Botswana looks like an amazing place. It’s landlocked and located just north of South Africa.
A mid-sized country of slightly over 2.3 million people,[17] it is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. About 11.6 percent of the population lives in the capital and largest city, Gaborone. Formerly one of the world's poorest countries—with a GDP per capita of about US$70 per year in the late 1960s—Botswana has since transformed itself into an upper middle income country, with one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
en.wikipedia.org/...
This American kid was, at the time of the video (2016), being hosted by a Botswanan family for the semester. Here’s why he loves the place [4:57]:
Is this gorgeous, or what?
And here’s what Lonely Planet has to say about that delta the bridge spans:
The Okavango Delta – there's nowhere quite like it on earth. This is a place where wild creatures roam and rule, where big cats and much bigger elephants walk free in one of the world's last great wildernesses. The delta is a byword for abundance – for animal numbers, for the variety of species, for the birdlife, for floods of Biblical proportions. And it is also a place of singular and unparalleled beauty where safari possibilities can seem as endless as the waters themselves.
www.lonelyplanet.com/...
The primary staple in Botswana is a polenta-like dish with a variety of names, including Phaleche and Pap.
Phaleche - Mealie Pap is the staple of Botswana. Mealie meal is made from white maize corn. It is also a popular dish at a braai usually served with tomato and onion relish, meat and vegetables. It is even eaten for breakfast with milk, butter and sugar.
From the YouTube description
Her presentation at the end is basically meat-potato-veg if you swap in the phaleche for the potatoes [5:27]:
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Exclusive travel:
Botswana didn't just turn its back on mass tourism. It ushered in an era of utterly exclusive safari experiences, the likes of which are seen no where else. These are sumptuous lodges and remote tented camps, especially in the Okavango Delta and surrounds that are sometimes contemporary in style, and at other times problematically awash in colonial nostalgia. And they will provide you a front-row seat for wildlife spectacles that you may just have all to yourself.
www.lonelyplanet.com/...
The kid in the first video, above the fold, says that there are more cows than people in Botswana. He’s probably right. I was wondering how a (formerly) poor nation could eat so much beef; and of course the answer is they raise the cattle.
The national dish is Seswaa, a sort of pulled beef — actually, the description reminds me a bit of the Cuban dish ropa vieja. Except the YT recipes I’m finding don’t call for the onions and peppers. So I don’t know which is authentic, although if I had to guess: traditional without the onions and peppers. Personally, I’d want to use them b/c they’ll add terrific flavor. But you just might be making ropa vieja instead of seswaa.
Seswaa is the national dish of Botswana. This meat dish is made from beef, goat, lamb or chicken and boiled with onion and pepper until soft and tender. Like every good stew in southern Africa, it is cooked low and slow in a three-legged cast iron pot. Once the meat is soft, it is pounded or shredded and served on a bed of a pap.
pemburytours.com/...
[4:08]
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The Kalahari Desert, the largest unbroken stretch of sand on the planet, is not your ordinary desert. From the salt pans of Makgadikgadi, the baobabs of Nxai Pans, and the spare magnificence of Kubu Island in the north, to the wonderful wildlife of Kgalagadi in the south, this is a desert of exceptional variety. Throw in the fossil river valleys, swaying golden grasses, black-maned lions and the echoes of the indigenous San people in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and there are few more beautiful deserts on Earth.
www.lonelyplanet.com/...
More recipes will come later. For now, please watch this lovely behind-the-scenes look at professionally photographing wildlife. If you’ve ever enjoyed a wildlife show, you will love this one [10:47 and gorgeous to watch]:
The adventure starts in Hermanus, near the Southern tip of Africa. Since my usual assistant was unable to come on this trip, my mother kindly offered to join and help with the driving. We travelled via the Karoo into Botswana and on to the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. In the CKGR we camped for 3 nights in Deception Valley filming desert wildlife, birds, lions and cheetahs.
From the YT description
Part 2 — zebras! [10:18]:
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People speaking Khoisan (Khoe and San) languages have lived in Botswana for many thousands of years. Depression Shelter in the Tsodilo Hills has evidence of continuous Khoisan occupation from about 17,000 bce to about 1650 ce. During the final centuries of the last millennium before the Common Era, some of the Khoi (Tshu-khwe) people of northern Botswana converted to pastoralism, herding their cattle and sheep on the rich pastures revealed by the retreating lakes and wetlands.
Bantu-speaking farmers
Meanwhile, the farming of grain crops and the speaking of Bantu languages were carried gradually southward from the Equator. By about 20 bce such farmers were making and using iron tools on the upper Zambezi. The earliest dated Iron Age site in Botswana is an iron-smelting furnace in the Tswapong Hills near Palapye, dated about 190 ce and probably associated with Iron Age farmers from the Limpopo valley. The remains of small beehive-shaped houses made of grass matting, occupied by early Iron Age farmers around Molepolole, have been dated to about 420 ce. There is also evidence of early farming settlement west of the Okavango delta, in the Tsodilo Hills alongside Khoisan hunter and pastoralist sites, dated to about 550 ce. Archaeologists therefore have difficulty interpreting the hundreds of rock paintings in the Tsodilo Hills (designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001) that were once assumed to be painted by “Bushman” (San) hunters remote from all pastoralist and farmer contact.
www.britannica.com/...
Most of the references I found for Bogobe called for using sorghum flour [8:46]:
I don’t know who wrote this, but they desperately need an editor:
Bogobe is made by putting sorghum, maize or millet flour into boiling water, stirring into a soft paste, and then cooking it slowly. Sometimes the sorghum or maize is fermented before cooking for some days to make it sour. This dish is called ting. This sour porridge can be cooked and eaten with meat or milk and sugar.it is called ting. Without the milk and sugar, ting Another way of making bogobe is to add sour milk and a cooking melon (lerotse). This dish is called tophi by the Kalanga tribe.
en.wikipedia.org/...
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The watermelon is believed to have originated in Botswana, by the way. I read that on the internet so I know it’s true. 😉
One video I watched was of a young missionary describing how delicious the food of Botswana is. Then she got to the one thing she hated. She makes a point of saying, if you are offered food, you accept: it is polite. And maybe the people are poor — doubly impolite to refuse. But if you have a chance to politely refuse these, you probably should:
Mopane worm, caterpillar of the moth Gonimbrasia belina, is cooked in hot ashes, boiled, or dried and fried.
en.wikipedia.org/...
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Beef, goat, lamb, and chicken are the primary meats eaten in Botswana.
The other type of meat is of chicken. Traditionally grown chicken (free-range) is considered to be tastier than commercially grown chickens. By cooking a traditionally grown chicken for a guest, a host shows special hospitality. Cooking chicken in a three-legged iron pot on an open fire gives it the best flavour.chicken meat is usually eaten with dumplings or pap.
en.wikipedia.org/...
This one’s super short [1:11] — chicken traditionally cooked over an open fire in a three-legged pot:
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For any vegetarians, this is a great option for tickling your taste buds. Dikgobe combines peas and beans with sorghum, maize meal or samp to create a savoury porridge. It can be served as a main meal or a side dish.
pemburytours.com/...
Samp is hominy — cracked hominy, if I heard her correctly. [5:49]
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So come on in and grab a cuppa...
...and a nice nosh…
...and join us.
New Day Cafe is an open thread. What do you want to talk about today?