Winter 2021
As I write, our multinational National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project team, or "NGOWP" for short, is preparing for what will be the 11th annual crossing of the Okavango Delta in Ngamiland, northern Botswana. These Okavango Transects were started by Dr. Steve Boyes in September 2010 as a wetland bird survey; Steve wanted to study and observe the distribution and abundance of wetland birds across a repeatable transect into hard to reach parts of the Okavango Delta. The 2010 transect was comprised of just two mekoro, which is the local name for a dug-out canoe, and 4 participants; Steve, a filmmaker from France, and two local polers; Chaps and Gobonamang, or GB as he is known to all of us. GB has since completed every single other Okavango Transect, including participating in all of our expeditions and ifeld trips to the major rivers Angola and Namibia - he's covered somewhere close to 8,000km of the river with us, all in mekoro.
