana that continued to be active.

“When we stated the event in 2014, we had planned it as just a once-off event, but the South Africans who participated encouraged us to make it annual.

They liked our sandy terrain because it is pretty different from theirs, which is mostly mountainous,” he said, before hailing the South Africans for their continued support, indicating that about half of the participants were from the neighbouring country, either as clubs or individuals.

The walk is expected to take hikers through two routes of grueling sand, being a 15km route and a 30km.

The event will also be graced by the Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Nnaniki Makwinja and the Assistant Minister of Youth, Gender, Sports and Culture, Buti Billy.

The whistle blows at 6am. ENDS