Thasabu of the San people doesn’t mind if you call him a Bushman, even though it was too cold to wear his bushmen clothes. In fact he likes to be called that. He told us that as we walked with him through the Kalahari desert. He was teaching us how to find water from tubers buried underground, how to know which plants were good medicine and how to work out the age, how fresh and the gender of the tracks we were seeing. He knows so much that we in the so called developed world have no clue about.
We had just ridden the Trans-Kalahari road before tackling a strength sapping sand trapped track to the reserve he lives on and were staying as guest at Dqae Qare lodge. It’s a social enterprise project that allows the San people of the Kalahari to make a decent living and also to preserve their culture. The night before, we had been stargazing with Greg, the project manager, a wonderful guy who is deeply committed to the San people and the future they envisage. Greg by the way is an avid amateur astronomer and brought out his telescope for us to look through. The Southern skies have so many more stars and we stared in amazement at the ring nebula, a cloud of a million white dwarfs and the rings of Saturn. It was literally a luminous experience.
Over dinner, we had helped Dinah, one of the San cooks light a heater [it’s been incredibly cold] and she had apologised for being unable to read the directions. She who could be dropped anywhere in the middle of this wilderness and happily survive, who knew what plants cure earache, kidney disease, or indigestion. Who could track game and find water in this parched land. Apologising to me, who would die in two days if left here alone, for being unable to read.
The San people are a beautiful people who have been abused through the ages by settlers and other tribes, yet they have a wonderful culture, possibly the oldest in the world, but sadly it is one that is that is being eroded. It feels like this would be a loss to the entire human race, so thank goodness, for Thasabu, Greg and Dinah.
As I write this we have traveled another 200 Km and we are in the Okavango Delta. The sun is rising over the river we are camped by and the dawn chorus of birdsong has awakened us. We are having a life experience every day, from racing herds of ostriches along the side of the road to tackling crazy tracks that turn into sandpits 2 feet deep, to meeting incredible people. We never know what’s coming next and to be honest, we like it that way.
Jesus talked of living life in all fullness and that has many connotations, but here, in this place, on this bike, with these people, I am starting to understand a little of what He meant.
