What a Safari Looks Like When a Woman Is at the Wheel
Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More ResponsiblyShow Notes
What does a safari look like when the guide isn't a man? Award-winning writer and editor Ellen Carpenter went to Botswana's Okavango Delta to find out. (To learn more, read her Afar story about the experience.)
Meet this week's guests
Ellen Carpenter is a New York–based culture and travel journalist. She served as editor in chief of Hemispheres, United's inflight magazine, for seven years, and before that was an editor at Rhapsody, Nylon, Spin, and Rolling Stone.
Baemule "Bae" Siethuka, 32, grew up in Tutume in northeastern Botswana and was working in HR when she saw African Bush Camps' guiding program posted on Facebook. She became the program's first graduate in 2025 and is now a junior guide at Atzaró Okavango.
Tshidi Phalaagae, 28, is a trainee guide from Gaborone, Botswana's capital — a true city girl who came to the program with, in her words, "zero knowledge of nature." At the time of Ellen's visit, she was just a few weeks shy of graduating.
Jessica Motshegwa, 26, is a trainee guide from Mmadinare, Botswana, who joined the program in 2025. She once tried to enlist in the Botswana army. A Facebook link from her cousin changed her path.
In this episode you'll learn
Why more than 90 percent of African safari guides are male — and what one company is doing about it
How African Bush Camp(ABC)'s three-year female guiding program works, from theory exams to practical training to first solo drives
What it was like for Bae, ABC's first female guide, to complete her training while pregnant — and earn her license when her son was six months old
Why Dutch Kasale, ABC's head guide and mentor, says training women from the city is often easier than training men who grew up in the bush
What makes a female guide's approach on the game drive feel different
The moment Bae manifests a leopard into view
About African Bush Camps
ABC was founded in 2006 by Beks Ndlovu, one of a handful of Black Africans to own a safari company. He launched the female guiding program in late 2021 with an ambitious goal: 50 percent female guides across all 18 camps in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia by 2030. There are currently 12 women in the program — eight trainees and four qualified guides.
Chapters
00:00 — Into the Okavango
02:00 — The Case for Change
06:00 — Meet Tshidi
08:00 —Bae Siethuka Takes the Wheel
13:00 — Tracking the Leopard
16:00 — Inside the Program
21:00 — Bae's Big Moment
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Unpacked by Afar | Travel Smarter, More Responsibly
Welcome to episode three of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel, this time focused on Dubai food: how a city long known for celebrity chefs and global concepts has grown a homegrown food scene with a flavor all its own.
In a new ongoing series, Afar is asking a deceptively simple question: What does a UNESCO World Heritage designation actually do? This episode starts in North Queensland, Australia, home to two UNESCO sites that sit side by side: the Great Barrier Reef and the Wet Tropics, which includes the Daintree Rainforest.
Welcome to episode two of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel, this time focused on Dubai hospitality: how a city with more than 800 hotels and 150,000 rooms built a world-class hotel scene on one of the Arabian Peninsula’s oldest traditions: the welcome.
Welcome to episode one of a four-part Unpacked series on Dubai travel: the history, the ambition, and the glamorous, multicultural city it's become today.
Afar contributing writer Emma John road-trips the Great Victorian Bathing Trail, uncovering the best spa towns in Victoria, Australia—from thermal springs on the coast to century-old bathhouses inland.