Meet Promise - Xugana Island Lodge

Xugana Island Lodge
June 2008

Xugana guests often remark on their questionnaires that they liked their friendly mokoro poler, Promise.

They might see him one morning with a rake in his hand caring for the grounds and at midday carrying luggage to the bungalows. Later in the afternoon they see him wielding a wooden pole to push them quietly past the reeds and tiny frogs that can be viewed from the modern version of traditional dugout canoes – mokoros, which historically constituted the main form of transportation in the delta.

“I like the guests. When they do mokoro, I do mokoro,” says Promise Kabelo. “I drive them in the mokoro to show them the animals….Tell them (readers) we saw the lions – 3 females and one male on Palm Island.” It’s a sight he is still marveling days after the event.

Promise, a Desert & Delta Safaris employee for 9 years in September, is a man of the upper Okavango Delta. He was born in Seronga in 1969 and at age 11 learned to pole the mokoro when he and his grandfather went fishing for bream. Of his home village, he says, gesturing to illustrate the distinction, “This side is the desert. This side is the river.” Today his 5-year-old daughter, Kimberly, lives there with her mother, and he visits on his time-off.

Promise is proud of his specialist guide license for the mokoro and his tracking skills. He likes zebras and looks for roan antelopes, sable antelopes and Cape buffalo. He is also known around Xugana’s staff village as the lone staffer who has an appetite for the abundant catfish caught in the delta waters. If someone catches a catfish, the refrain is, “Promise will eat it.”

When guests first meet Promise on the motor boat that will take them to their walking safari or their mokoro ride, they can’t help but be struck by his introduction: “This is Promise,” he says, smiling broadly and going from guest to guest to shake hands.
They won’t forget him.

Many thanks Maria Henson - Desert & Delta Safaris Volunteer