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We are spending a day at the Bushman Farm, so we get a lie in until 7. After breakfast Ken heads into town for some last minute bits and pieces while we go on a nature walk with a bushman, a bushwoman and a bunch of bushkids. They chatter away in their clicking language, dig up roots and tubers to show us what is edible, what can be used as medicine, what used to make rope or thatch huts. They peel a huge thing like a big deformed spud and all chomp away happily. We all try a bit, it is eatable, but pretty tasteless.
Day 7. Fri 23rd April 'The Bushmen of the Kalahari'.
DaveMidgley2005-10-22 10:16:57
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We are spending a day at the Bushman Farm, so we get a lie in until 7. After breakfast Ken heads into town for some last minute bits and pieces while we go on a nature walk with a bushman, a bushwoman and a bunch of bushkids. They chatter away in their clicking language, dig up roots and tubers to show us what is edible, what can be used as medicine, what used to make rope or thatch huts. They peel a huge thing like a big deformed spud and all chomp away happily. We all try a bit, it is eatable, but pretty tasteless.
The bushmen have a quite different ancestry from the other people of sub-saharan Africa, being descended primarily from the San, as well as from the Khoikhoi or Hottentot, both tribes which originated in Southern Africa. The San were smaller than the West African "Bantu", with lighter skin and different characteristic eye and facial shape. The San were nomadic hunter-gatherers, able to survive in the desert without food or water for long periods by utilising water and fat stored particularly in the buttocks, a physical characteristic still very noticeable, especially in the women. Sadly this ancient culture is now all but lost. In 1998 the San people still living a traditional lifestyle in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, granted to them in 1961, were forced by the government to relocate outside the Reserve. The official reason was the need to support wildlife preservation, and to "rescue" the San from their "primitive" lifestyle and integrate them into "civilised" society. The possibility of diamonds beneath the reserve may also have played a role. Dqãe Qare is one of a number of enterprises set up in an attempt to preserve the San culture.
After the walk we chill until lunchtime. Pete digs out his GPS and whiles away the time telling us how far from home we are - Macclesfield is exactly 5352.1 miles away, at a bearing of 357º.
After lunch we have a nap, and then Pete and Kathy go for a walk while Ken, Julie and I repack
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See photographs from:
Zambia Gallery
