We went on a bushmen tour and the bushmen speak in clicks, not entirely clicks just clicks every now and then. On the way there was a very dusty and long road that took 5 hours. The last hour to the campground was on a very dusty silty road. The dirt is a volcanic red. A lesser skilled driver would have fishtailed the entire way or slid off the road entirely. Dust billowed up from our tires and I asked about the wet season which seemed would make the road almost impassable. Victor said the only problem was the big onion trucks that could get stick, spinning out and making deep ruts. You could get stuck behind them on the narrow roads until a tractor would come and pull them out. You could be stuck an hour or a day you'd never know. On the way home we stopped to use a restroom and I saw I had a raccoon mask of white around my eyes from where my sunglasses were and a dust line to lighter brown on the rest of my face. Then we reached the 'campground. that was in the middle of nowhere, the staff lived there. It had showers that were really easy to see into from the outside, because the (shower) building was made of planks of wood with varying spaces between them.
That evening we drove to a partly dried up saline lake and got to walk on salt crispies and the mud underneath smelled bad. There were dried up dead fishies about one inch long, and in bigger cases one and a half all over, the dry lake bed. 'Mostly they were in footprints and had hoped to live in the small pool of water that had been there but they died anyway'. Meaning you could see water had pooled in footprints and the fish had found them and were dried up in dense clusters within them. We saw dried hippo footprints that were a little big bigger than the size of a basketball, lots of pelican prints, human prints (bare feet), hyena, and bush pig prints.
We slept in a small tent and woke up at 4:45 am and drank some hot chocolate and in mom's case, coffee (instant coffee and powdered milk in plastic cups with hot water). We also ate yummy biscuits, (they were totally gross, but it was all there was until we returned to eat and we didn't' know when that would be). It was dark when we left camp and it was light when we arrived at the Hadzabe camp. On the way there we passed through a lot of dried river beds. We drove through the grey light of pre-dawn. Along the way shadows would come into focus as single or multiple donkeys (or an occasional cart) laden with chuffed up yellow water containers to haul water for the day. Slowly color bled into chalky white landscape as we lost our night color blindness and the landscape became green and brown.
When the driver said we 'we're here' we thought we had to walk a little bit to get to the camp but when we walked forward and realized the rings of branches bunched around trees were actually houses, that had no roof and skins strewed across the dirt for a bed. There were 2 (small) fire with people around them, men at one and women at another. The men smoke A LOT 'that is probably why they coughed so much'. The men wore shorts and each had skin tied at their shoulder. The women wore kangas tied as skirts and another kanga wrapped around their shoulders. There were 4 super duper cute puppies, and the adults had big clumps of missing fur from scars. They adults were really skinny because they only got the parts people don't want to eat.
They had assortment of bows and arrows that were decorated with fur and markings that showed what arrows went to which bows. We (O and L) were given bows and arrows we all went out to hunt with them. Some of the bow stings were made of twisted tendons and such from animals. We shot but we missed every time and constantly lost our arrows in the trees. If it's stuck in the tree you are expected to climb up and get it, the bushmen got them out in about 5 minutes. Keep in mind almost every tree and bush had self defense in the form of sharp thorns of some kind. The bushmen hit almost every time they shot. They were hunting birds, squirrels and mice. They got really excited about the squirrels, all 4 of them hunted for about 30 minutes and didn't get them.
Mid hunt they made a fire in about 2 seconds with dried feces and sticks. They roasted and ate 3 birds, the birds were about the half the size of a baseball. We (O and L) didn't eat them, mom tried it. The boys were off trying to catch something and they did offer me some, I thought NO WAY am I going to eat one bit of that minuscule amount of meat the 4 of them are sharing for breakfast! Then Benga took some and I asked him what it was like and he tore me off a small piece. It was smoky and quickly dry in my mouth. The meat turned pasty, leaving a lingering and building taste of smoke and grit. Almost like guilt for how easy I can obtain food and water. They shaved off the beak with a knife and ate the head, whole brains and all. We saw how little they were eating and (desperately) wanted to shoot them a bird. We kept hunting, they shot a total of 7 birds and 3 field mice (bigger than a house mouse). The skeletal thin dogs got the bones and scraps, in this case, legs, feet and innards. I told Benga in the states people buy their dogs pre-made dog food and he was surprised and asked how much it cost. I instantly regretted even bringing it up and felt embarrassed and lied a low price, yet still high for them. We stopped at a murky pool the size of a twin bed and one squatted down and filled his hand to drink and the other man squatted down and put his lips to the water and drank the murky muddy water. The dog drank from a make shift trough cut out of a log. This water hole was used by more local people than just the Bushmen and had a 'fence' of brush around it, presumably to keep livestock from destroying it. Sometimes at night some of the men from the tribe will wait to hunt bigger game that come to drink.
When we returned to camp we had target practice and shot at a stump that was covered in holes and pretty hard to hit. We drove back to our camp and got a gigantic brunch and felt very guilty because we ate a lot and couldn't finish all that was fixed for us and they got so little and finished every scrap. It was about 11 before we ate. We were thirsty, hot, and hungry when we got back but we all had, I think, silently agreed if they can live that way we can deal with hunger, heat and thirst for a while without complaining, which yet again I was so proud of them for not a peep of a complaint. If one modern American gave everything he owned to a bushmen, a bushmen would have the equivalent of way more than 10 bushmen villages (I am sure it's more than that since they don't have much that can be measured in terms of monetary value). Americans are spoiled. Bushmen wouldn't want to live as an American because they aren't used to rules. Their only rules might be don't go out at night. The guide told us the chief knows a medicine to burn in fires to keep wild animals away.
When the driver said we 'we're here' we thought we had to walk a little bit to get to the camp but when we walked forward and realized the rings of branches bunched around trees were actually houses, that had no roof and skins strewed across the dirt for a bed. There were 2 (small) fire with people around them, men at one and women at another. The men smoke A LOT 'that is probably why they coughed so much'. The men wore shorts and each had skin tied at their shoulder. The women wore kangas tied as skirts and another kanga wrapped around their shoulders. There were 4 super duper cute puppies, and the adults had big clumps of missing fur from scars. They adults were really skinny because they only got the parts people don't want to eat.
They had assortment of bows and arrows that were decorated with fur and markings that showed what arrows went to which bows. We (O and L) were given bows and arrows we all went out to hunt with them. Some of the bow stings were made of twisted tendons and such from animals. We shot but we missed every time and constantly lost our arrows in the trees. If it's stuck in the tree you are expected to climb up and get it, the bushmen got them out in about 5 minutes. Keep in mind almost every tree and bush had self defense in the form of sharp thorns of some kind. The bushmen hit almost every time they shot. They were hunting birds, squirrels and mice. They got really excited about the squirrels, all 4 of them hunted for about 30 minutes and didn't get them.
Mid hunt they made a fire in about 2 seconds with dried feces and sticks. They roasted and ate 3 birds, the birds were about the half the size of a baseball. We (O and L) didn't eat them, mom tried it. The boys were off trying to catch something and they did offer me some, I thought NO WAY am I going to eat one bit of that minuscule amount of meat the 4 of them are sharing for breakfast! Then Benga took some and I asked him what it was like and he tore me off a small piece. It was smoky and quickly dry in my mouth. The meat turned pasty, leaving a lingering and building taste of smoke and grit. Almost like guilt for how easy I can obtain food and water. They shaved off the beak with a knife and ate the head, whole brains and all. We saw how little they were eating and (desperately) wanted to shoot them a bird. We kept hunting, they shot a total of 7 birds and 3 field mice (bigger than a house mouse). The skeletal thin dogs got the bones and scraps, in this case, legs, feet and innards. I told Benga in the states people buy their dogs pre-made dog food and he was surprised and asked how much it cost. I instantly regretted even bringing it up and felt embarrassed and lied a low price, yet still high for them. We stopped at a murky pool the size of a twin bed and one squatted down and filled his hand to drink and the other man squatted down and put his lips to the water and drank the murky muddy water. The dog drank from a make shift trough cut out of a log. This water hole was used by more local people than just the Bushmen and had a 'fence' of brush around it, presumably to keep livestock from destroying it. Sometimes at night some of the men from the tribe will wait to hunt bigger game that come to drink.
When we returned to camp we had target practice and shot at a stump that was covered in holes and pretty hard to hit. We drove back to our camp and got a gigantic brunch and felt very guilty because we ate a lot and couldn't finish all that was fixed for us and they got so little and finished every scrap. It was about 11 before we ate. We were thirsty, hot, and hungry when we got back but we all had, I think, silently agreed if they can live that way we can deal with hunger, heat and thirst for a while without complaining, which yet again I was so proud of them for not a peep of a complaint. If one modern American gave everything he owned to a bushmen, a bushmen would have the equivalent of way more than 10 bushmen villages (I am sure it's more than that since they don't have much that can be measured in terms of monetary value). Americans are spoiled. Bushmen wouldn't want to live as an American because they aren't used to rules. Their only rules might be don't go out at night. The guide told us the chief knows a medicine to burn in fires to keep wild animals away.
