Southern Africa - Day 18 (Part 1)

Thursday, 30 January 2020 - Botswana

This morning we take a walk with bushmen into the Kalahari desert. We were supposed to do this yesterday but we arrived late so we did it this morning instead. 

Before the walk I did a walk of my own around the hotel grounds. I was hoping to see some animals but only birds around. Yesterday evening I saw a group of what I thought were deer but Clever laughed and said there are no deer in Africa. At first he thought it was a duiker (in the antelope family) but when I told him they were in a group, he said they are impalas. But I don’t think they were impalas because what I saw were all brown with skinny legs, really like deer. So in the end I dunno what the hell I saw 😅. 

Our guides were descendants of bushmen, who use the click language. Even among the bushmen there are different tribes with different languages. The bushmen are shortish, fairer skinned and have surprisingly small eyes like the Chinese. 

During the walk, we saw eland dung. The elands are big animals but they have small dung, which is good for fire. A blackthorn tree (looked more like a bush but apparently it can grow quite big) which fruit can be eaten. A brandy bush which berries can be eaten, and which leaves can be used to neutralise the poison of snakes, spiders and scorpions. There were small holes everywhere in the ground, these were scorpion nests. The bigger holes are the nests of dung beetles. But they are all sleeping now, they only become active at night. Then a buffalo thorn tree which berries can also be eaten. 

There are giraffes, elands, oryx, impalas, wildebeests and even lions here. Saw the holes dug by an aardvark to find ants. 

The bushmen showed us how to light a fire. You need dried grass, dried dung, a bigger stick where you make an indentation and put it over the dried grass and dung, and then a smaller stick to put into the bigger stick’s indentation and rub until there is smoke, then blow in the smoke and it becomes a fire! So cool! 

They use stones and animal bones to make weapons - walking sticks which can also be used as a weapon, spears, bows, the arrows are in a container made of tree trunk and the skin of animals. Animal skin is also used for clothes and bags. The poison of a certain type of beetle is sometimes used only on the arrows, not on the spears.