Abstract Okavango Delta

When I first heard of the Okavango Delta I was a student and the images that I had seen had fascinated me so much that I had always wanted to go there. Back then, elephants, giraffes, hippos, rangers in khaki, and tents in the style of “Out of Africa” fascinated me as much as Hemingway’s Africa stories. Many years later, and a bit more grown up, I saw the real Delta for the first time with my own eyes. Although it was dry season and everything was so very different from what I had imagined, it fascinated me every bit.

Interestingly, it was not the animals that fascinated me most: it was the people that lived there or made their living there or those that continued to return to the land year after year. It was those people – that were all visibly linked by their connection with the land, either through their job or through their love for the land, like a community defined by their affection. At first, I felt like an outsider.

When I saw the land for the first time from above, in an aerial perspective, it was remarkable and I was astonished how surreal everything begun to be. Every bit of the landscape was intersected and connected by animal pathways that turned a mundane scene such as a simple waterhole into a truly fascinating art piece and a simple grass field into a rugged elephant skin. In that way, the Okavango fascinated me every bit and gave me an entire new way of seeing a place. I will be back, I am connected now, too.