Internship
in Botswana
Between
May and August, I spent four weeks in Botswana. I was given the wonderful
opportunity of working at the herbaria and assisting with students training
on the PRECIS Specimen Database. The time was divided into two visits, each
of which was two weeks long. During each of these visits I spent the initial
week at the University of Botswana Herbarium (UCBG) and the second week
at the National Herbarium (GAB).
Mbaki
Muzila (UCBG) and Monicah Kabelo (GAB) had both attended SABONET Database
courses. However, Mbaki is currently studying towards an Honours degree
at the University of the Free State. Monicah has many tasks around the herbarium
and this leaves little time for data capturing. In light of this, SABONET-Botswana
has employed two students on a contract basis to encode the Poaceae specimens.
The
first visit, in late May to early June, entailed the training of one student
at each institute and computerising Poaceae specimens. The student at UCBG
was Ronald Samaxa. He was highly motivated and quickly learnt how to capture
data and back up his database. Abednico Macheme, the student at GAB, was
equally motivated. He had already started work on the database with the
help of Monicah and only needed to polish his data capturing skills. At
the end of the second week, Monicah and I went over some reports on the
Specimen Database and how to run simple queries using a “Reports Database”.
Both
herbaria benefited tremendously from the students, as they did their utmost
to speed up the data capturing process. By my next visit, which was in late
July to early August, GAB had completed the Poaceae and UCBG had only new
Poaceae specimens left to encode (specimens that had not yet been mounted)!
The
next step after computerising the Poaceae was to make sure that they were
properly georeferenced. This is a difficult, time-consuming task, but with
the help of Gerald Pope’s “Collecting localities in the Flora Zambesiaca
area”, it turned out to be very enjoyable. It was also an educational experience
for me, as I am now familiar with many of the collecting localities in Botswana
(even though my pronunciation is not always correct). I learnt that the
most widely collected area in Botswana is the Okavango Delta (Ngamiland).
The Delta extends over most of the degree squares 1922 and 1923 and comprises
perennial channels and swamps, islands, and seasonally inundated floodplains
(Pope & Pope 1998). The legendary Peter Smith collected many of the
specimens from this area. With reference to the grass collection, much of
the other vast expanses of the country remain undercollected.
To
summarise, the total number of specimens encoded at UCBG was 1,006, of which
667 belong to the Poaceae. At GAB a total of 2,427 specimens, of which 1,209
belonged to the Poaceae, were encoded. My contribution was 390 specimens
for the two institutions. I acquired a vast knowledge of the beautiful country
and met many wonderful people. I also gained by being able to visit a few
of the localities I had been georeferencing!
Thank
you to SABONET for providing me with this unique opportunity. I am extremely
grateful to Dr Moffat Setshogo (SABONET Botswana), Dr Bruce Hargreaves (Head
of the Botswana Natural History Museum), Mrs Queen Turner (Head of Herbarium
Section) and Mr Jimmy Mashonja (Head of Entomology Section) for all their
assistance during my stay. A big ‘thank you’ also to Jacob Phiri, Monicah
Kabelo, Ronald Samaxa, Abednico Macheme and the rest of the staff at the
Natural History Museum.
SABONET News 6.3: 228
