A mokoro is a shallow, narrow canoe poled from the back, with the poler standing. In the Okavango Delta in Botswana, it is the way you cross water. It has been the way you cross water for a very long time.
There are faster boats in the Okavango. The motorboats can reach a lodge across the floodplain in twenty minutes; a mokoro takes ninety. There are dryer boats — the motorboats sit higher in the water and you do not need to take your shoes off. There are quieter boats too — newer electric outboards make almost no sound.
None of those boats is a mokoro. From the floor of a mokoro, you are eye-level with a sitatunga antelope in the reeds. You are nine centimetres above a frog. You are below the dragonflies. The boat does not announce itself. The animals do not flinch.
There is a second reason. The poler standing behind you is, almost certainly, a man who learned to read the delta from his father, who learned from his father. There is a polers’ guild in Maun. The men in it have been polers for generations. You are not in a boat. You are in a relationship.
There is a faster way to cross water. There is not a better way.
Filed under
Craft
