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
Bayei
The people who brought the mokoro — Okavango Delta fishers and hippo hunters who arrived from the Zambezi in the eighteenth century with the dugout canoe and the fish trap, and who now pole tourists through the channels they mapped.
Identity
Population: Around 50,000 in northern Botswana and the Caprivi
Location: The Okavango Delta and its fringes — Maun, Shorobe, Seronga and the panhandle
Language: Shiyeyi, endangered with most speakers shifting to Setswana
Language family: Niger-Congo → Bantu (R40)
Traditional governance: Historically clients of the Batawana under the Tswana system, without their own recognised chieftaincy; the Kamanakao Association has campaigned since 1995 for recognition of the language and of Wayeyi chieftainship.
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.
Panhandle Bayei
Communities along the upper delta channels.
Delta communities
Households of the seasonal islands and channels of the lower delta.
Maun and fringe communities
Urbanising households around the delta's main town.
Culture
Clothing: Printed cloth and Western dress; historically skins and bark cloth; poling and fishing dress adapted to water work.
Food: Fish above all, with water lily roots, wild fruit, millet and maize; the delta's fishery supports both subsistence and trade.
Ceremonies: Fishing season observances; funerals with drumming; healing ceremonies; the mokoro's making and first launch.
Marriage customs: Bridewealth negotiated between lineages; historically matrilineal features, altered by long incorporation into Tswana patrilineal structures.
Initiation rites: Learning the delta's channels, seasons and fish behaviour; a young person's competence with the mokoro and the fish trap is the practical passage.
Food & Recipes
Every dish the Atlas publishes for Botswana and Namibia, at national rather than community level — 16 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
Stories & Oral Literature
The Canoe That Made the Delta NavigableTechnology
The Bayei brought the mokoro, a dugout canoe poled standing in shallow water, into the Okavango from the Zambezi around the mid-eighteenth century. It transformed movement through the delta and became the region's defining technology. Modern mokoro are increasingly fibreglass, to spare the hardwood trees, and the poling skill is now the basis of the delta's tourism economy.
Asking to Be RecognisedPolitical account
Botswana's constitution historically named eight principal Tswana tribes with seats in the House of Chiefs, leaving others including the Wayeyi without recognition. The Kamanakao Association took the matter to court in the 1990s and won a ruling of discrimination; constitutional amendments followed, though Wayeyi campaigners argue the change fell short of equal standing.
Proverbs
“The channel that looks open is the one with the hippo.”
Apparent ease conceals danger.
“The pole finds the bottom the eye cannot see.”
Practical knowledge over appearance.
“A language without a school is a language with a funeral date.”
Said by Shiyeyi campaigners.
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: A high creator distant from affairs; water spirits and ancestral powers active in the delta; the hippo and crocodile carry particular significance.
Beliefs: Ancestor veneration; water spirits of channels and pools; diviners and healers; Christianity widespread today.
Ancestors: Ancestral claims to channels and fishing grounds; graves on the higher islands above the flood.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
The creator
Distant high god
Water spirits
Powers of channels, pools and islands
Ancestors
Consulted in illness and in disputes over fishing grounds
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Villages on the delta's sand islands and fringes, of reed and pole houses with thatch, raised above seasonal flooding.
Building techniques: Reed and pole construction with grass thatch; mokoro building from single hardwood trunks, now often fibreglass; fish trap and basket weaving.
Village layout: Village on the island's higher ground with mekoro drawn up at the water, fish drying racks between.
Artifacts
Mokoro
Craft
Dugout canoe poled standing, the delta's defining technology.
Conical fish traps
Craft
Woven traps set in channels and shallows.
Okavango Delta
Heritage site
UNESCO World Heritage site, the world's largest inland delta.
Shiyeyi language materials
Language heritage
Orthography and teaching materials produced by the Kamanakao Association.
Historical Timeline
c. 1750
Bayei migrate into the Okavango from the Zambezi, bringing the mokoro and fish traps.
1800s
Incorporation as clients under Batawana authority.
1966
Botswana's independence; the constitution recognises eight Tswana tribes and not the Wayeyi.
1995–2000s
Kamanakao Association campaigns and litigation over recognition and language.
2014
The Okavango Delta is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- UNESCO: Okavango DeltaUNESCO
- Minority Rights Group: BotswanaMinority Rights Group International
- Ethnologue: YeyiSIL International
Premium & scholarly sources