After an uncharacteristically slow start, the Cheetahs had been gaining on the Zebras for some time and were now almost within clawing distance. Behind me, excitement exuded from my fellow passengers, knowing that the fading light would force a victory one way or the other. In a final twist, our guide Paul had told me that there was a lion lurking just around the corner – everything hinged on who would see it first. Rounding the bend, the floodplain stretched before us like an emerald tablecloth, and behind me I heard the cry of “Tau!” (‘lion’ in Setswana). The Cheetahs team had spotted the lion first, earning them five points and a narrow victory over their rivals, the Zebras. It may be an unusual guiding tactic to award points to guests spotting game, but having a group of local eleven-year-old street kids as clients called for some unconventional techniques.

The children in question come from Bana Ba Letsatsi (‘the Sunshine Children’), a charity working with Maun’s local street children. Formed in 2004 by an Irish nurse, the number of children it supports has mushroomed from 15 to over 230, an illustration of the growing scale of a problem that goes unnoticed by the thousands of tourists who pass through this gateway town to the Okavango Delta each year. Keen to help, local safari operator Ker & Downey Botswana have decided to donate a percentage of their profits to Bana Ba Letsatsi (BBL). They’ve also donated time at their Footsteps camp to BBL, allowing several groups of the charity’s children to visit and take part in their Young Explorers programme, which teaches them about the wilderness that has long been on their doorstep in Maun. Before I joined one of the children’s groups on their trip into the delta, I paid a visit to the BBL centre to find out more from director, Fiona Miller.

With the sun shining and children playing, it could have been a typical schoolyard scene, but behind the carefree ambience lay some disturbing, heart-wrenching tales. Fiona explained that a third of the children here are orphans (AIDS being the primary cause), while the rest have been abandoned by their parents. Sleeping rough on the streets, some have never been to school; others are victims of drug, alcohol or sexual abuse, who have been forced to beg or work underage in order to eat. She describes an average day: “Each morning we go out and collect the children, bringing them here to feed and shower before they go off to school. After classes they come back here for more food and homework, and then the hardest part happens – we drop them off at the end of the day. We give them tents as shelter, but sometimes they are not in the same place the following morning.”

A young boy approaches us wearing a cheeky grin along with his ‘Young Explorer’ T-shirt. He was part of the BBL group who’ve just returned from Footsteps camp, and he’s full of stories of how big elephants are and how he put sweets on a stick in the fire. “Toasting marshmallows,” Fiona deduces, smiling.

Education is key, and BBL provides basic literacy education to enable the children to go to local schools. They also go one step further, continually checking attendance records with the individual academic institutions. BBL has also started a youth programme to assist in training those who leave school. The ultimate goal is to house the children off the streets, but that path is currently blocked by budget constraints.

The costs of providing 47,000 meals a year, together with uniform expenses, school fees and doctor’s bills, certainly adds up, so funding is a constant concern – 1.4 million pula (£110,000) is next year’s estimated budget. Surprisingly, before Ker & Downey Botswana got involved, just eight per cent of BBL’s funding came from domestic companies; the major financial backer was the Somerala Fund, which is based in the USA. Nicky Brandon, BBL’s primary proponent inside Ker & Downey Botswana, actually became acquainted with the charity by chance during a dinner party when she overheard Fiona talking about her work.

“I had no idea how bad the problem with street children in Maun was, and I just wanted to do something to help,” she told me. It wasn’t long after her first discussions with the charity that the first BBL trips to Footsteps took place. “In times of economic crisis, it’s usually the charity funding that is the first to get cut,” she added. Thankfully, the opposite was true in this remarkable case.

A few days later, I arrived at the Footsteps camp in the Okavango Delta. Rustic and intimate, this six-guest camp is ideally suited for the use of an individual family. The normal daily activities here are specifically tailored to the children, making it somewhat unique, and the BBL kids (most of whom had never been into the bush before) would be following a similar programme to what their Western counterparts would usually experience.

Paul Moleseng, Ker & Downey Botswana’s specialist guide, is the one responsible for organising the daily events. With a diploma in environmental education, ten years’ guiding experience and apparently limitless energy, Paul has perfected the balance between education and entertainment, winning immense respect from his young apprentices. When in Maun, he runs the Wildlife Club at BBL, and the highest achievers in its four age groups are the ones rewarded with the trips to Footsteps.

The children in our group seemed nervous and shy at first, but these feelings soon evaporated during the first wildlife drive as each animal sighting prompted excited calls from the two teams. Somewhat aptly, there were plenty of youngsters running around and looking at us too. The onset of the rains had meant a myriad of babies had recently dropped – there were wee warthogs the size of guineafowls, young tsessebes with wobbly legs and impala fawns frolicking beside watchful mothers. All the time, Paul, ably assisted by guide James and trainee Isaac (an ex-BBL success story himself), fired questions: “Giraffe – How do you tell if it is a male or female?” “Why do zebras have stripes?”

Later, Isaac told me that after he finished school, he had no job and no prospects. Then BBL sponsored his guide training and now he has a placement with Ker & Downey.

“Two years ago, I dreamed of being a guide and now I am,” he said, with gratitude evident in his voice. “It shows what you can do if you want something enough,” he added.

A pair of twins helped by the BBL are a perfect example of this; they competed at the Junior Athletics Championships in Poland, and have since won sponsorship to run the next New York City Marathon.

The following morning, a flock of ungainly marabou storks and a pungent odour led us to a fresh zebra carcass that had been left by a resident lion pride. A gruesome, severed warthog head provided further evidence of the lions’ presence, but they remained elusive. Switching tack, Paul took us on a guided walk to explain novel aspects of our surroundings, such as that elephant dung is a great mosquito repellent, and that if you were caught short in the bush, the absorbent Kalahari apple-leaf should be your first stop. 

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Back at camp, Paul taught the children firearms safety using an airgun, then, after a keenly-fought football match, it was off to the lagoon for a speedboat ride. Judging from some of the expressions on their faces, this aquatic experience must have been the equivalent of going on their first rollercoaster.

As the lion sighting and screams of “Tau!” brought the spotting contest between the Cheetahs and Zebras to a close, I asked Paul what is the hardest thing about guiding children. After a pause, he shakes his head: “I can’t think of anything. It’s all easy. I am an adult with a child’s heart so sometimes it doesn’t even feel like work. And they are like sponges. You tell them once and it sticks.”

I recalled one of the boys who had earlier remembered from the previous year that zebras and wildebeest could graze together because one eats the blade of the grass while the other eats the stalk. “The children have worked hard to get on this trip, but this is just the beginning. When they go back, they will tell the others what they have seen and done and that will spur them on to become guides themselves one day.” It’s an opportunity that none of these children would have had without Bana Ba Letsatsi and Ker & Downey Botswana, but one they surely all deserve.

• For more information on Bana Ba Letsatsi or Ker & Downey Botswana’s Young Explorers programme, visit their respective websites: www.banabaletsatsi.com and www.kerdowneybotswana.com.