The main mess tents at Jack’s Camp are home to a mesmerising natural history collection, enthralling guests who spend hours perusing these fascinating cabinets.
When Dewald du Plessis – affectionately known as Kwagga, joined the Uncharted Africa family in 2016 part of his job was to manage the Jack’s Camp museum along with the smaller displays in the other Uncharted Africa camps. This saw him devote hours of his time to the collection, getting to know every piece on display and learning its background.
“I catalogued every single specimen both on display and in storage,” Kwagga tells us. “Conservation work was also necessary on some of the older specimens which, if left unattended, would have perished in the harsh conditions of the Kalahari, leaving us with fewer links to a rich past.”
The Jack’s Camp museum is registered as part of the network of National Museums of Botswana and the pieces on display form part of the Bousfield family’s private collection, spanning many generations. The site of Jack’s Camp was formerly the camp of legendary explorer Jack Bousfield and was refashioned into the luxury camp we know today by his son Ralph.
“It emphasises the importance of Uncharted Africa’s custodianship of the areas the camps operate in, which have so much to offer Botswana and visitors to the country,” smiles Kwagga. “Yet few would have been aware of these aspects of the areas if not for museums such as this one at Jack’s Camp.”
This is a camp with numerous distinctions including its striking pool pavilion and Persian tea tent, but even here, at one of the world’s most unique destinations, the natural history museum stands out.
“I believe that having the museum here since the beginning played a major part in establishing Jack’s Camp’s signature within the safari industry,” Kwagga muses. “Some of our first guides were MSc and PhD students researching various subjects around the Makgadikgadi. During the course of their fieldwork and safaris, they added interesting specimens to the collection, thereby expanding upon our knowledge of the area. Even today the museum forms a vital link between current research (the area still attracts researchers from across the globe) and the information offered by the guides to our guests.”
Since the majority of pieces in the collection have been accumulated through the Bousfield family’s travels and personal history, they incorporate a wider geographic area than the camps themselves.
“The collection contains various specimens encompassing the natural and cultural history of not only the Makgadikgadi and Botswana as a whole, but also from East Africa (where the Bousfields originated) and North Africa (where Jack Bousfield served during WW2, and where his son, Ralph, frequently leads private safaris).”
Few people can claim to know this extraordinary collection of artefacts as intimately as Kwagga. “I got to know each specimen intimately during the recording process and setting up the museum in its current iteration during the 2020 rebuild of Jack’s Camp. The identification of unfamiliar artefacts involved a lot of research and correspondence with academics, with each thread of information leading down its own captivating rabbit hole that in the end form a great interconnected maze that ultimately leaves one in awe of the complexity of life on our planet and humanity’s part in it. Anything from stone tools made over 3 million years ago (before the genus Homo even evolved); fossils from the largest terrestrial predator to stalk the African continent; fleas meticulously collected from a rarely seen White-tailed Mongoose; or items from Roman-occupied Gaul (modern-day France), Mughal India or ancient China that were discovered in the deep interior of southern Africa.”
Few life experiences make you feel as present as a safari, and yet it’s their timeless quality that holds their romanticism. Delve deep during your stay at our Uncharted Africa camps and you’ll find history etched deep that’ll leave you pondering for many years to come.
