Once upon a time (forty two years ago) in a land far far away (Kenya is two thousand five hundred kms north north east of Maun), I remember studying the Michelin map of Africa hanging on my fathers office wall.

The Okavango was depicted with faint traces of blue against a background of yellow. As a hydrological miracle it has fascinated me since that day. It has given me a lively hood, untold happiness, a place to adventure and a place I call home. But until last week its source was clouded in mystery. In my imagination, the “Angolan highlands” were like some Tolkienesque forest, shrouded in mist, unreachable to the ordinary Hobbit.

And then the team of the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project asked me to fly them to the Source lakes of the Okavango. In the heart of Angola.

To lend some context to this adventure you should know that shortly after I was awarded my private pilots license in Kenya in 1980 an American pilot was jailed for 15 months in Luanda for (unintentionally) crash landing his plane in Angola on a flight from Abidjan to Cape Town. A long time ago, I admit ,but sometimes these stories stick with you and, to my mind anyway, Angola has always been off limits. This was to be my first visit to this country.

As further context, Six Alpha, as my family call our 1979 Cessna 210, has just come out of an eight month hospital visit. Covid played havoc with “supply chains” and Continental ,the Alabama based factory where engines are made for light aircraft, had laid off most of their factory staff. It took six months for the engine to finally arrive in Johannesburg, and another two to get it fitted and signed off. Aircraft engines have a service life and Six Alpha’s second engine has done us proud. Over the last twelve years it has carried us on adventures from Addis Abba to Xigera. It was time for a new one.

And so on a beautiful May morning, with winters chill just beginning to become apparent, I preflight checked Six Alpha. Four up and full fuel, it was the first takeoff with the new engine so close to gross weight. I was interested to see how it would perform. Slower climb out than the old turbocharged engine, but nothing to be concerned about.

An hour and a half later we landed in Rundu, Namibia in the Caprivi to take on more fuel. There is no Avgas available in Angola, but Six Alphas long range tanks were designed exactly for this kind of mission. Another hour and a half and we landed in Menongue.

We landed in Tempue shortly before sunset and were shown our accommodation in the main research camp. Here I met social workers teaching the local villagers health care, sustainable farming and beekeeping among other topics. There were researchers studying the forest and the peat beds that filter the water in these source lakes, and there were mechanics and builders constructing the project base camp for community development work. The runway I had landed on had only just been refurbished after laying dormant since the civil war.

The next day I explored Tempue village and the river. Kai was busy mapping the forest. At the southern most boundary of the village, beyond the old administrative offices of the old Portuguese regime, red painted skull and cross bone signs warned of the presence of land mines!

On my final day a number of the researchers joined us on a two hour drive up to one of the 19 source lakes that feed the Kavango river along a deeply rutted sandy track. The entire region, some 50,000 square miles, or about the size of England, is a massively important water source, not just to the Okavango to the south, but to the Cassai river, which flows north into the DRC and joins the Congo river, and the Zambezi river to the east. If the Congo rainforest is the “lungs’ of Africa, this place must surely be the kidneys! Water flowing into the small lake was so crystal clear, I could see the white sandy bottom several meters below.

Mist covered the river on the morning of departure. An indication that winter had also reached this remote corner of Africa. A thorough preflight and we were on our way to Ondjiva. We stayed at the 60 room hotel called Aguila Verde, the Green Eagle hotel. There was a 6 foot high concrete statue of an eagle in the fountain in front of reception. It was not green. The beer was cold, the steak dinner was a tough as boot leather. The rooms were, given the circumstances, very acceptable.

The next morning, we still had to waited to get clearance to land in Ondangwa, Namibia, but soon we were on our way. Once we crossed the FIR, It was an even bigger relief to have the main tanks full of Avgas 20 minutes after we landed. A small hitch getting through to Windhoek on the phone to file the flight plan to Maun was over come by using a cell phone borrowed from the Apron control officer. For some reason the number in Windhoek just wont connect to roaming Botswana cell phones. A three hour rather bumpy ride at FL 115 brought us home to Maun.

After 27 years of war, Angola is poor. The village of Tempue has approximately 1200 inhabitants. There is no running water, no power, no bus service, no cars, no internet only a basic health clinic and two very small shops. The people survive off what they can farm or hunt. There are very few wild animals or birds. Few domestically farmed animals. I was shocked how few insects or birds I heard.

Yet this place is at the very heart of the most left important watershed in Southern Africa. What happens here in the next 10 years is vitally important to the very survival of the Okavango, and quite possibly the Cassai and Zambezi too.

What the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project is doing is enormously important towards creating sustainable livelihoods to avoid irreversible changes to the flow of three rivers that support the lives of countless animals, birds and people downstream.