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For perhaps as many as 25,000 years, the Bushmen of the Kalahari lived as hunter-gatherers, foraging in a vast desert with survival skills equal to the challenge of what might be considered the harshest environment in the world. Their musical, singsong language, filled with punctuating clicks, bespeaks a gentle people. They called themselves the "San". Neither a patriarchal nor a matriarchal society, their tasks were divided mutually and children were raised by the family. When the small bands went off into the Bush in search of kudu or other game, the men would lead and the women would follow, burying ostrich egg canteens full of water from the river. At times, they would have to track an animal for up to two weeks. When a kill was made, they would feast and celebrate. Women would drum as the men danced, whirling and twirling into a state of ecstasy. There were no medicine men. As children, all were taught healing techniques and in the manner of a group meditation, would ritually heal themselves and each other as part of the celebration. After a feast, they would return to their camp, with the women leading the way, uncovering the water-filled eggs as they went. The bands were small groups of twelve or thirteen, and if a woman should happen to have twins and food was scarce that year, she would have to decide which of the children would be allowed to live and which would not. In the barren lands of the Kalahari Bush, where game was scarce, the band would have to travel far to secure food. If an elder was no longer able to travel, the adult children would walk them to the shade of a Baobab tree and say their good-byes, leaving them with a little meat on a bone. These were their laws for the survival of the group and they were accepted with love and understanding. There is no word in the Kalahari's language for "property" for they believed that whatever the Universe provided belonged to all. As a result, when cattle ranchers moved into their territory and a cow was wandering loose, the Bushmen would presume it to be a gift from the universe, kill it and eat it. After a time, the homesteading cattle ranchers became incensed and began shooting the Bushmen on site, like wild animals, referring to them as "yellow dogs". The San were masters at locating water, a precious commodity in the arid land. At night, before digging a shallow hole in which to rest a hip, making the ground more comfortable to sleep on, they would walk to the top of a sand dune, placing large leaves on the crest. In the morning, they would gather the dew covered leaves. Out in the desert when water was needed and they were far from a watering hole, the men were able to locate underground sources of water, literally by their sense of smell. By assembling a thin tube, constructed of reed-like stems sleeved together to form a type of straw, sometimes twenty feet in length, and inserting it through the opening of an ant mound, they would drive it into the ground far enough to reach the water source. They would then draw the water up through the straw and spit it out into a leaf, held there by their wife or a child, one mouthful at a time, until enough was collected for each to have a sip. Their entire culture was based on collective effort and the sharing of both the responsibilities and joys of living each day. Theirs was a culture truly able to live in the moment. The Kalahari Desert, covering what is now Botswana and Namibia, was the ancestral land of the Kalahari Bushmen. When a white, South African government applied apartheid to Namibia, the original homelands of the Bushmen were reduced by seventy per cent. Bushmanland, a small, rectangular section of northeast Namibia is the area now reserved for the remaining population. There are only about 1,000 Ju/wa (one of seven linguistic groups among the Bushmen) living independently on a thin section of eastern Bushmanland, where they struggle to farm the land, raise cattle and adapt to stationary life in small villages. The remaining Bushmen in Namibia were carrying guns for the South African army, laboring for white or black masters on commercial farms or working menial jobs in the cities. Back in 1960, the South African government established a special department to deal with Bushmen affairs. Lured into the city of Tsumkwe, departmental headquarters for Bushmanland, the Ju/wa were leaving the land to take jobs as cooks, janitors or mechanics, for white administrators. Before long there were no Bushmen in the Bush. Later, when the army pulled out of Namibia and the Bushman Battalion was disassembled, they were forced to return to western Bushmanland to face the possibility of starvation on the arid plains where wild game is rare and farming is difficult. When the homelands policy was implemented, Bushmen became wards of the state. Unable to read or write, the Bushmen were kept under the control of the central government without representation. Politicians were making decisions for the Bushmen. As an example, European and American trophy hunters were allowed to hunt big game in Bushmanland, whereas, the Bushmen were only allowed to hunt with bows and arrows, and only on foot. Bushmen were spending time in jail for killing game for food while on horseback. In the 1980's, more and more Bushmen were leaving Tsumkwe and returning to the Bush. With the aid of the Ju/wa Development Foundation, the villages were established with their own herds of cattle and farming areas, but the ancient knowledge of survival in the Kalahari desert may be lost forever. Now that Namibia has declared its independence from South Africa, the Bushmen are still concerned that trophy hunters, conservationists and cattle ranchers may try to chip away at more of their little rectangle. With the writing of a Bushman constitution, the Ju/wa have finally become involved with the politics of democracy. The Bushmen still living in Botswana primarily worked for cattle ranchers who had moved onto land that was once theirs. The rest were starving. Among the commercial farm workers, researchers had stated that just a decade ago their per capita income was less than $30 per year. Despite the fact that the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, consisting of 20,000 squares miles of desert, was set aside in 1961 for Bushmen to pursue their hunting and gathering, only a few lived as simple hunter-gathers, in the manner of their ancestors, still hunting the Kalahari with traps, spears and poison-tipped arrows. River fed lakes had dried up, forming vast salt pans. The Savute River has been dry since 1982. For Botswana the days of the traditional Bushmen are gone. Sedia Modise, assistant director of the Department of Wildlife in Botswana commented that the conservation laws imposed on the population of Africa "prevent people from doing what their forefathers did for thousands of years", when referring to big game hunting. "Although the fines are low, the laws will change. They are trying to educate the people of Botswana that these animals aren't just for meat...big game hunting means big dollars". The wheels of progress continue to turn for Africa, at the expense of the San People and their ancient wisdom. The instinctive knowledge of survival in the desert and the ability to locate water in areas where none is apparent, has been "forever entombed" with a culture assimilated by "progress". |