StapleBotswana
Bogobe
Sorghum porridge, cooked plain or soured, the traditional staple before maize arrived. Bogobe jwa logala is the fermented version, eaten for breakfast.
Serves 6 · 45 minutes
Basubiya
River people of the Chobe and Zambezi floodplain whose kingdom once held the whole four-country corner, who were pushed aside by the Lozi and then the Kololo, and whose land was fenced off for a national park in 1960.
Identity
Population: Tens of thousands across the Chobe and Zambezi floodplain
Location: The Chobe district of northern Botswana, the Zambezi region of Namibia, and adjacent Zambia
Language: Subiya (Chikuhane), a Bantu language of the Zambezi floodplain
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (K40)
Traditional governance: The Chobe chieftaincy in Botswana, recognised within the traditional authority system; a parallel Subiya chieftaincy exists across the border in Namibia.
Clans, Sections & Sub-groups (3)
Most African peoples are federations of named sub-groups (clans, sections, chiefdoms or sub-tribes), each with its own dialect, territory and traditions.
Chobe communities
Botswana's Basubiya, in the villages along the river outside the park boundary.
Namibian Basubiya
Communities of the Zambezi region, formerly Caprivi, with their own chieftaincy.
Riverine fishing households
Families working the Chobe and Zambezi channels and the seasonal floodplain.
Culture
Clothing: Contemporary dress; ceremonial regalia for the chief's court; the fishing household's working dress.
Food: Fish from the Chobe and Zambezi in abundance, sorghum and maize on the floodplain margins, and the wild produce of a river that floods annually.
Ceremonies: The chief's installation and court occasions; harvest and flood observances; funerals; the dances of the Zambezi floodplain, shared with Lozi and Mbukushu neighbours.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth in cattle where kept and in goods otherwise; patrilineal descent; cross-border marriage is routine in a corner where four countries meet within a few kilometres.
Initiation rites: Instruction in the river's channels and its flood cycle; girls' seclusion and instruction in the older tradition.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Botswana, Namibia and Zambia, at national rather than community level — 24 in all: the staple a household eats daily, the dish the country names as its own, street food, what is cooked for a wedding or Eid, regional specialities and a drink. Quantities and method are given for every one, so these are recipes rather than descriptions, and each has a photograph from Wikimedia Commons. The Food page carries the whole continent, searchable by country and by ingredient.
Botswana
8 dishes
StapleBotswana
Dikgobe
also Samp and beans, Dikgobe tsa ditloo
Cracked maize cooked with bambara groundnuts or cowpeas until soft, the Botswana staple that appears at every funeral, wedding and kgotla gathering.
Serves 6 · 2 hours 30 minutes, plus soaking
National dishBotswana
Seswaa
Beef or goat boiled with nothing but salt until it falls apart, then pounded in the pot. Botswana's national dish, cooked by men at weddings and funerals in three-legged pots.
Serves 8 · 3 hours 30 minutes
Street foodBotswana
Magwinya
also Fat cakes
Plain fried dough balls sold from tins at every bus rank and school gate, eaten with polony, atchar or nothing at all.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours
Festival & feastBotswana
Serobe
Tripe and offal cooked slowly with the intestines cleaned and cut fine, served at weddings and funerals alongside seswaa. Nothing of the animal is wasted.
Serves 8 · 3 hours
Regional specialityBotswana
Morogo wa Dinawa
Wild or cowpea leaves cooked with onion and sometimes groundnut, eaten with bogobe. Gathered rather than grown, and the dish that carries households through the dry season.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
Regional specialityBotswana
Phane
also Mopane worms, Madora
The caterpillar of the emperor moth, harvested off mopane trees, gutted, dried and then stewed with tomato and onion. High in protein, seasonal, and a genuine delicacy in Botswana.
Serves 4 · 1 hour
Drink & sweetBotswana
Madila
Milk soured in a hide or gourd until it thickens, drunk on its own or poured over bogobe. The pastoral household's preservation method and its breakfast.
Serves 6 · 2 to 3 days
Namibia
8 dishes
StapleNamibia
Oshifima
also Oshithima
Pearl millet porridge cooked stiff, the staple of the Ovambo north where mahangu grows on sand that supports little else.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
StapleNamibia
Oshifima wa Mahangu
also Pearl millet porridge, Oshithima
Pearl millet flour beaten into a stiff white porridge, the staple of Namibia's north and the food that makes the Ovambo agricultural year make sense.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
National dishNamibia
Potjiekos
Meat and vegetables layered in a three-legged cast-iron pot and cooked over coals for hours without stirring. As much a social occasion as a recipe.
Serves 8 · 4 hours
Street foodNamibia
Kapana
Thin strips of beef grilled fast over open fires at Katutura's market in Windhoek, dipped in chilli spice and eaten straight off the grill standing up.
Serves 6 · 20 minutes
Festival & feastNamibia
Oshiwambo Chicken
Free-range chicken cooked with spinach and tomato in the northern style, served with oshifima at weddings and homecomings.
Serves 6 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Regional specialityNamibia
Biltong
Beef or game cured with vinegar, salt and coriander and air-dried, cut with the grain rather than against it. Namibia's game farms make some of the best there is.
Serves Makes 500g · 4 to 6 days
Regional specialityNamibia
Omagungu
also Mopane worms, Omangungu
Mopane caterpillars dried and then fried or stewed, a seasonal delicacy of northern Namibia sold by the bucket in Oshakati market.
Serves 4 · 50 minutes
Drink & sweetNamibia
Oshikundu
Pearl millet and sorghum fermented for a day into a thick sour drink, brewed by women in the north and drunk by everyone from children upward.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 1 day
Zambia
8 dishes
StapleZambia
Nshima
Maize meal cooked stiff and served in smooth rounds with relish. Zambians eat it twice a day and a meal without it is not counted as one.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
StapleZambia
Delele
also Okra relish, Slippery relish
Okra cooked with bicarbonate of soda until deliberately slippery, a Zambian relish that people either love or refuse outright.
Serves 6 · 30 minutes
National dishZambia
Ifisashi
Greens cooked in groundnut paste, served with nshima. Meatless, cheap and eaten across the country, and the dish Zambians most often name as their own.
Serves 6 · 40 minutes
Street foodZambia
Vitumbuwa
Rice or maize flour fritters, fried and sold at markets and roadsides with tea, eaten at breakfast and by children on the way home.
Serves Makes 20 · 2 hours
Street foodZambia
Chikanda
also African polony, Wild orchid cake
Wild orchid tubers pounded with groundnut and chilli and set into a firm pink cake, sliced and sold at Zambian markets. Sought after enough that the orchids are now threatened.
Serves 8 · 1 hour 30 minutes
Festival & feastZambia
Village Chicken with Nshima
Free-range chicken stewed slowly with onion and tomato, cooked when guests arrive. Village chicken takes far longer than the frozen kind and is worth every minute.
Serves 6 · 2 hours
Regional specialityZambia
Kapenta
Tiny dried lake sardines fried with tomato and onion, from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Kariba. Cheap protein, eaten with nshima across the country.
Serves 6 · 35 minutes
Drink & sweetZambia
Munkoyo
Maize porridge fermented with the root of the munkoyo shrub into a sweet-sour drink, made in villages and sold in bottles in Lusaka.
Serves Makes 3 litres · 1 to 2 days
Stories & Oral Literature
The Kingdom at the Four CornersHistorical account
Before the Lozi expansion and the Kololo invasion of the 1830s, a Subiya polity held the floodplain where Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe now meet. Successive conquests reduced it. The colonial boundaries then cut what remained into four pieces, and the Caprivi Strip was drawn in 1890 specifically so Germany could reach the Zambezi, which it turned out not to be able to navigate anyway.
Fenced Out in 1960Displacement account
Chobe National Park was gazetted in 1960 and the communities living on the riverfront were moved out. The park now holds one of the largest elephant populations on earth and generates a very large share of Botswana's tourism revenue. The villages sit outside the boundary, dealing with elephants in their fields and applying for permits to enter land their grandparents farmed.
Proverbs
“The river gives the field and takes the house.”
Life on an annually flooding plain.
“The elephant is counted and the farmer is not.”
Conservation economics, from the village side.
“Four flags stand where one kingdom stood.”
The colonial partition of the floodplain.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Nyambe as the creator in the Zambezi floodplain tradition; ancestral spirits active in lineage and chiefly matters; the river carrying its own powers.
Beliefs: Ancestor veneration; river and pool spirits addressed before crossings and fishing; Christianity widespread through missions since the nineteenth century.
Ancestors: Chiefly genealogy is recited at installations and is the basis of the parallel claims made either side of the Botswana-Namibia border; ancestral graves inside the park are a standing grievance.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Nyambe
The creator of the Zambezi floodplain peoples' cosmology
River spirits
Powers of pools and channels, addressed by fishers and before crossings
Ancestors
Consulted in chiefly succession and in matters of land
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages of pole and mud with thatch on the higher ground above the flood; raised granaries; block housing increasingly; the park fence as the edge of the settled world.
Building techniques: Pole and mud with grass thatch; raised platforms and granaries against flood; dugout canoe (mokoro) building for the channels; fish traps and weirs.
Village layout: Villages strung along the river above flood level with fields on the enriched margin, canoes at the landing, and the park boundary immediately behind.
Artifacts
Mokoro dugout
Craft
The poled canoe of the Zambezi and Okavango floodplains.
Chobe riverfront
Natural heritage
The park's river frontage, holding one of Africa's largest elephant populations.
Fish traps and weirs
Craft
Equipment of a floodplain fishery timed to the annual rise.
Chieftaincy regalia
Regalia
Insignia of a chieftaincy claimed on both sides of an international border.
Historical Timeline
Pre-1800
A Subiya polity holds the Chobe-Zambezi floodplain at the four-country corner.
1830s
The Kololo invasion and Lozi expansion reduce Subiya authority.
1890
The Caprivi Strip is drawn to give Germany access to the Zambezi, cutting the floodplain.
1960
Chobe National Park is gazetted; riverfront communities are moved out.
Present
Tourism dominates the district's economy; human-elephant conflict is a constant of village life.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Britannica: Botswana — peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
- Minority Rights Group: NamibiaMinority Rights Group International
Premium & scholarly sources