Famous, mysterious, forgotten, stolen and now found again.
The Savute Channel, one of the greatest mysteries and fascinations of northern Botswana, is flowing again after nearly 30 years of lying dormant.
Covering over 100km as it flows from the Linyanti River (fed from the Zibadianja Lagoon), through a gap in the Magwikhwe Sand Ridge, past Savute Elephant Camp, it is only a matter of days before it reaches its final destination, the Savute Marsh in the Mababe Depression, in the middle of the Chobe National Park.
Since November 2008, its painstakingly slow meander (falling only 18cm for every kilometre covered) has been keenly followed by many, and yet, surprisingly, the water seemed to arrive overnight at the camp.
The camp awoke on the morning of January 5 to the sight of a river flowing.
Herds of wildlife are delighting in the fresh new water source, celebrating the abundance of the channel.
The Savute Channel has only ever flowed intermittently. It last flowed from 1967 to 1981, but since then the channel and the Savute Marsh have been dry, a phenomenon that has occurred on and off over centuries.
Until recently, the channel was an open grassland, home to numerous animals such as large herds of zebra, impala and wildebeest, and abundant predators such as lion, cheetah and wild dog.
Gaunt skeletons of trees, now long dead, that grew in one of the earlier dry periods, line both the channel and the marsh.
These trees would have had at least 50 years of dry conditions in which to grow and mature into the size they reached, before drowning during a subsequent flood.
Records show that the channel and the marsh dried out during the 1880s.
It remained dry until the summer of 1957-58 when heavy rains in the catchment area of the Angolan highlands re-flooded the Chobe river system, and the channel flowed once again until 1966.
Its irregular flowing pattern continued until 1981, when the channel seemed to dry up completely and be lost forever.
As northern Botswana experienced very strong seismic activity in April 2008, as well as a super flood season, it is once again hard to distinguish whether both or just one of the factors are causing the channel to flow again, or whether it is pure coincidence.
