'Lake Ngami' is an
endorheic lake in
Botswana north of the
Kalahari Desert. It is seasonally filled by the
Okavango River, via the
Okavango Delta, as well as the
Taughe. It is one of the fragmented remnants of the ancient
Lake Makgadikgadi. Although the lake has shrunk dramatically beginning from 1890, it remains an important habitat for birds and wildlife, especially in flood years.
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Lake Ngami had many famous visitors during the 19th (and into the 20th) century. In 1849
David Livingstone described it as a "shimmering lake, some 80 miles long and 20 wide". Livingstone also made a few cultural notes about the strange people living in this area; he noticed they had a story similar to that of the
Tower of Babel, except that the builders' heads were "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding" (''Missionary Travels'', chap. 26).
Charles John Andersson (who published ''Lake Ngami; or, Explorations and Discoveries during Four Years' Wanderings in the Wilds of Southwestern Africa'' in 1855) and
Frederick Thomas Green also visited the area in the early 1850s.
Frederick Lugard led a British expedition to the lake in
1896.
Arnold Weinholt Hodson passed through the area on his journey from
Serowe to
Victoria Falls in
1906.
External links
★ Read local weekly news from
The Ngami Times.