Botswana Food and Tipping Practices

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Safari lodges and camps in Botswana serve an array of internationally recognised food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dietary requirements can be catered for with ease when given prior notice. Beef and chicken are popular meats eaten locally and served in many ways in restaurants and the dining rooms at lodges, so travellers can expect to enjoy foods they know when being catered for in the country.

Local Cuisine and Dining Traditions in Botswana

Seswaa Botswana's national dish | Photo: ALLEKO via Getty — Seswaa Botswana’s national dish | Photo: ALLEKO via Getty

Local dishes include beef seswaa, bogobe (pap), and morogo, eaten throughout Botswana and surrounding countries. Beef seswaa is slow-cooked beef, then shredded and cooked as a pot stew with an onion and pepper gravy. Bogobe is ground cornmeal boiled with water and salt until it has a porridge-like consistency. It’s served as the starch with meat and vegetables. Bogobe is often accompanied by a tomato, onion relish, or cooked spinach (morogo).

Meat is also traditionally grilled on open coals, as are large, white mielies (corn on the cob), which are farmed on a small, subsistence level. These are often seen on the roadside, where vendors are set up with grills serving the passing local public. The local beer is called St. Louis, and it goes down a treat!

Tipping Practices in Botswana

Stock image of a generic looking tip jar — A tipping jar | Photo: CatLane via Getty

In Botswana, Pula (BWP) and USD are the only accepted currencies.

When it comes to tipping, as a general guideline, we recommend about USD20 per person per day for your guide, about USD15 for trackers, and about USD20 for general staff (porters, cooks, cleaners, waiters, watchmen, etc.). Some lodges have an anonymous tip box for all their staff, but you’re also welcome to give a gratuity directly to the person who helped you.

If you’re staying in a city hotel in Botswana, work on BWP35 porterage per person. As for dining out, the norm is between a 10% and 15% tip on the total amount of the bill (depending on the level of service). For a group of five to six people or more, some restaurants add a gratuity directly onto the bill, so check first to avoid double tipping.