Bushmen Village

The following day we drove about 65 km to an historic living village of the /Xoa-o Ju/Hoansi gaon, a branch of the San people whom we typically refer to as the Bushmen. Most live in very dire circumstances since many of their traditional activities have been severely restricted. Although they have given up their traditional housing, they've replaced it with tin shacks and basic construction that isn't much of a step up. To try and support the village, they have turned to putting on demonstrations for tourist groups. They will even walk one out into the bush and show how they track and hunt animals. We didn't think our little ones would be able to keep up with such a demanding pace, so we elected their crafts program wherein some of the tribespeople showed how they make jewelry, bows, arrows and fire. Most of them spoke their native tongue; complete with all of the clicking sounds just like in the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy and very little English. So, one of the younger members of the tribe did the translating. He's pictured with Augustus above. Not much bigger than Augustus, he indicated that he was 19 years old. They were all attired in their traditional clothing which is to say very little clothing at all--loincloths, and the women wore something similar looking in the front but with a much longer back piece to cover the nether parts. Many of the women had their babies tied to their backs while they used natural materials to create all sorts of marvelous jewelry confections of seeds, ostrich egg shells, and wooden beads. They did so with the most primitive of hand tools. One man made a bow, set of arrows and quiver in the time we observed him. He used giraffe bone to make the arrows as well as some more modern iron tips. Making fire seemed to be a fine art. The translator, Elias, didn't appear to be as skilled as the older man and seemed to endure some good-natured ribbing from the ladies as a result. Augustus gave it a try and remarked on how difficult it was to keep up the speed on the rubbing stick.

When the older Bushman finished creating his hunting weapons, he showed us how game is tracked in the bush. He had a target set up and shot three arrows. He narrowly missed it each time. When we gave it a try, we realized how difficult it was to secure one's dinner. All of us with the exception of Annie gave it a try and we'd have all gone hungry that day had we to rely on our own prowess because most of us didn't even come close.

The tribe had a "craft shop" set up under the trees, somewhat of a roofless, wall-less, stick kraal with the crafts the tribespeople make hanging from sticks embedded in the earth. Emma bought a quiver and bow that included giraffe bone tipped arrows and the fire starter equipment. Augustus bought a bush knife. Annie's quiver was miniature size that she intends to hunt rats with. I got a multi-strand necklace made out of some sort of indigenous seeds. Our interpreter wrote everything down in his class notebook and calculted the total purchase prices on a scrap of paper while the little ones looked on from a neighboring tree.

It was a wonderful experience to see firsthand how the Bushmen have lived and existed for millennia. It was also somewhat sad to view a culture in the midst of disappearing. Because the San/ Bushmen are a nomadic people, their very way of life has been inalterably changed by virtue of the government confining them to a limited territory where they can no longer hunt the type of animals they were long accustomed to. It would be interesting to return in 20 or 30 years to see what has become of them and how they manage to adapt in this ever changing world of the 21st century.