After our school visit yesterday, we drove a bit further out in the Kalahari, and stopped to visit a family of Bushmen, the Raats. This is a family that lives with one foot in each world, and is interested in keeping and sharing their traditional culture. It was quite interesting, as when we arrived, most were wearing fully western clothes, and then some changed into traditional Bushman clothes. They live in a woven grass-sided house that really should be called a hut. But they sleep in beds, and have an outdoor toilet and shower with grass walls. They cook both inside on a hot plate and outside directly in the fire. They served us lunch and it was mainly vegetable and very delicious.
After lunch, we went on a bush walk with some of the men. They showed us the traditional plants and hunting methods and talked about some of their traditional culture. They were wearing the traditional animal skin loincloths, and they had spears and bows and arrows. Walking out in the midday sun was really hot, and really sandy, and it kept feeling realer and realer. When we came back towards the family compound, our host, Barbara and her daughters were waiting, wearing their traditional clothes, to show us how to make Bushman jewelry. They make their own beads and ornaments from material such as ostrich shell, hollow sticks that have been decorated with dark burn patterns, seeds, small rocks, fuzzy seed pods, and turtleshell. We got to see how they used sticks to drill holes into the beads, and how they used hot metal to make burn patterns. We also saw how they used sharp stones to carve traditional Bushman designs into ostrich eggs, and then rub wet ochre into the patterns to make them stand out. We each got a a little bag of bead they had made themselves, and we each got a piece of bone with a traditional Bushman pattern burned into it to use a pendant as we each made our own necklace or bracelet. Mine is a scorpion, but we had antelopes, hunters, lizards, birds, and spears.
It was starting to get dark as we got back to the main area, and as we waited for dinner, we watched the sunset and sat on the back bumpers of our mini-vans while our guide Hermann started us on a game of charades (or sha-RAHds, as Mariam calls them). We can't laugh at Mariam's British accent too much, because it's turns out she's really good at sha-RAHds. She managed to guess the film 'Top Gun' from Donato just miming putting on sunglasses, so...
After it got dark, it was really dark. Deeply dark. We had an amazing dinner of mutton cooked over the open fire, and then the family danced some traditional dances for us. It was cold. It's so interesting, but when the sun is out, it's incredibly hot (and right now it's heading into winter), and when it was dark, it was really cold. The temperature must have swung about 40 degrees, and it just felt extreme.
Some of us slept in tents, while some of us slept in grass huts. And that's the story of our night sleeping out in the Kalahari with a Bushman family.
After lunch, we went on a bush walk with some of the men. They showed us the traditional plants and hunting methods and talked about some of their traditional culture. They were wearing the traditional animal skin loincloths, and they had spears and bows and arrows. Walking out in the midday sun was really hot, and really sandy, and it kept feeling realer and realer. When we came back towards the family compound, our host, Barbara and her daughters were waiting, wearing their traditional clothes, to show us how to make Bushman jewelry. They make their own beads and ornaments from material such as ostrich shell, hollow sticks that have been decorated with dark burn patterns, seeds, small rocks, fuzzy seed pods, and turtleshell. We got to see how they used sticks to drill holes into the beads, and how they used hot metal to make burn patterns. We also saw how they used sharp stones to carve traditional Bushman designs into ostrich eggs, and then rub wet ochre into the patterns to make them stand out. We each got a a little bag of bead they had made themselves, and we each got a piece of bone with a traditional Bushman pattern burned into it to use a pendant as we each made our own necklace or bracelet. Mine is a scorpion, but we had antelopes, hunters, lizards, birds, and spears.
It was starting to get dark as we got back to the main area, and as we waited for dinner, we watched the sunset and sat on the back bumpers of our mini-vans while our guide Hermann started us on a game of charades (or sha-RAHds, as Mariam calls them). We can't laugh at Mariam's British accent too much, because it's turns out she's really good at sha-RAHds. She managed to guess the film 'Top Gun' from Donato just miming putting on sunglasses, so...
After it got dark, it was really dark. Deeply dark. We had an amazing dinner of mutton cooked over the open fire, and then the family danced some traditional dances for us. It was cold. It's so interesting, but when the sun is out, it's incredibly hot (and right now it's heading into winter), and when it was dark, it was really cold. The temperature must have swung about 40 degrees, and it just felt extreme.
Some of us slept in tents, while some of us slept in grass huts. And that's the story of our night sleeping out in the Kalahari with a Bushman family.
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