Kalahari Desert

While the Kalahari Desert is called a desert, it isn’t a true desert. Some areas receive a great deal of rain ? up to 250 millimeters of rain each year. It’s not regular or dependable rain, which gave the area its name. The Tswana word is Kgala which means ?great thirst? while the tribal name was Kalagare meaning a place without water.

The Kahalari Desert wasn’t always a sandy, dry place. It was once part of a lake called Makgadikgadi. The lake covered a huge area, 80 thousand square kilometers. By comparison all of the Great Lakes in the United States, five of them, cover about 244,000 square kilometers. Makgadikgadi was about as large as the largest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior. It was also about 30m deep on average. The last of the lake drained about 10,000 years ago.

Les Stroud, the Survivorman from television, spent six days in the Kalahari Desert filming one of his episodes. During his time there the surface temperature on the sand reached 107.6F, in the shade! In the sun it was as high as 149F. That’s a huge contrast to the temperatures at night. At lowest, the Survivorman had to sleep in 44F cold. He didn’t know which one he liked less, the cold or the heat.

One of the most important aspects of surviving in a desert like the Kalahari Desert is trying to drink enough water. It’s necessary in normal places. But in 140F heat and dry air dehydration can take place in a hurry. Survivorman ran into a severe lack of water. He did a number of things to try to gather the important resource. One was to create a urine still, where he could capture all the water from his urine. Waste not want not. He also found some plants that kept a lot of water, but the roots had to be chewed so it was the equivalent of only a few drops. He called it quits after six days, dizzy from a lack of hydration. There’s no doubt that even Les, trained and prepared in survival in harsh environments, would have died in only a few more days.

That’s life in the Kahalari Desert. Or is it death?

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