In the chilly predawn hour of late July, the peak time for a winter safari in Botswana, I sink deeper into the seat of our electric Land Cruiser, bundled in layers of scarves, blankets, and jackets. We’re on the move. A predator, the elusive African leopard, was spotted near our lodge the night before. While tracking this large nocturnal cat will ultimately prove difficult, I have already witnessed a different rare sight on this trip: a crew of all-woman guides known as the Chobe Angels, the first in Africa and the only such team in Botswana, where women still represent less than 5% of all safari guides.
“In the past, guiding was meant for men—women were back home, doing the house chores,” says Oriah Nthobatsang, one of 20 guides at the Chobe Game Lodge, which sits inside the namesake reserve known for having the highest density of elephants in Africa. “The Chobe Angels have broken that norm.”
Botswana accelerated reforms aimed at improving the lives of women in the 2000s, during what the World Bank cites as a “golden decade” for the progress of women’s rights worldwide, led by sub-Saharan Africa. In more recent years, the country has passed laws like giving married women the right to own land, and implemented initiatives to boost women’s participation in the economy. Still, Botswana’s gender equality indicators are lagging behind neighboring South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, highlighting the critical need for groups like Chobe Angels.
It hasn’t been a smooth journey for the lodge, either. When long-time general manager Johan Bruwer joined in 2006, Chobe Game Lodge had just one woman working as a guide. Safari operators were hesitant to hire women, so Bruwer created an agreement with the Botswana Wildlife Training Institute in the nearby town of Maune to send all their women students to Chobe. “It took us the better part of a decade to get the all-woman crew together,” says Bruwer. During that time, the lodge implemented initiatives like equal wages, flexible schedules to support a healthy work-life balance, and job security post-maternity leave.
“It wasn’t easy,” says Nthobatsang, who became a guide in 2013. She maneuvers our quiet vehicle through the fragile park ecosystem as we pass a couple of kudu deer and a boisterous family of baboons gathered in the shade of the nearby mopane trees, indigenous to southern Africa. “I didn’t know how to drive, but I told myself, ‘One of these days, I will see myself in that Land Cruiser, driving in the mud or the sand.’ ”
“Guiding is not just about driving into the bush to see big game,” says Tshepiso “Vivian” Diphupu, the lodge’s environmental educator. We meet by the Chobe River, a mighty waterway at the northern edge of the park that attracts Angolan giraffes, puku antelopes, and hippos throughout the dry season. “The moment we go behind the wheel, we’re here to narrate a story,” Diphupu adds as a herd of African bush elephants, including a floppy-eared toddler, slowly descend to the river for their daily bath.
