The Travel Essay

I don’t know when my forefathers came into this land. But it appears that we have been living in the desert for a very long time: we have adapted to the life of the desert and its ways. We are the bushmen of the Kalahari.

My cousin Doma and I have been together from the time we were children. We lived in a little village in the middle of the desert where our mothers looked after us until we were old enough to hunt.

Our houses were made of reeds tied together with vines. It was more like a small woven hut with a single entrance. In the hot day, it was cool inside and in the cold desert night it kept us warm: the reeds had an unusual ability to retain heat. The huts were arranged in a semi-circle on a cleared piece of land. Surrounding the huts, we had a circle of thorns and thorn-bush. This fence helped to keep away lions and elephants. Occasionally a lion would enter the compound and we would all shout and make enough noise to frighten the animal away. It was rare for us to kill a lion. The desert lion is a big animal and it is difficult to kill one. It is also our tradition to kill only animals that we can eat and only when we need to eat. Lion meat is inedible for us.

When we were young we spent time with the women of the compound, learning to pick roots, berries and leaves that were edible and had medicinal value. We learnt that the inner shoot of the desert grass was good for stomach upsets. The women showed us where ostrich eggs filled with water had been hidden in the ground under bushes so that we could seek water whenever we were thirsty. They also taught us to scrape the tuber root of a tree and to squeeze water from the scrapes. These are essential skills that we had to learn to survive in the hostile desert. As a treat we occasionally got a sweet crystallised gum from the acacia tree. We sucked on the crystals to give us enough energy to stay out in the desert for long periods.

The other most important lesson we learnt from our mothers was how to make a fire. We were each given two dry sticks. On one stick, there were three hollowed out depressions. The other stick was sharpened slightly so that it could fit snugly into any one of these shallow holes. We placed a small amount of sand into the hole and used the sharpened stick to push it in. Then, holding the upright stick between our palms, we rubbed our palms together until sparks flew from the hot sand. Some dry grass was placed under the sparks so that a small fire would be set off. We blew gently into the grass as the sparks took hold and the dry grass burst into flames.

Doma and I learnt to hunt with our fathers when we were small. In the beginning our job was to carry the knife used to skin the animal that we trapped. The usual animals that we hunted in the bush were impala, ostriches, wild pigs,warthogs, porcupines and, sometimes, kudu. Hunting an ostrich was dangerous as the bird could easily rip open our stomachs with its clawed feet. Kudu was more difficult to catch and we had to use our poisoned arrows. The poison was prepared by the village elders and children were kept away when this was done. The poison was extracted from the sap of a tree and then spread on the arrowheads. It was so poisonous that if you were cut accidentally by the arrowhead, you would die quickly. But the most important part of hunting was the way we learnt to identify the footprints of the different animals, the direction in which they were going, and how much time had passed since they had gone that way. This taught us how to plan to capture the animal and when to seize the opportunity. We had to know the direction in which the wind was blowing and the quality of the light so that we could get close to the animal. We usually had a feast when we caught an animal because it would be days before we could get any more meat.

One day an aeroplane landed near the edge of the desert. We gathered at the dirt track running next to the airstrip and a white man came to talk to us. He could speak Taa, our language. He offered both of us a job in his reserve which was just outside the boundary of the desert. There was more bush there than just sand. He told us that we could come back to our homes whenever we wanted, and he would look after us on his reserve. That was how Doma and I came to live in the valley.

We became game trackers in the valley lodge. Our job was to track animals for the visitors. We started off in the early morning on a jeep and followed different tracks along the dirt roads criss-crossing the reserve. There were paw marks and foot prints from lions, leopards, hyenas, guinea fowl, giraffes, kudu, impala, small deer and several other animals. If the marks were fresh we would follow them to see where they led and tried to get close to the animal.
 There were several watering holes on the reserve and we always knew we could see some animals there in the evening. A pride of desert lions had made the reserve their home. There was enough game on the reserve to keep them fed. The pride consisted of two lions, two lionesses and five cubs which were about a year old. We knew where they hunted and could make out their calls during the night.

Meanwhile, back at the lodge, there were two resident hornbills that kept trying to get into the lounge to pick on the biscuits, cake and other food. They were always around during lunch and tea when the visitors to the lodge were relaxing. The other residents were a family of porcupines that came out of the bush every evening to feast on the leftovers from the kitchen. There were two adults and three baby porcupines which became regular visitors. The kitchen door had to be locked at all times because they would break in and eat all the potatoes. Doma and I got used to these animals and their antics.

One morning a puff adder took residence underneath the lounge and we had to kill it. The boss man came with a spade and, using the edge, sliced off its head. It was still attempting to attack him even with the head cut off.

The real surprise for us was the lion cubs which discovered the open lounge in the lodge and began to come regularly in the night. On one occasion they ripped out the cushions and tore the leather seats. Then one day, a couple staying at the lodge were walking to the lounge early in the morning when they were stunned to see the lion cubs and a lioness trooping out from the lounge. The animals would have heard the voices of the couple and smelled their presence. They trotted off into the distance when the sun was just rising, leaving the couple in a state of shock. For us, this was an ordinary occurrence; it happened regularly in the desert. Sometimes, when our huts were empty, lions would tear them down. We learnt to live with these dangers.

So Doma and I are now learning the ways of others. We go back into the bush every other week. We have to remember how to live in the bush because, for us, the desert is our home and we know that it can be kind to those who don’t abuse it.