"a STRIP of land called Caprivi" Caprivi by smirnofforiginal

Chancellor Caprivi negotiated this strip of land, from the British for the Germans and thus it was named 'Caprivi'.

The Caprivi is the strip of land (a pahandle) between Angola and Botswana. The Kavango Riverruns through and into the Zambezi River where the Caprivi meets a junction with Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

one man and his wives!

Entering the Caprivi Strip through a vetinary checkpoint, the sun seemed to be beating down hotter than it had outside the strip, the tarmac road (yes tarmac!) was reflecting the glare of the sun & creating mirages to drive into. People lining the roads... walking, walking... walking and smiling and waving at us. Grass huts huddled around one another - meticulously clean. Women sweeping the dirt floors; such pride in their homes. And the children - the happy, smiling children with their big, broad, toothy smiles, beaming at us, delighted with an apple or Bic biro passed to them. Beautiful children... but the difficult overwhelming feeling of being a "have" amongst a stretch of land of "have not's". It did not sit easily with me - white, middle class girl, driving along with her nice, middle class family in their expensive hire car... and I looked into the eyes of the teenagers... I swear I could see some resentment and, if so, could I blame them? not really. But I didn't want them to resent me... I fell in love with this strip of land and it's peoples; it's peoples who had to work so hard for the most basics of their needs but who produced school children in the smartest, ***est uniforms I have ever seen.... I wish my children were that immaculately turned out.

One night I sat and spoke extensively to a lady from Botswana. She was a very engaging lady. she told me that each gaggle of grass huts was not a little village but the settlement of one man and his wives...

more alarmingly though and far too easy to imagine, this lady told me how, due to the lengthy walks to and from school, a lot of girls hitch rides and of course, rape is often their fate. If this is not worryng enough, one only has to think about the HIV epidemic that is rapidly increasing in Namibia...