New Project :Wennegren Foundation Research Awards

One of ORI’s researchers, Dr. Susan Keitumetse, an archaeologist and cultural heritage specialist has been named as one of the recipients of the Wennegren Foundation Research award. The project will sponsor one (1) MPhil student at UB and the purchase of archaeological field equipment such as total station and GPsetc. The project, titled “Historical archaeology of marginal landscapes between Kgalakgadi Desert & Limpopo Dry Valleys”, will be carried out in the collaboration with Dr. Zoe Crossland (Co-Applicant), University of Columbia , and Ms Joyce Maphanyane (Co-PI), Environmental Science Dept, UB main campus. In brief the project is a component of the broader Cultural Heritage Programme being developed by Dr Keitumetse at ORI. The project looks at archaeological material and ethnographic evidence from the sparsely populated eco-tone between the Kgalagadi desert and the rich subsidiary valleys of the Limpopo river (Popularly referred to as ‘marginal spaces’) in order to explore the social, economic, and political interactions of the 19th century Botswana. The focus of the study will shift from the hilltop settlements and nucleated towns that have been the object of most research and focus on cattle-post areas to explore patterns of mobility, migration and social contact at a time of political change. This project is carried out in a circuit that will start in Central Botswana (Mosolotshane area) through Boteti area and finally Ngamiland following documented historical Tswana migration to North-West Botswana. The end product will be used by government stakeholders such as local communities, Botswana Tourism Organisation, Botswana National Museum, etc, to develop a tourism product needed to diversify Botswana tourism. We would like congratulate Dr Susan Keitumetse and her team on this achievement and flying the ORI flag high.

Tsodilo Hills:copper bracelet of the evening

The Botswana Society's new website features an article by authority on Tsodilo and renowned African rock art expert, Alec Campbell with colleagues Larry Robbins and Michael Taylor in which they give an insight into the wondrous and mysterious Botswana's only World Heritage Site, piercing together its long and intriguing history. Also featured on the page is the forthcoming cultural San Musical Festival which is to be held on the 1st August at D’Kar, where San communities from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa will converge on this village for three days of musical. For more events and interesting article please visit the Botswana Society 's new website:http://www.Botswanabeckons.com

University of Guelph visit to HOORC

This week a group of 12 people (one faculty and eleven students) from the University of Guelph visited HOORC as part of their field course. In the Library, they were taken through the digitisation work done on the legacy collections. Of particular interest to them ,was Doc Heinz's colour slides of bushman life. Later, Mieke Vanderpost gave a presentation on the San people, chronicling their history, unique cultural practices, and their dialect easily identifiable by the click sounds. It was in keeping with the preservation of their culture and to assist them integrate into society that the Kuru Development Trust was established in 1985, for which Meike Vanderpost has been a part of since its establishment. Part of the Trust's activities include the organisation of yearly art cultural music festivals which attract the various San groups. However, she lamented the gradual disappearance of the San culture, notably their rock paintings, for which they are renowed for.

Pete Smith's Delta: memorial and herbarium launch

Residents of Maun gathered at the site of Pete Smith's former home on the banks of the Thamalakane in Maun on Saturday to take part in unveiling of a new sculpted memorial for the pioneering Okavango researcher who died ten years ago last week. Owned by the Maun Catholic Mission, the site's trees and natural vegetation are kept much as they were when Pete Smith lived there. The ceremony included Tharientsho Storytellers' songs from The Seed Children stage production and Mieke and Helena's Scottish airs for flute and fiddle, and remarks by HOORC's Director Professor Susan Ringrose and the University of Botswana's Director of Public Affairs Mhitshane Reetsang. Father Anton of the Maun Catholic Mission officiated.

After the unveiling ceremony, people moved on to HOORC, where the new Natural Collections building containing the Pete Smith Herbarium was officially launched.

The week of events, that included an exhibition of digitized versions of Pete Smith's annotated maps of the Okavango, was sponsored by HOORC's BIOKAVANGO Project.

Stories from the Delta

University of Botswana Library Services team (L to R) Oarabile Rakgamanyane, Anastacia Makati, Molly Botlhole and Rose Legwatagwata at the opening of Pete Smith's Delta exhibition

Stories from the Delta

University of Botswana Acting Senior Archivist Molly Botlhole cutting the ribbon to open the Pete Smith's Delta exhibition

"This web-based resource will inform and inspire many more such projects to share legacy materials and to support current research and to show what lessons the past has for us."

Stories from the Delta

Mr Moaparankwe Mpho, former Water Affairs colleague of Pete Smith, at opening of Pete Smith's Delta exhibition

"Pete Smith worked with the people who lived in the Delta because he knew what they knew was important."

Stories from the Delta

Mr Forembi Forembi, former Water Affairs colleague of Pete Smith

"Pete Smith taught me how to read maps, so that I could move long distances in the Delta where I had not been before, just by following maps."

The exhibition, Pete Smith's Delta: Pioneering Biodiversity Conservation in the Okavango opened in Maun yesterday evening, featuring a live storytelling session with some of the late Pete Smith's friends and colleagues who travelled and worked with him in the Delta. The exhibition also previewed the new web-based resource developed by HOORC's Library, GIS Laboratory and University of Botswana Library Services Archives team, based on digitized versions of Pete's annotated maps. The exhibition continues until Saturday, May 23rd in African Art and Images at the Maun airport.

Farewell to Gemma Bentley

Gemma Bentley working on HOORC Library archives with Oarabile Rakgamanyane and Olebogeng Suwe

Gemma Bentley, Senior Archivist at the University of Botswana's Library Services since 2005, completes her work with the University this week. Gemma initiated and developed the Library's archives work, established a records management programme, recruited and trained archival staff and had a major role in laying the foundation for the University's institutional repository and digitization work. Gemma's hands-on and advisory assistance with development of the HOORC Library's archives -- the Peter Smith, Hans Joachim Heinz and Richard Bell collections -- will have a lasting impact on the services HOORC's Library provides to the Okavango community. Go well, Gemma: we will all miss you.

History of tsetse fly control in the Okavango Delta

Recently received in HOORC's Library, University of Botswana historian Dr Maitseo Bolaane's Tsetse and trypanosomosis control in the Okavango Delta, c. 1930s - 1970s looks at the relationship among tsetse fly control, the cattle industry and game policy in northern Botswana over five decades. The "bumpy road of trial and error" to control the pest described in the paper included destruction of game, selective bush clearing, and spraying of insecticides. The paper notes that, while there seems to have been little attempt to incorporate indigenous knowledge about tsetse fly on the part of colonial administrators, in Botswana Africans made sustained efforts to observe the fly environment and to experiment with its control. The paper was published in the South African Historical Journal in 2007: you can find it in HOORC's Library.

New issue of Botswana National Museum periodical

HOORC's Library recently received the first 2008 issue of The Zebra's Voice, quarterly publication of the Botswana National Museum. The issue commemorates the Museum's 40th anniversary and contains articles about the Adopt-a-Monument campaign, pre-development archaeology, revitalization of the Motswedi wa Ditso cultural heritage radio programme, and local community involvement in eco- and cultural tourism. You can request a copy from the National Museum or read it in HOORC's Library.

Digitization of legacy resources at HOORC's Library

Digitization project team Olebogeng Suwe and Anastacia Monageng

Portion of Peter Smith annotated map

HOORC's Library, supported by the BIOKAVANGO Project and working with the University of Botswana's Library Services Archives team, is digitizing selected historical materials from the library's special collections. The first project is electronic capture of 60 1:50,000 scale maps of the Okavango Delta region used by the late Peter Smith to document findings made on his field trips. Smith annotated the maps with observations about sightings of plants, local place names and water depths -- information that is being captured to produce an online searchable index of the maps' content that will be linked to images of the maps. plantsand peoplefor africa's Alison and Roger Heath are currently assisting with interpretation of botanical names on the maps, which will be linked to a database of Smith's herbarium specimens. Other digitization work planned includes biodiversity information contained in the archives of the late Dr Hans Joachim Heinz, anthropologist, and of the late Dr Richard Bell, ecologist.

New in HOORC's Library: Shiyeyi writing system

Mutjango wu Shiyeyi = Shiyeyi writing system / by Andy Monthusi Chebanne, Mike Rodewald and Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo is a newly published orthography that aims to provide an understanding of the history of the Wayeyi people, long time inhabitants of the Okavango Delta region.

The book describes the history of writing the Shiyeyi language and how Shiyeyi should be written. A product of ten years of research, Mutjango wu Shiyeyi has been produced as a collaboration between the Botswana Society and the Kamanakao Association. You can find the book in HOORC's Library.

Historical map of Botswana

The University of Texas at Austin has some interesting historical maps of Africa in its Perry-Castañeda LibraryMap Collection. You can also view the Sketch Map of British Bechuanaland, May 1887 http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_africa.html