Botswana Quotes

“We are relatives at the village and yet we become strangers in the city”
― Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon

“Not much was said of Gaberone except its riches and its danger. The prisons were said to be in-escapable, the shanty towns cheap, the police didn’t bother the illegal immigrants unless they were caught committing crimes. A dangerous paradise.”
― Thabo Katlholo

“A Motswana in Zambia or Zimbabwe was referred to as gwerekwere and so was a Zimbabwean or Zambian in Botswana. Post-colonialism tragedy.”
― Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon

“At one level the story of the second fall of Zimbabwe can be read as tragic yet a courageous one: a simple but soaring binary about unfounded courage in the face of immeasurable oppression. But at another level, it is a window into a much more complex, perhaps even darker and sadder, narrative about contemporary slaveship and the terrible collision of aspiration and frustration and the need to survive that has been unleashed upon the people of Zimbabwe. Exploitation and oppression are not matters of race.”
― Thabo Katlholo, The Mud Hut I Grew Upon

“The small town of Kasane stands on the high veld plains of the northern horn of Botswana, a tourist haven shouldering the economy of the small but rich country.
The town is located some one thousand kilometers north-east of the Capital City, Gaborone, with its hard blue skies and river-clear air, Kasane is a piece of paradise in this desert region; a shit-hole for the natives apparently as I was to learn, but still the place is a slice of heaven for tourists coming from outside.
At the center of the small town resides an underrated true wonder of nature. A place called Plateau from which one can observe a pack of lions stalking a herd of Zebras; wildebeests crowded together like bees; a fish eagle splashing against the slow moving river and come out bearing a fighting catfish; herds of elephants and Buffaloes grazing and browsing the green mass of flora that escorts what seems like a coiling dark green phantom.
The entire place below Plateau to the north is a wide array of interconnected channels, caressed on the sides by tall evergreen grass. The true wonder that is the exemplar of the Chobe District.
The gravel to the height of ‘Plateau’ snakes through tall, fat baobab trees rising and falling, offering breathtaking views of the dense ridges, then dipping into creeks filled with clusters of dilapidated shacks and mobile homes with junk cars and abandoned road construction machinery scattered about. It clings to more defined creeks with shallow rapids and water clear enough to drink.”
― Thabo Katlholo

“Because of the heat and the lack of water and materials for shelter, much of the Central Kalahari has remained unexplored and unsettled. From our camp there was no village around the corner or down the road. There was no road. We had to haul our water a hundred miles through the bushveld, and without a cabin, electricity, a radio, a television, a hospital, a grocery store, or any sign of other humans and their artifacts for months at a time, we were totally cut off from the outside world.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“Most game reserves in Botswana are large tracts of totally undeveloped wilderness. There are no paved roads, fast-food stands, water fountains, campgrounds, restrooms, or any of the other “improvements” found in parks and reserves in more developed countries.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari