Seswaa, Setswana Food and a Trip to Oodi Weavers

Botswana cattle culture shapes the national table, while the surrounding Kgatleng and Kweneng villages preserve weaving, pottery and basket-making traditions that make rewarding morning excursions from central Gaborone.

What to eat in Gaborone: seswaa, bogobe and village chicken

Whether you pull up a chair at a shaded outdoor kitchen on the Main Mall, visit a cultural restaurant in Tlokweng or dine in a contemporary bistro at Riverwalk, look out for six unmistakable Setswana staples:

• Seswaa: Botswana's national celebratory dish. Tough cuts of beef on the bone (or goat, known as nama ya podi) are simmered slowly in a three-legged cast-iron pot (pitsa) with nothing more than water, onion and a pinch of salt until the meat falls apart, then pounded vigorously with a wooden pestle into tender, savoury shreds.
• Bogobe and Ting: red sorghum meal cooked into a firm porridge (bogobe) or fermented slightly beforehand to create a pleasantly tangy, sour porridge called ting, the classic partner for rich seswaa or stewed beef. White maize meal (phaleche or pap) is equally common.
• Koko ya Setswana (free-range marathon chicken): lean, flavourful village chicken slow-braised until tender, far deeper in taste than commercial poultry.
• Morogo wa dinawa and Samp with beans (Dikgobe): sun-dried cowpea leaves cooked down with tomatoes, onions and sometimes crushed groundnuts, served alongside dikgobe (stamped maize kernels boiled with sugar beans).
• Magwinya (fat cakes) and serobe: golden deep-fried dough balls sold warm at morning street corners, and traditional slow-cooked tripe (serobe).
• Mopane worms (phane) and ginger beer (gemere): crunchy dried emperor moth caterpillars fried with onion and chilli, washed down with fiery homemade ginger beer infused with tart cream of tartar and pineapple peel.

Oodi Weavers, Lentswe la Baratani and Gabane pottery

Twenty kilometres north-east of Gaborone past Phakalane lies the village of Oodi, home since 1973 to the Lentswe la Oodi Weavers cooperative. Here, women weavers spin, dye with bush barks and weave thick Karakul wool on vertical looms into one-of-a-kind tapestries, bedspreads and table runners illustrating Setswana proverbs, cattle posts, wildlife and village weddings. On the drive out, pause beside the highway at Lentswe la Baratani (Hill of the Lovers), a steep red hill wrapped in local folklore that Batswana treat as sacred ground, or detour fifteen kilometres west of Gaborone to the hillside studios of Gabane for handmade stoneware pottery and blown glass. Pair an Oodi excursion with Day 3 of our Gaborone itinerary.