In Botswana: from Okavango to Tsodilou
Listed as a World Heritage Site, the Okavango Delta in Botswana,
Is an immense Garden of Eden where wild animals live in complete freedom,
At the beginning of the southern summer, the vegetation and the soil offer the dryness of the panorama,
Six months later, the scenery changes when the flood covers everything, under the water of the swamps.
This river is unlike the Amazon or the Seine, never reaching the sea it stagnates,
It dies at an altitude of 950 m, forming a delta as big as Brittany,
But by one millimeter per year, the Okavango plateau is rising and leaning towards the extreme West,
The Zambezi is capturing the endorheic river, endangering this entire ecosystem.
The delta is a fragile environment, this river, which never reaches the sea, has created a miracle,
a treasure for the earth and humanity.
On the powder roads, in the mildness of a summer evening in Botswana without floods,
When the sky begins to burn slowly, the animals of the savannah seek refuge,
Here kudus, rhinoceroses, elephants or giraffes have crossed the culture of the San people,
Painted on stone by the first men of southern Africa, the Bushmen people
The people of the "click" language watch over the secrets of the Tsodilo mountain,
In the open air, the prehistoric paintings over 4,000 years old recall Lascaux,
A sacred place emerging like a pyramid from a flat landscape of meadows,
A cliff was used for ceremonies to heal and thank the spirits.
We find tattooed on the skin of the mountain animals and hunting scenes
That of a hunter camouflaging himself under a large hat to look like a buffalo, symbolic,
The paintings were used to educate young people, to recognize animals as in class,
Alongside the paintings the San preserve the other heritage, their language of clicks.
Guy says l’Arié…..Joie