In the small, unfenced village of Kajaja, Botswana, where Oriah Sekondeko grew up, wildlife sightings were simply part of everyday life. Elephants might appear in the distance on the walk to school; crocodiles could be dozing in the sunshine along the riverbank. Her parents taught her how to handle contact with these dangerous creatures and how to stay safe.
It never occurred to her that those childhood experiences could inform a career. 'At school, we were taught: what do you want to be when you grow up? And obviously it's going to be a police officer, a soldier, a nurse,' she says. 'I didn't know much about being a professional guide.'
Today, Oriah is one of 20 women who make up the Chobe Angels — Africa's first all-female team of safari guides, based at the five-star Chobe Game Lodge inside Chobe National Park. In 2008, the Botswana Wildlife Training Institute issued call-outs in regional media seeking women interested in becoming professional safari guides. Twenty thousand responded. This momentum was spearheaded by Chobe Game Lodge's general manager Johan Bruwer, who set out to recruit and train more women for a profession that had, until then, been almost exclusively male. The lodge's safari guide team became fully female by 2010.
Sixteen years later, roughly 80 female safari guides are employed across the safari-based lodges of Botswana's famed Okavango Delta. Chobe Game Lodge has become something of a national incubator: the majority of the female guides working in Botswana today passed through this program first. Desert & Delta Safari's luxurious Chobe Game Lodge is the only property located inside Chobe National Park in Kasane. Its natural setting — a mixed ecosystem of woodlands and savannah surrounding lush river floodplains — is so dramatic that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton once chose it for their second wedding.
Guests at the lodge are offered two types of safaris: land-based game drives through Chobe National Park in open 4WD vehicles and water-based river excursions on flat-decked electric boats. The Angels lead both and are the authorities on the region's abundant flora and fauna. Their exceptional instincts, enthusiasm, and rigorous training have garnered them worldwide attention. But the effects of this initiative reach far beyond the lodge.
Malebogo 'Lebo' Mangwegape's path was much different than Oriah's. Growing up in Ramotswa village, an area with little wildlife of its own, the animals of Chobe were at first entirely foreign to her. You wouldn't know it today. On the water and in the bush, the 45-year-old safari guide has the calm demeanour that makes even the most hesitant safari guest feel at ease — something I experienced first-hand when a gnarly crocodile sidled up to our boat.
