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Field Notes from A Planetary Expedition 

Niamh Shaw reports on her experiences participating in an expedition into the remote, Mars-like salt pans of Botswana to study the subsurface geology. 

Read article in the fully formatted PDF of the Europlanet Magazine.

In July 2023, I joined a field trip to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana as part of the Transnational Access (TA) programme run by the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI). The salt pan is one of seven planetary field analogues and over forty laboratories that researchers around the world can access, free of charge, through Europlanet.  

I applied to the TA programme as a science communicator and joined an expedition for the geophysicist Mebatseyon (Meba) Shawel from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia to investigate features in Ntwetwe Pans, Makgadikgadi Basin, Botswana using Ground Penetrating Radar (see Meba’s scientific report). Fulvio Franchi, Associate Professor in Sedimentology in the Earth and Environmental Science Department at the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) is the local coordinator for Europlanet 2024 RI and organised the field trip. 

While interested in planetary science, this is not my field of expertise. As a science communicator I provided imagery of the field trip for the science team. I also captured the human story of life in the field work, which I continue to share with the general public to raise awareness of Europlanet and of the diverse research projects taking place at these fascinating planetary field analogues. This is my story… 

Arrival Day – 5 July 2023, Johannesburg, South Africa. 

10.50am 

I left Strasbourg, France, early yesterday morning and now, over a day later, I’m almost at my final destination. I’m already feeling colder than I thought I would be, and didn’t really pack properly for the dry season. Fulvio had advised me to only pack a carry-on bag. Most of my luggage is camera and AV equipment which leaves me little room to squeeze in any extra items. There’s an outdoor store at the airport and I use my layover to source a light down-jacket, some thin layers, a hat, and a USB rechargeable headlamp with a special UV setting to locate scorpions at night – should they decide to join me in my tent! All the gear is considerably cheaper than what I would have paid in Ireland. I’m not sure whether it’s wise to bring this winter gear but I know that I’ll use it later in the year on my Antarctic expedition.

12pm

I board my last plane, bound for Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. It’s a small propeller plane; the Air Botswana steward deftly squeezes my carry-on bag in the tiniest overhead bin, suitable only for briefcases and shopping bags. We take off! I love that the snack onboard is biltong with a beverage.

1.30pm

I have arrived in Gaborone! The Air Steward wrestles for a minute or so with my carry-on but soon it is back in my care. Lemphose is there, my name written on a sign, as arranged by Fulvio. Lemphose works at BUIST as a snake handler, as well as in transportation. He tells me that we need to wait for Meba’s flight, which is arriving soon from Ethiopia. I use the time to get myself a SIM card. Meba arrives. He is quiet with kind eyes. Immediately I know that this is going to be a really lovely trip. Soon we are on our way to Palapye, some 350km away and home to BUIST, the host university for this field trip.

6pm, Palapye.

Fulvio meets Meba and me at the stunning Majestic Five Hotel. I’ve never seen clothes like his, he’s clearly dressed for the climate and the bush. Fulvio is a force of energy; I like his directness. He leaves us to settle in. I make plans to meet Meba at the restaurant in an hour. I lie on my bed, call David, my husband, and go straight to sleep. Meba eats alone.

Day 1 – 6 July

8.30am, Palapye.

Fulvio is outside in the truck, already packed with gear for the field trip. I’m not sure what the right attire is for driving into the bush. I don’t have many items to choose from so I wear them all and figure I can take some layers off once I get warmer. It is cold though and I’m glad I bought those items at Johannesburg airport. Meba takes the front seat. I want to film Meba and Fulvio and be ready to take photos when I can. Half of the back seat is taken up with a portable fridge, and there’s gear everywhere, so I need to find some room for myself.

11am. Shopping somewhere between Palapye and Boteti

This is a small town but it has a SPAR supermarket. We have that supermarket chain in Ireland too but the food in this SPAR is a lot different. I assist Fulvio in picking up the items we need, while Meba keeps an eye on the truck. A lot of what he’s buying is meat. Really good cuts of meat too. We get bread, milk, cheese, peanut butter, tomatoes, biscuits (called EET-SUM-MOR – the packaging looks a lot like the Highland Shortcake biscuits from home), lots of water, some cleaning stuff and that’s it. We meet Lemphose in the car park. I meet Thras here and Boniface. Thras is a postgrad student of Fulvio, studying geology. She’s gentle and quiet, and so tiny. Boniface is a technician at BUIST. Their truck is also packed with all the science equipment. 

Fulvio drives around the corner to another shopping area and picks up an inverter. He tells me that we’ll need this in the field to recharge our batteries and lighting every day. I’ve never seen an inverter before. 

1pm 

After a quick lunch, we are on the road again bound for the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan. It’s a squeeze now in the back. I’m holding two dozen eggs on my lap, other items are digging into my left side and I’m trying not to flatten the other groceries with my feet or any other body part. 

2pm 

We take a left turn and are no longer on a bitumen road. Fulvio stops the car to chat with Lemphose, who is driving the other truck. This is where our phone signals will stop. I make one last call to David – it’s my last chance for the next five days. I reassure him that if anything goes wrong Fulvio has a satellite phone. We don’t expect anything to go wrong – it’s the dry season and all the predatory species like the lions have left the basin. Fulvio has been involved in many field studies at the pan, and in all those seven years he’s never seen a lion over dry season. 

We all jump back in the trucks and I re-jig a few items a little to give myself more room. We are now driving on a dirt track, following a wire fence on the right. Regularly the track becomes deep pits of sand. Fulvio has driven this many times but warns us that the truck can get stuck if we’re not careful. He shares stories of times he got stuck in the past, or helped others who were stuck. He explains that in having the two trucks we’re a lot safer. If one truck gets stuck, the other can get us out. 

I’ve never seen a track like this before; the sand is falling on top of the truck in waves, much like when you drive in deep puddles. It splashes up onto my rear window. We take a right turn and I see the massive dust cloud we have left behind. I start filming. Lemphose is driving behind us and the dust the car generates is incredible. I’m glad I caught it on camera. 

We keep driving. Donkeys and horses rush by from time to time. And then we see the pan on the other side of the fence. Miles and miles of flat land and nothing. After two hours of driving on the track, Fulvio takes a left turn and we are in a clearing with some abandoned buildings. This is our camp. 

4.15pm, Camp 1 Boteti 

We have arrived! Fulvio has used this place as a camp many times and he explains how to set up everything: the tables go on the small patch of poured concrete, the fire against the wall of the abandoned building close by, and the tents to the left of the tables. Everything in the back of the trucks is covered in dust, including some of the groceries and my carry-on bag. It takes an hour to finish setting up camp. Sunset soon follows. The heat of the day is gone and fire becomes an important part of the evening. I take some photos and enjoy the heat of the day. Unlike Irish sunsets, darkness comes quickly here. Dinner was delicious. Fulvio has figured out, from many years of field work, that meals of meat with basic vegetables like potatoes are the most tasty and effective form of nutrition. Dinner is over by 7.30pm and, after washing-up, we sit around the fire to stay warm. Stories about Botswana and life at the University are shared. Boniface and Lemphose, while fluent in English, regularly shift into Setswana, the country’s native language. The pace of the phrasing is nice to listen to. It’s a melodic sort of language. I mostly listen to everyone at the fire. Lemphose plays music from his phone. There’s an outhouse about 100 metres from the camp. I’m glad I bought that headlamp with me, as I decide to go there before heading to bed. The path is dark and there’s a few deep holes I need to avoid. I head to bed around 9.30pm. Thras does too. My tent is huge, army surplus and pretty basic, but it’s nice to be able to stand up. I get into my sleeping bag. It’s soothing to hear the group chatting and laughing nearby. I’m asleep in minutes. 

Day 2 – 7 July 

7.30am 

The sunrise is stunning but it’s cold. Lemphose has the fire going. I’m wearing every layer of clothing I have. I brush my teeth using a cup and water from the 5-litre bottle. Breakfast is peanut butter sandwiches, coffee and some of those EET-SUM-MOR shortcake biscuits. We sit around the fire quietly as we get ready for the day. Meba tells us he had difficulty sleeping because he was cold. I got up twice during the night to go to the toilet. Fulvio tells me it’s because I was cold; he offered me a second sleeping bag last night but I didn’t want to take it. I want to be treated the same as the rest of the team, not be an added burden, or weaker than the rest. 

8am 

We pack everything back into the trucks, except our tents, tables and chairs and depart for the first day of data gathering for Meba. It’s time to get on the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan. We drive for about 45 minutes and reach our first test area. Boniface and Lemphose remove the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) from their truck. It’s a device that uses radar to monitor subsurface layers of the ground. It takes a while to set up but, once it’s all assembled, Meba walks carrying a monitor, secured across his shoulder, with a long 10-metre sort of tubing that contains the radar sensors attached behind. He’s mapped out areas of the basin he wants to monitor and has created a sort of grid for each site. Today his paths are long 1-kilometre straight lines that Fulvio maps out using his GPS and the tracks of one of the trucks. It’s cold and windy on the pan; the dirt is a paler colour and crusty underfoot. Thras is excited – she’s already seen formations that relate to her field of study and is gathering samples. The morning involves setting Meba up with the GPR monitor, walking slightly ahead or beside him (we’ll affect the radar if we follow or walk too closely beside him). As morning leads into midday, the temperature rises and soon it’s uncomfortably hot. Lemphose and Boniface continue to keep their faces covered with balaclavas. They don’t want to ingest the dust. 

Lunchtime! Fulvio gets the bread, cheese, ham slices and tomato from the fridge in the back and we make sandwiches. Even though it’s hard to keep the dust off anything, the food is delicious. Water and then an apple and a few more of those EET-SUM-MOR biscuits. We continue gathering data with Meba and Boniface until about 2.30 pm, when we head back to camp. By now, it’s swelteringly hot for me, but it’s only about 28 degrees Celsius. 

When we return to camp, everybody washes up to remove the dust from the pan as best we can. It’s nice to have an hour or so to sit in the shade with some water as I edit some photos from the day. Some of us are resting; Meba and Boniface are studying the data and powering the computer from the inverter, which is plugged into the car battery. I feel a sense of calm that can only come from being in the outdoors. I think about David and wonder what his day is like. I lie down for a bit and take a short nap. As the Sun sets, I work with Thras, Meba and Fulvio in preparing dinner. Lemphose has another great fire going and, tonight, we have lights running, which were charged during the day with a solar panel. I recharge my camera batteries at the inverter too. Dinner is over by 6.30pm and again we sit around the fire sharing stories. Thras tells us more about her life in Ethiopia, before she came to Botswana. Her boyfriend is still in Ethiopia, as are her family. She goes quiet, and we realise that it may be difficult for her to talk about. She was living in a region that was badly affected by the Tigray war. Fulvio and the University helped her flee the country. Lemphose changes the mood and shares some crazy TikTok videos he has saved on his phone. He plays music and we laugh together about something. Thras and I are the first to go to bed again, at 9pm. It’s a stormy night so we all go to bed early. 

Day 3 – 8 July 

I’m getting used to the routine at camp. It’s another cold morning and we’re off to our next test site for Meba by 8am. It takes a little longer to get to this second location but when we do it’s incredible. We disturb wildebeest, zebras and ostriches along the journey and they run from us as our trucks drive by. I can’t capture the amount of activity around me, but I do my best. It’s wonderful to be so close to these creatures. We come to a stop and the surrounding wildlife disappears around us. We are in the middle of the pan, with miles of it in front us. We’ve parked near a mound, which is a feature of interest to Meba. His first walk with the GPR is across the mound behind us. The day is pretty much like the one before, with the priority to assist Meba and Boniface in gathering the data. Lunch is the same again, just as delicious as before. The dust covers everything just as before. I stay behind to keep an eye on the vehicles and our gear as the others support Meba and Boniface. We return in the late afternoon to find a small herd of cattle has decided to hang out in our camp! They’ve flattened a few of the tents and have left cow patties everywhere. But it doesn’t take long to sort everything out and we can get our work completed for the day. The sunset is stunning, dinner is delicious, chats around the fire are always entertaining. Thras and I go to bed before the others. I’m enjoying this simple life, falling into bed exhausted, wearing all my clothes to stay warm. I’m proud that I’m coping with the discomfort, that I’m an equal member of the team. 

Day 4 – 9 July 

I heard noises during the night; maybe the cows came back? I was a bit spooked and, since I need to relieve myself twice every night, leaving my tent has added risks when I don’t know what animal is going to greet me. I imagine that it was an elephant, which I still haven’t seen. I hear the snores of all the others who seem to be sleeping through our visitor. Eventually I go back to sleep. Today Meba needs to do a circuit that will be approximately a continuous 5-kilometre walk across the bush. Fulvio needs to travel to Gwete to get more supplies and arrange things for the next camp so, after we make our plans, he heads off and Meba begins his data collection. Lemphose – as snake handler – joins Thras and Boniface with Meba on this long circuit while I stay with the vehicle. They take the GPS, some of the EET-SUM-MOR biscuits and water, and I watch them walk into the bush. I keep the satellite phone, so that Fulvio can call when he’s starting his return journey back to camp. It’s a long day on my own. As the day heats up, there’s nowhere to rest so I stay busy with my camera and take short walks in the area, without straying too far from the truck. I get to think a lot. I think about life back home, about David, about my work. I think about how lucky I am to be here and how I managed to pull that off. Would I ever have imagined that I could survive in the African bush with no power or running water or toilet even? And yet here I am doing just that. Around 11.30am, way ahead of schedule, the team return to the truck. They’re all exhausted from walking that far in the heat, so I get out all the lunch things and we eat together. Lemphose drives us back to camp; he has to make two trips as we can’t all fit in one truck. Thras and I are brought back first. I have the whole afternoon to myself. I rest in my tent, remaining awake and continuing the deep thinking that began earlier in the day. I can’t remember the last time I have thought so clearly.

Sunset this evening is very unusual: there’s a bush fire and the smoke clouds light up the sky a deep, deep red. I manage to capture a timelapse of the fading light. The bush fire is a concern, but Fulvio tells me that they happen all the time. I’m glad I’ve caught it on camera.

Day 5 – 10 July

We leave this camp today. We dismantle the tents and pack them back in the truck and leave the area just as we had found it. I took the second sleeping bag from Fulvio last night and I was definitely warmer and didn’t get up during the night to go to the bathroom. It’s a long drive to the next test site and the back seat is a squeeze now that we’re carrying all the extra camp gear again. I look out the windows as Meba and Fulvio talk together about their work and the selected site.

‘Is that a lion?’ I shout to them both. ‘It is!’ I noticed first the vultures, who are circling above, and then saw the lion. Fulvio slams on the brakes. I take out my camera and start shooting. Fulvio is incredulous, he’s so happy to witness this. In his seven years of field work at the pan, he’s never seen a lion here. The lion has just caught a zebra who lies beside him. He’s alert and looking all around him, protecting his cull from the vultures. We’re about 20 metres away and remain in the truck watching the spectacle, admiring him. Lemphose decides to approach the lion in his vehicle and gets about 10 metres closer. The lion stands up; he’s spooked. Fulvio gestures for Lemphose to reverse, to give the lion his space. I can’t believe what I’m witnessing. I try not to think about the violence of the moments before we arrived, how the zebra got caught, how he was killed. We linger for another few minutes. In all the excitement I didn’t record any video footage, but I do have some great photos. The lion is the topic of the morning. We think about the last four nights we had camped just beside the pan unaware of our predatory neighbour. I try not to think about that too much.

We just have the morning for data gathering, as we need to get nearer to Gwete for Meba’s last day of data gathering tomorrow. We leave this section of the pan and drive into new terrain, acres and acres of trees with a narrow path in the open plain. More dust, more sandy roads again, but then I see a person on a bicycle and then some rubbish on the track. My phone starts to buzz with messages, so we must be getting near. Fulvio pulls over for us all to get out and take a close-up look at a Baobab 

tree. They are enormous trees and their trunks are exceptionally broad with short swollen branches. As it’s the dry season it has no leaves, but it’s still stunning. I’d never seen a Baobab tree before – I had read about them and now I’m surrounded by them. Soon we arrive at a metal gate, which opens automatically into a sort of campsite resort with people and toilets and running water and electricity and furniture. It’s a lot to take in. As Fulvio checks us in, I step aside and call David. It’s so lovely to hear his voice. Once Lemphose, Boniface and Thras arrive, we set up camp. After a hot shower and a real coffee, I video chat some more with David and tell him all about our adventures so far. I still can’t quite believe where we are! We eat dinner together at a table in a roofed open-air restaurant. The food is delicious and the chats together are wonderful. We’re a little louder than the other guests but I don’t think any of us care. We sit around another fire in our camp afterwards, in darkness, continuing our chats, but tonight is the coldest of the trip. I’m glad to have my second sleeping bag. We find out the next morning that temperatures dropped to 2 degrees Celsius and that it had snowed in Johannesburg overnight.

Day 6 – 11 July 

While it’s especially cold this morning, it is very luxurious to go to the toilet on an actual toilet, and brush my teeth using a tap. Breakfast is delicious but all the waiters are freezing. These temperatures are unusually low, so no-one is prepared and the campsite isn’t built for this weather. We don’t mind: hot coffee and fresh fruit make up for it. It’s time to complete the gathering of data for Meba’s last section of the salt pan, so we pack up shortly after breakfast and are soon on our way. This is the biggest ground survey of all the sites we have visited. The cold doesn’t let up on the salt pan and it’s windy out there too. We walk together in convoy: Fulvio leads with the GPS to map the path for the rest of us, and we all walk ahead of Meba to help him keep his line straight. We crisscross the terrain in a grid-like fashion so that Meba can gather his data. At one point a dust storm heads our way; Fulvio tells us all to get down and brace ourselves. Thankfully, at the last minute, the wind changes and we are saved from even more dust gathering on our bodies. There are a lot of gridlines to cover in this last survey. We decide not to take a break, just keep going to get it done and get out of the wind. For the next two hours we walk constantly, over and across mounds back on to the flat areas. I get to see elephant tracks, which is incredible. We don’t see any elephants but the tracks are a great find.

And then we are done. Meba has completed his survey of the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan. We have one last night in the basin before we return to Palapye tomorrow. Anxious not to stay in the open bush anymore (because of the lion sighting), we head to a campsite on Kubu Island, a dry granite rock. It’s odd to be making camp near other groups of people but we get about pitching the tent and getting the fire going one last time together. It’s a lovely place here, surrounded by Baobab trees and massive boulders, and it’s very different terrain from the bush.

Day 7 – 12 July. Leaving the Makgadikgadi Pan

I’m first to wake up. I want to catch the sunrise across the pan with my camera, but it’s an overcast day and the footage isn’t all that great. I interview Lemphose, Meba, Thras, Fulvio and Boniface as we are packing up. I ask them what their greatest challenge was about the field trip and what they will remember most. The cold was tough for most of them and the lack of running water and, for some, this is also what they will remember most. Fulvio will remember seeing his first lion on the salt pan.

My biggest fear before embarking on this expedition was that I would be a burden to the team, that my inexperience of field work would slow them down. But I don’t believe that I did. I wasn’t much use to the team in the early part but, as I learned the routine, I contributed as much as we all did and I’m proud of myself for that. I’m also proud that I embraced the challenge, the lack of running water, or toilet, or power, the dirt and all that dust. That’s what I remember. The dust. Those yummy EET-SUM-MOR shortcake biscuits, the chats around the fire at night, the laughter, the beautiful sound of the Setswana language and – yes – the cold.

I’d like to thank Fulvio Franchi and everyone at Europlanet for the opportunity to be a part of this field trip. The Transnational Access planetary analogue programme is a terrific initiative and I hope that one day I’ll get to join another science team on another analogue some time too. Since returning, I’ve used my photos and videos countless times to share with families in Ireland about my adventure. I’ll continue to write about the experience to engage new audiences about the work of planetary scientists. A new collection of video content will be released shortly to share with new non-science audiences.

The visit by Niamh Shaw to the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan in Botswana was supported by Europlanet 2024 RI with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.

Niamh Shaw is an Irish science communicator, educator, explorer and keynote speaker and is an International Fellow of The Explorers Club. In her work, she seeks to find the human story behind scientific discovery in the field. She recently voyaged to the Antarctic peninsula as part of an international Women in STEM leadership initiative.

Links

More about the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans Planetary Analogue Site

More about Niamh Shaw

Issue 7 of Europlanet Magazine