Batsi initiated conversation for the first time. “That is my village.”
“Is it dangerous to be next to the river like that, with all the hippos and crocodiles?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about fishing from those narrow boats?”
I had seen dozens of hippos, their little round ears and pig eyes poking through the river. One had chased a double-decked sunset cruise boat I was on the previous night, a vessel over 40 feet long and 20 feet wide.
“Hippos are bad.” Batsi was smiling again, racing upstream against the powerful river. “They always attack the boats. Sometimes the crocodiles get the fishermen when they swim to shore.”
“Really? That happens?”
“Sometimes.”
We passed another mokorro. An old man was settled deeply in the bow, laying a set-net with ashy, wrinkled hands. I realized that all the canoes hugged the riverbanks.
“Tough way to make a living.”
“That is why I work for the lodge, and I am very grateful to Mr. Jackson.”
The next morning I hooked a tigerfish almost immediately. It folded the heavy rod, and I was shocked when a fish of no more than four pounds appeared from the coffee-colored water. It occurred to me that surviving this ecosystem required incredible strength.
Batsi shook my hand firmly and clapped my back. It was a long while before my heart rate settled. I knew that I wasn’t finished with Botswana, tigerfish, or my own conflict about living and fishing there.
After college I took a teaching job in Botswana. Batsi and I fished together a number of times. I learned much from him about guiding and other things. Whenever we caught a catfish we took it to his village, and every time I lost a tigerfish, he said the same thing: “Big fish. Five, six kilos.”
I never landed one over three.
Miles Nolte spent two years living and teaching in Botswana.
Photo by Denver Bryan
