Saturday, September 23: When we arrived and settled in Shakawe at the end of May, the marsh located in front of our Tocadi house was full of water approximately a meter deep. The marsh leads to the Okavango River, part of the famed Okavango Delta system. An impressive variety of bird life, as well as hippos, crocodiles and elephants, can be seen in and near the marsh and river.

As summer approaches, the water has slowly receded. No rain has fallen here since we arrived; a duration of at least three months with no precipitation. In June we could see people navigating the water using mokoros (dugout canoes propelled by poling). Now it is dry enough that we were able to walk from our house out to the river early last Saturday morning to look at birds.

There is significantly more human activity in the marsh now. People from Shakawe and the surrounding villages walk out every day to harvest reeds for use in building and fence construction. With the thinning of the reeds, boats full of tourists from the two nearby lodges are visible from our front yard. Children from the village play in the small patches of water that remain. The marsh will fill again if there is a rainy season, which would begin sometime between November and January.