Voices of Botswana: the tree man of Ngoma

By Roxanne Reid
When you arrive at Ngoma Safari Lodge on the western border of Chobe National Park, the view from the main deck will blow your mind. It looks out over the veld, a baobab tree and a waterhole towards the Chobe River. If you’re lucky when you stay here, you might meet the tree man of Ngoma.

​A big, burly man, professional guide Bevan Machira can be a little intimidating at first. But show an interest in nature, especially trees, and you’ll make friends very quickly.

As a guide he’s interested in everything from animals to rocks and plants, but it is trees that truly have his heart. In fact, he loves them so much we dubbed him the ‘tree man’. He seemed to like that, telling us that in the language of his Subiya people it translated to Mokwame we zisamo.

​Back home in the Linyanti he has planted guava, banana, pawpaw, mangosteen, baobab, brown ivory, hard mahogany, jackalberry and sausage trees. He collects seeds in the wild – not in the park, he’s quick to add – and nurtures them to germinate and grow.

He took us to his room behind Africa Albida Tourism’s Ngoma Safari Lodge to show us his garden. He admits that the other staff tease him about his ‘jungle’ but it’s a 3m-square patch of greenness, a sharp contrast with the brown nothingness in front of the other rooms. He had two half-grown pawpaw trees, an avo tree and a number of smaller trees he’d grown from seeds – a natal mahogany, a 10-inch high brown ivory in a bag of soil, and a pod mahogany in a small pot he said was ready to be planted out.

Bevan also grows chillis. ‘The others take my chillis when I’m away on leave because they like spicy food, but I don’t mind,’ he said. What bugs him is if he asks them to water his plants and they forget or don’t bother.

​His love of trees was inspired by his father who used to grow vegetables and taught him how to care for plants. He regards the trees as his children and it hurts him to see them struggle or die. Once when he was away from home in the city his brother phoned to say that mole-rats were killing some of his young trees. He dropped everything and rushed home to see what he could do. ‘I was so very angry to see them like that, I wanted to cry. I love my trees,’ he said.

Although his grandfather, a traditional healer, was killed by an elephant when he was out gathering plants one day, Bevan bears the animals no ill will. But he sees elephants eating tree bark in the dry season and he’s worried that some of these of trees – like the majestic baobab – will die out in future. ‘I see too many trees dying from damage by elephants or people,’ he said.

Before Bevan became a guide he worked as a chef for a safari company. His long-term ambition is one day to grow vegetables to use in his own restaurant. He also dreams of using timber from trees he has grown to build a house in a tree.

And who doesn’t dream about living in a tree house? It’s just that most people don’t grow the trees from seed first!