Wednesday, 22 January 2020 - Namibia
All animals go up the mountain in the afternoon because it is windy and this cools their bodies. In the evenings the wind comes in from the sea and they all come down. There are all kinds of animals here: oryx, springboks, ground squirrels, and the Hartmann’s mountain zebras. These zebras are protected because their numbers are dwindling but they are a problem for farmers because they drink a lot of water, mostly from swimming pools or anywhere else they can find water.
Whilst water is good for the bigger animals, it is not good for the little sand creatures such as beetles and spiders (there are 7 kinds of spiders here). The beetles go up the mountain in the morning to get dew which runs down their backs into their mouths. They secrete some kind of liquid onto their backs; this acts as a sun screen (so cute). Then the spiders have their nests underground, with a tiny door that opens and shuts (also co cute). When a beetle crawls over the nest, they open the door and poison the beetle. It is too big to drag into their nest underground so they cut off its head and suck the juices, leaving an empty shell behind.
Then comes the lizard which is very good in finding spiders’ nests and feeds on them. Then the snakes eat the lizards. And finally the snake eagle eats the snake. Most of these creatures hide in the sand and come out at night. So there is a good system in place, and the hot and dry weather is not a problem for them; but rain and water pose serious problems for their survival.
The desert sand is a rust colour with shiny particles in it which is quartz. There are also black particles and these are iron. The guide used a magnet and dragged it in the sand and all the black particles stuck to the magnet. It’s amazing! Sometimes compasses do not work here, especially in places where there is a lot of iron. The iron in the sand is what makes the sand hot. If you have to walk bare foot in the sand, you have to walk really fast and when you stop to rest you have to bury your feet in the sand where it’s cooler.
The sand dunes in the desert never change their location due to the nara plant. When the sand covers the plant, it grows above the sand, and this process continues until the plant is about 2 metres tall, and then it stops and the sand completely covers it. But now the dunes have ‘roots’ which are essentially the nara plant’s roots, and that’s why the dunes never changes position. Deserts grow, so the Deadvlei we see now will one day be completely covered by sand, and the Sossusvlei we see now will one day become a Deadvlei (the river will be blocked by more dunes forming), and a new Sosussvlei will form. So the desert moves more and more inland. Slowly but surely.
Bushmen will walk very far to hunt for animals to eat. They use the poison from the spiders to shoot animals. When they shoot something, they cut off its tail and bring it back to their families, and then the whole family goes back to where the animal was because it’s too heavy to carry the dead animal back with them. They cut off the tail as proof that they have killed an animal, and also to inform other bushmen that this animal belongs to someone.
The family has to move fast to where the dead animal is because otherwise the vultures would eat the animals. So they leave behind the old, weak and sometimes children as well because they are too slow to follow 😔. Just turn the other way and walk straight ahead, never look back again and never talk about what they left behind 😔😔😔. Then at night sitting around a campfire eating, dancing, eating, dancing until the whole animal is finished because they don’t know when their next meal will be. Sometimes they go for days without eating as they are unable to find anything to eat.
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