Dispatch 45 - Tannie Gertruida and the Nama Stap

We're still zigzagging across Mama Africa, and she's beautiful as ever, as now out of Caprivi and back into beautiful Botswana, wild dogs at Savuti, we head for the River Khwai. The road is flooded, difficult going, abnormally high water, deep river crossings - we camp on the riverbank next to the soccer field that's been prepared by volunteers from 4x4MegaWorld. Next day it all happens - another great community day to link nature, culture and community. Speeches in the 'Kgotla', the chief's meeting place, the gathering of Khwai River water to be added to the symbolic expedition calabash, this time by two lovely traditional Basarwa San ladies. There's singing, dancing, feasting, and some of the best soccer yet. Onto Xakanaxa in Moremi Game Reserve - more flooded river crossings, elephants galore, a great leopard sighting - no. 6 on this journey - the area is always a paradise for wildlife. Ross' voice over the radio: "Another leopard across the mopani pole bridge under the sausage tree." That's no. 7 - let's face it, the freedom of a 4x4 wildlife journey across Botswana is a must for every adventurer - a hardwood fire at night, the unfenced sounds of the wild, the roar of a lion, red-billed francolins heralding the dawn, the cackle of a hyena, the cry of a jackal, and the true Transfrontier travellers, the ever present elephant who need no boundaries - some 250,000 of these silent giants that wander across the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Park, shared by Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Time marches on - just 25 days left on our 100 days journey.

We add Okavango Delta water to the calabash, and water from Tamelekane in Maun where we have a wonderful community day at the Botswana Wildlife Training College - Maun is a great place to re-supply. Nando's, one of the expedition sponsors, gives us a chicken feast. We check the Landies, fuel up, even get ice for the Captains and head out for the 52,800 sq/km Central Kalahari Game Reserve, bigger than Swaziland and Lesotho combined. It's a paradise. After so many bustling and frenetic community days, the feeling of solitude and tranquillity is unbelievable, the Kalahari, largest mantle of vegetated sand in the world is endless. The Kalahari lions are magnificent. Park Manager, the friendly Dimikatso Ntshebe, writes these words in the Boundless Expedition Scroll:

'You know Kingsley, we shouldn't view nature as an adversary to conquer and destroy, but rather a storeroom of infinite knowledge and experience linking man to the past, present and the future - Just as you and your team cross national boundaries, so may conservation areas also cross boundaries and countries - Nature knows no limits.'

And so we cross this vast piece of Africa and across Khutse Game Reserve to a wonderful Basarwa community day at Phuduhudu where the Boundless Scroll to link nature, culture and community gets endorsed in the Sesarwa click language of the San people - so as to confuse your tongue I've giver you a sentence: 'Ishi ka xonkhwate isi gkaaba qhaaka thine qhoole, qhaoung xhenya qhaa qgoobale…'

We cross the Kalahari to Mabuasehube, more African wild dogs and then into the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park on the one-way east to west wilderness track across pristine, unspoilt Africa - pans, wildlife and red Kalahari dunes - to the Nossob River. We South Africans can feel proud, straddling the border between Botswana and South Africa, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of the most pristine conservation areas on earth. Officially opened on May 12 2000, this is the first formally declared Transfrontier park in Africa and a model for conservation in the 21st century. The head of the park on the South African side is Nico van der Walt. He's a gem and allows the gate at Tweerivieren to be opened so that Ross my son can race his girlfriend Anna through the night in one of the Land Rover Discoveries to Upington in search of urgent medical attention - it's scary, she's down with bad malaria and not responding to the treatment. Counting back the days, she must have got it on the Angolan border up on the Kwando. Ross radios to say there's a big male lion just outside camp. I wish him well - we've lived with malaria all our lives and know the danger if things go wrong.

Nico helps us gather calabash water from a pan and chooses a calcrete stone to add to stones from all the Transfrontier conservation areas to become a Boundless Southern Africa expedition route monument at Sendelingsdrift in Namibia. Bat eared foxes, black backed jackal, hyena, ostrich, beautiful gemsbok, eland and thousands of springbok move between the majestic camel thorns along the beds of the ephemeral Nossob- and Auob Rivers. Bateleur eagles soar overhead, huge sociable weavers' nests, odd shaped carefully thatched, superbly insulated bird hotels that can house up to 300 weavers and their chicks, threaten to topple the trees they've cleverly built in.

We deflate the Landies' tyres, leave the park's tourist routes behind to take the switchback 91 red dune ride to !Xaus Lodge, a beautifully appointed small personalised upmarket thatched lodge run by a private concessionaire on the !Ae! Hai Kalahari Heritage Park (land) which has been returned to the Mier and Khomani San communities. We're in for a treat, last night was -6°C and we froze in our tents - tonight it's duvets and hot water bottles. !Xaus in Nama means 'heart'. It refers to the heart shaped indentations of the remote Kalahari pan below the lodge - symbolically the lodge is also regarded as the heart of the Mier and Khomani San communities. At sunset we walk across the pan to meet these delightful San people, like early hunter gatherers we squat around the coals of a small fire on the Kalahari sand where amongst rudimentary grass and stick shelters, we watch the light golden brown complexioned women with smiling wrinkles and twinkling laughing eyes, using their tiny hands to fashion ostrich shell necklaces and bangles. Mashozi, who's been sitting with an old man, hands me a necklace made from a piece of gemsbok bone decorated with a burnt etching of a naked hunter with a bow.

Later, back at the lodge, there's a feast prepared by the Mier community and traditional dancing by the Knomani San. We've been joined by a group of 20 business leaders from Nando's who are assisting the expedition with community work. As always it's great fun around a Kalahari fire. Coca Cola have brought in Robert Swan, the famous arctic explorer - the first man to walk unaided to both the South- and North Poles. !Xaus concessionaires Glynn O'Leary and Johan Kriek of Transfrontier Parks Destinations, are with us - they've been very much part of this expedition through their Mashampane tented camp and 4x4 wilderness trails in the Mozambique section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park and with the Batlokwa people at Witsieshoek Lodge where they are assisting with a community tourism initiative. Sprinkbok and lamb potjie in black cast iron pots, roosterbrood, moskonfyt and malva pudding - Tannie Gertruida Bott's speciality. The night is cold so we place shovelfuls of warming coals from the campfire under our canvas camp chairs to keep our much-travelled 'boude' warm.

Next day, in keeping with !Xaus Lodge's community spirit, Christine du Plessis, the Sanparks 'People and Conservation' officer, has arranged a Kgalagadi district art competition. The drawings clearly show the link between nature, culture and community and with the Nando's team we move to Welcome School for a nature 'quiz' and the handing over of box libraries, big blue trammels donated by Alert Steel into which educational books have been packed by children from Centurus Colleges. As always at these community events Mashozi, (my wife with whom I've been adventuring for over 40 years), distributes reading glasses to poor sighted people. Called Rite to Sight, it's a Grindrod supported initiative which, when we reach Riemvasmaak a few days later, goes a step further as with the help Neville Bosman, the president of the Lions Club of Gordonia and Andre van Niekerk, the Land Rover North Western Motors dealer in Upington, a convoy of expedition Land Rovers escorts cataract patients from Upington Hospital into the community hall in Riemvasmaak. They've left blind, the bandages come off and now they can see! There's a opskop and a feast, langarm, piano accordion and guitar, lovely old Riemvasmaak women in traditional dress, and off course, the expedition members - some more clumsy than others - have to learn the 'Nama Stap' - we'll keep you posted.