S5, E26: What a Safari Looks Like When a Woman Is at the Wheel

What does a safari look like when the guide isn’t a man? Award-winning writer and editor Ellen Carpenter went to Botswana’s Okavango Delta to find out. (To learn more, read her Afar story about the experience.)

Transcript

Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked by Afar. What does a safari look like when the guide isn’t a man? Today we’re heading to Botswana’s Okavango Delta to find out, and I’m handing the mic to award winning writer and editor Ellen Carpenter. Ellen has been on safari before and on every past trip. Her guides were men. That is the industry standard, more than 90 percent of African safari guides are male. But Ellen had heard about a camp working to change that, and she wanted to see it for herself. So join us as Ellen gets up close with elephants, watches lion cubs wrestle in the grass and tracks a leopard through the bush, all with a woman at the wheel.

Ellen Carpenter: I’m sitting in the middle row of a custom Land Cruiser. The wind is whipping my hair as we wind down a dirt road in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. Suddenly, an elephant appears, seemingly out of nowhere. He’s huge, at least 10 feet tall, with long tusks and dark, wrinkly skin. The vehicle stops and we all hold our breath for a moment, watching to see what he does. He barely acknowledges us and continues yanking strands of grass from the ground with his trunk.

My guide’s name is Tshidi, and as we watch the elephant, she turns to me and asks, do you feel comfortable getting closer? Sitting in the vehicle with Tshidi, I feel totally safe. I say yes and Tshidi scooches forward and turns off the engine. The elephant walks slowly across the dirt road right in front of us, dragging his long trunk along the ground, which Tshidi says is a good sign.

Tshidi: So that shows that the elephant is mainly relaxed. If it was not relaxed, even the way we approached it, it could have shown us that it’s not comfortable with our approach.

Ellen: As much as I’m taken by this elephant, I’m more impressed with Tshidi. I’ve been on safari before, but never has a guide asked me if I felt okay getting closer to an animal. They always just assumed that’s why I was there to be as near to this majestic wildlife as possible. But this is my first time with a female guide, and I’m beginning to realize it’s a totally different experience.

Though I’m excited to see elephants and leopards and lions, I’ve really come to Botswana to meet the female guides at African Bush Camps or ABC as they’re known. More than 90 percent of safari guides in Africa are men, but ABC is working to change that. The company launched a female guiding program at the end of 2021. There are currently 12 women in the program, 8 trainees and 4 qualified guides.

Beks Ndlovu: My ambition or aspirations is that in by 2030 that 50 percent of our workforce as guides are actually female?

Ellen: That’s Beks Ndlovu, the founder of ABC and one of a handful of black Africans to own a safari company. He started out as a guide himself, and then applied the passion and knowledge nurtured by the job to creating ABC in 2006, 20 years ago.

Beks: So when I started off my guiding career, it was very clear that that it was very much a male only industry. And not just the guides, but even the staff. When I first started, we actually had no females at all working in the camps. It was all guys. Uh, and certainly in my career as an independent guide, I only came across two female guides. That bothered me in a sense, because one of the things that I fundamentally, um, you know, really stand for is, is justice. And one of the reasons why I started African Bush Camps almost 20 years ago now was to address some of the injustices to the land, to the wildlife and to the people.

Ellen: Now, Beks says 50 percent of the employees at his 18 camps across Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana are women. So it only makes sense that women should make up half the guiding team as well. ABC’s Female Guiding program is an intensive 3-year curriculum where students learn everything from conservation to tracking to first aid. ABC isn’t the first safari company to employ female guides. Chobe Game Lodge in Botswana, for example, has an all female guiding team. But ABC is the first to offer a long term program like this after the women graduate, they don’t even have to stay with ABC. They’re welcome to apply for jobs at other safari companies.

Beks: So where do people stay with us? Or we train people and they go to other organizations. That’s up to them. As long as we are making an impact in the landscape of tourism and changing these mindsets, that’s what’s important.

Ellen: Beks applauds the efforts of the all female guiding team at Chobe, who are known as the Chobe Angels, but he also wants to see more.

Beks: The only other company that focuses, as you know, are the Chubby Angels and. And it’s very much at Chobe Game Lodge in Chobe National Park. It’s not normalized throughout the organization. So. So there is no doubt that they will have some impact. But I think impact is only realized when these things are normalized throughout society, throughout our industry, and not necessarily create a bubble where they exist.

Ellen: Over the next 5 days, I’ll get to meet 3 of ABC’s female guides. They each hail from different parts of Botswana and have very different backgrounds. But one thing unites them an incredible amount of confidence. Oh, and another thing they have in common. They all found out about the program on Facebook.

Ellen: Tshidi is the first of the female guides I meet at Kwai Lediba, one of ABC’s signature camps. She wears her hair in Princess Leia buns and her glasses have transitional lenses that appear purple in the sun. She’s a true city girl from Gaborone, Botswana’s capital.

Tshidi: And I knew nothing about nature as well. But I already applied and I was like, okay, Siri, you can do this. You always take challenges. Why not this one? The outcome can even be better than what you think.

Ellen: So you didn’t come into it thinking, I want.

Tshidi: No no no.

Ellen: No no. I love animals. No nature. No nothing.

Tshidi: I came as much to do so with zero knowledge of nature. And then African bush camp boosted me and gave me a lot of knowledge.

Ellen: Tshidi is just a few weeks shy of graduating from the program, and because of this, she still has to be paired with a mentor guide when out on game drives. I’m only able to go on one drive with her, but it’s memorable. She’s as much a teacher as she is a guide, giving ecology lessons at every turn. She explains how Hammerkop massive mud and stick nests are so well insulated that the birds don’t have to spend all their time sitting on their eggs. She points out splotches of mud on a leadwood tree, and explains how elephants rub their backs on them to remove ticks. She even stops the car twice to pick up empty soda bottles.

The next day, I take a helicopter from Kwai Lediba to Atzaró Okavango, ABC’s newest camp, a collaboration with the Ibiza-based Atzaró Group. My guide for the next three days is Baemule Siethuka, or Bae for short, and she is there waiting for me at the airstrip with a huge smile and an even bigger hug. As the helicopter’s blades whip the wind, she lays out her plans.

Bae: Like, I’m not going to guarantee you anything. I hear you haven’t seen me. You haven’t seen the cheaters. Uh, those are very elusive animals. Yeah, same as wild dogs. They are very hard to see, but I’m always with my positive energy. I never say never. Every time I go out, positive energy, we manifest whatever we want when we go out. Mother nature has a way of always providing.

Ellen: That afternoon, Mother Nature provides a lion, two lionesses, and 7 cubs, who chase each other and wrestle in the tall grass. I couldn’t be happier though. She’s a total pro now. Bae was like Tshidi when she was selected by ABC to join the first class of its female guiding program in November 2021.

Bae: I didn’t know anything about the Bush like it was very new. Everything was new to me.

Ellen: We’re sitting in the thatched roof boma at Atzaró in between game drives. Bae tells me she comes from a village called Tutume in the northeastern part of Botswana. Before joining ABC, she had never been on safari, never seen a lion. She didn’t know that warthogs used abandoned termite mounds as homes, and couldn’t differentiate the call of a lilac breasted roller from the call of a blue waxbill. She comes from a family of farmers and was working in HR when she saw the job posting on Facebook.

Bae: But I remember when I saw the post that African bush camps are about to empower women into being trainee guides or into being guides. I told my bosses, I told them that I’m going for this and I’m going to pass. And they were like, what you are trying to go for is mainly men dominated, so I don’t think you can do it. I told them that we can bet I’m going to make it.

Ellen: Even as a child. They wanted a job that would push her, that would demand more of her.

Bae: Growing up, I always wanted to be a pilot. I think, uh, I’ve always wanted to have, uh, like, better jobs and challenging jobs and, uh, knowing that most of these high earning jobs are well known for men. So it’s not an easy job for you to get as a lady. Yeah. So that’s why I wanted, like, I wanted something that is challenging, that is said to be like, this is mostly for men. So I’ve always wanted to say, I can break this and go on to it.

Ellen: At Atzaró I also meet Jessica Motshegwa, who began training just 8 months ago. I want to go on a game drive with her, but she’s already been paired with another group of guests from Peru who adore her and I learn don’t want to share her.

Jessica: Yeah, they were very excited to a point where most of the guys will be will be like, no, she’s mine this time around. No. She’s mine. So it was really amazing. Even to an extent where even guests were like, no, we need her today. No, you had her yesterday. So it’s, it was really cool.

Ellen: Like Bae, Jessica applied to the ABC program because she wanted to be challenged and for people to take her seriously. She’s petite, probably 5 foot 2 on a good day. And she has Shirley Temple dimples and sparkly brown eyes.

Jessica: After finishing my high school, I really wanted to join the Army because I felt like, uh, personally, I’m, I’m too tiny. I’m small. I have a baby face. So I wanted something that would make me look big, look strong. Because I am strong, I believe I’m strong. So I wanted something that challenges or something that would, uh, show people that I can do it. I am more than what you see.

Ellen: She actually did try to join the army, but she was turned down.

Jessica: The first time. Uh, I tried. They said my legs were not straight, so they wanted straight legs, but I had. I did all the 2.4-kilometre run. I beat the time. I did all the push ups and sit ups, everything, I was good. The only problem was my legs. They said they were not, uh, straight for me to join the army.

Ellen: Fortunately, after all this disappointment, Jessica’s cousin sent her the link to the Facebook post about African Bush Camps female guiding program. Her family had actually gone on a couple of game drives in Kasane in the north of the country, and Jessica had expressed an interest in the job.

Jessica: So my cousin sent me a link saying, you should try your luck.

Ellen: I spend most of my time on Safari with Bae. On our first game drive, she asks what animal I want to see most while I’m at Atzaró. A leopard, I tell her. She says she will manifest it for me.

Bae: Hope to see you and that means fulfill my heart. I’ve seen a lot of leopards and it’s quite interesting because I always have my positive vibe with like every day I live. Like if my guests say, Bae, we want to see a leopard. When I get to the room, it’s like I’m praying for that. I say, God, you said, ask, it shall be given. And then in the morning I leave. I say, God, you said, ask and it shall be given.

Ellen: Bae’s positivity is infectious. I swear she’s always grinning. It’s difficult to imagine anything getting her down. By the time she wakes me at 5:30am for our morning game drive each day, she’s already been up since 4 and on an exercise routine with plenty of squats and lunges to upbeat gospel music. She wears her long dreadlocks in a loose ponytail, and they swing from side to side when she laughs, which is often. Or when her vehicle dips into a pothole, which isn’t as often as you’d think. Because I’ll say it, female guides are better drivers. Both Bae and Tshidi are more thoughtful behind the wheel, more aware of how the passengers might feel. When I’m sitting in the front seat next to Bae, I can see her weighing which way to go to avoid dips and bumps. She drives more slowly than the male guides I’ve been with, but it doesn’t feel slow. It just feels purposeful.

Bae: It might happen that it becomes bumpy, but I always ensure that it is smooth as it as as it can.

Ellen: But the guys don’t care.

Bae:That’s why.

Ellen: Maybe they like it bumpy.

Bae: That’s. That’s why we need ladies in to guide. Because they always consider it.

Ellen: Our first morning out we see a pack of wild dogs. We see a lioness and her cubs. We see elephants and giraffes in a dazzle of zebras. We don’t see a leopard, but Bae does find tracks. She gets out of the vehicle and draws a circle around them at the sandy dirt with a stick so I can see. She surveys the area and finds more tracks, and that makes it clear which direction the leopard went. The curiosity is killing me, she says, her eyes alight. That afternoon we sit down at the camp to talk, and I ask her about her first time taking guests out on her own after she graduated from the guide program.

Bae: You know. Before I said anything, I told myself that, okay, Bae, you are capable. Bae you are a star. Bae you are not limited. Bae you can do this. So at first it was a bit of scary. Like I was asking myself, how are they going to feel? Are they really going to be comfortable being taken out by me? Uh, since I was the only lady guard, but I managed to stand my ground, take my people, go out with them, and I show them that I can do it, and I am in control. And I ensured that they are safe. But funny enough, after that, they were very excited. So I was scared the first time. But at the end it was exciting because they were like, Bae you are amazing. Yes.

Dutch Kasale: My father was like a teacher. My father knew that his job is to end up to me, to share with me his whole experience of living in the wilderness, because he knew I’m going to live in the wilderness the whole entire life.

Ellen: I’m back at Atzaró and sitting by the pool with Dutch Kasale, the Botswana head guide at ABC. Dutch is 47 but doesn’t look a day over 30. He’s gregarious, with a loud, infectious laugh.

You get the best of both worlds.

He’s spent his entire career as a guide and loves what he does, sharing his knowledge of the bush with guests. Yeah, but also the guides.

Dutch: So then my job is to mentor the guides or to manage the guides, and then to look into training the female guides, because the idea was to try and, um, balance or bring equality into this industry as well. All right. So ladies, you didn’t think that’s for the for the men. They should know they can do it. That’s my job.

Ellen: Each year ABC selects between 3 and 5 women to undergo training. To apply, they must be over 18 years old and have a class B driver’s license to operate a manual vehicle. Once chosen, after a handful of interviews, they first tackle theory, reading and studying as much as they can on their own about animals, nature conservation, you name it. If they pass their theory exams, they move on to eco training at a guiding academy. After that, they’re assigned to a camp to begin job shadowing and practical training. First, they start with departmental rotation to get a full understanding of how the camps work.

Dutch: When they go into the camps, they start with different departments. The idea there was not for them to swallow their pride, because these guys, in terms of knowledge, they are amazing. So but what they lacked was, they lacked experience.

Ellen: They shadow housekeepers, maintenance workers, cooks, waiters. And then they finally get to head out with the mentor guides and begin seeing what their job will really entail.

Dutch: Because most of them, some of them, they just came from the city. It was entirely hard work to try and convert them from that life to the bush life. So, Um, me introducing them into the world, it’s like you’re bringing new colors to someone’s eyes.

Ellen: In many ways, though, Dutch says training women from big cities is easier than training men who grew up in the bush. Because the women come as well blank slates, they’re eager to learn, and crucially, they aren’t saddled with incorrect information. After all, just because a man grew up in the bush with his dad doesn’t mean his dad gave him all the correct info. Selly Kegakamang, the Botswana lead for African Bush Camps Foundation seconds this idea.

Selly: It’s more boys growing up in nature. They get the spark to be guys. They walk. They track with their fathers, their grandfathers. You hear the stories and then when you come to the females, it’ll be more of, oh, I saw a post and I, I applied, yes, or I grew up with animals, but I never really saw it as a job. So when. Now they get into, uh, being recruited for the female guides program, and they get to experience that first hand what it entails. It does, uh, grow a lot of spark for them. They they do it very well. They excel at it, uh, because they involve experience with book, books, I’ll say. They learn from the books. They learn from the experts. So it’s quite a good combination of education and life experience putting it together.

Ellen: Selly joined ABC in 2023 and she wears lots of hats. She runs a Junior Ranger club for children in the communities near the lodges. Most recently, she started a community garden near Atzaró to help combat food scarcity in the area. On top of that, she oversees the recruitment process for the female guiding program, so she’s seen the women go from novice to total pro, especially Tshidi, my guide at Kwai Lediba Camp, who was in one of the first cohorts that Selly oversaw.

Selly: When she studied. She. She’s a city girl, so when she started, she had no idea what this, uh, safari entails. Maybe when she started, it was more of, oh, I need a job. But when she got here, she got to love it. And she’s doing it fully. And you can see if you have, uh, if you go with her in a drive, you’ll see she even talks about the little animals, like the leopard tortoise you spotted from inside the car. So I think that’s some big growth.

Ellen: Selly tells me that one of the main reasons the women in the program tend to succeed is because people assume they won’t.

Selly: So when they’re doing it in a way, it’s trying to prove a point that they can also do it.

Ellen: When Bae was selected for ABC’s female guiding program, she had even more to prove than the other four women in her class because she was pregnant.

Bae: My youngest one, I had him while I was here. I remember I joined when I was pregnant. So I managed to go through the whole training. Uh. I managed to get all my licenses while I was pregnant and I went, I had my boy and my guide license I got it when he was 6 months old. So I came with him when I was going to write my examinations.

Ellen: How did people react to that?

Bae: It was this matter of, uh, wow, you are strong, lady. Uh, you couldn’t think of leaving your boy behind? I said, this is my motivator. So if I’m with him, I know I have a reason to keep pushing.

Ellen: Now, Bae’s children are 9 and 3. They live with her mother in Tutume. Bae works for 2 months, then has 2 weeks off to be with her family. That’s the normal schedule for all employees at a safari camp. She says it’s difficult to not see her boys every day, but she does talk to them and send photos and videos of what she sees out in Safari. She tells me she never had any doubt that she made the right choice to take on this challenge, to become ABC’s first female guide.

Bae: It just gives me strength because I know there’s something that I have to work for. Uh, knowing that I have somebody who believes in me, somebody who needs me, somebody who I have to provide for. So it keeps me going. It gives me motivation to work very hard, uh, because I know they are proud of who I am.

Ellen: Bae is a bit of a superstar at ABC. Guests request her to be their guide and beg to join her drives if she’s booked with another group. Bae tells me about a group of female friends who came on safari a few months ago and nicknamed themselves “Bae’s Babes.” I asked to be an honorary member. We even joke about making t shirts that they can sell in the gift shop. Jessica, the trainee guide, just arrived at Atzaró after 7 months at Kwai Lediba and hasn’t had the chance to work with Bae yet. But she says she can’t wait.

Jessica: I have read so many articles about Bae and I was so inspired. I remember the first time we saw her with the other two ladies I was with. We were like, that’s Bae! That’s Bae we read about, and we were so happy to finally meet her. And when we met her, we were like, you inspired us. You really did.

Ellen: That’s awesome.

Jessica: Yeah.

Ellen: Isn’t it cool to think that you could be that person for somebody?

Jessica: Exactly. It’s really cool. It’s cool because, you know, you never know. Some people will look up to us. As time goes on.

Ellen: Selly says something about Bae that really sticks with me.

Selly: When I see her. I don’t see any difference between her and the male counterparts. She’s a guy.

Ellen: On my last full day at Atzaró, Bae and I head out on our morning game drive full of hope. Let’s manifest something with spots, Bae shouts over the roar of the Land Rover. Two minutes later, we see a giraffe. Whoops, she says. Let’s try again and be more specific. Let’s manifest a leopard. She drives us back to where we saw the tracks that first morning. She slows to a crawl and peers over the side of the Land Cruiser. Then she stops and gets out and crouches down to the ground. Track marks, she says.

Bae: So he does. But the track marks comes from the void in here. So it’s very interesting. I’m getting getting interested because this leopard is somewhere around. Not far. So let’s try, let’s try. Let’s go back in the back.

Ellen: Bae circles the area in the Land Cruiser inching along at no more than 2 or 3 miles per hour. She sweeps her eyes from tree to tree. Sure enough, she spots an impala hanging from the limb of a tree. The hunt is on. Bae is off roading, driving over sage bushes and maneuvering the giant Landcruiser in between termite mounds and leadwood trees. Two giraffes, who had been casually eating began to run, clearly scared by a predator. And we know we have him.

Suddenly the leopard appears, creeping among the sage. He gives us a look of total disdain and continues to step slowly, as if he has all the time in the world and couldn’t be bothered by our presence. I tried documenting it all on my camera, but I find myself just wanting to watch in real time. I want to be in this moment, see what Bae manifested for me.

We follow him a few minutes, watching him slink in between bushes and at one point sneak up on a warthog who skedaddles so fast it’s like he’s in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Eventually, the leopard eludes us, disappearing into the landscape. Wow, Bae finally says. She raises her hands in the air and pumps her fists. Mission accomplished.

Bae: I’ve done myself that question. And my instincts and my instincts say something. I follow my instincts. Follow your heart. Look until you say, okay. Nothing. And then you give up. But I never give up. That’s the problem.

Ellen: And that is not a problem. That is a very good thing.

Bae: Right? Yes. Very comfortable if you let them be.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, I got, I got my leopard. I got my leopard.

Ellen: Back at the lodge. I asked her what her favorite animal is and she doesn’t hesitate.

Bae: You know, I like the leopard because to me, like, I like them for their elegance and strength. You know, Lupus can can live on their own. They can survive alone. They can survive in any kind of environment. I like them for their skittishness. How elusive they are is very. And like that gives you an excitement because you never know when you’re gonna see them. You never know where you’re gonna see them. And the moment you see them, it gives you that. Wow. Finally, I found it. You know, it’s like the power. The power that I need in the bush as a lady.

Aislyn: I don’t know about you, but I really want to go on safari now with Bae, Jessica, Tshidi, and all the other incredible women going through this program. To help you do just that, in the show notes we’ve linked out to and to the African Bush Camp website. We’ve also linked out to Ellen’s website and social handles, should you want to go down the rabbit hole of her work.

If you’re ready for more travel inspiration and intel like this, visit Afar.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok. We are at @AfarMedia. If you enjoyed today’s exploration, I hope you’ll come back for more great stories and interviews. Subscribing always makes that easy, and be sure to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. It helps other travelers find it.

This has been Unpacked, a production of Afar Media. The podcast is produced by Aislyn Greene and Nikki Galteland. Production support from Computer City Productions. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to their other fine shows like Culture Kids and The Explorers podcast.