May 23: Making fire when it's cold

It was about 2° at 6 AM. Think about that for a moment in the context of open air showers.

I personally didn’t sleep well because of the cold. I spent most of the night shivering under the thin blankets. So far, all the places we have stayed have had thick duvets, and I have been too hot; the first place we need them, they don’t have them. Go figure.

And if you think we are cold, our guides for a walk in the bush this morning were native San bushmen (who could speak no English) dressed in little more than shorts and an animal skin wrapped around their shoulders. The primary focus of the walk was desert medicines, including contraceptives, anti-nauseants, fertility drugs and headache remidies.

Segue:

The San are the nomadic tribes of the Kalahari, meaning they are in Botswana, Namibia, a bit of Zimbabwe and parts of northern South Africa. Their lifestyle is pretty simple; they hunt some kinds of antelope using bows and spears, and manage to live off various insects and grasses that are on the land. They live in groups of ~100 individuals. They’ve been around for as long as there have been people on the planet, and in fact the San are your ancestors. They are one of 14 tribes with direct DNA linkages for all human kind.

But their culture is disappearing quickly, and conservation is to blame. As of 2013, Botswana now forbids hunting of game, which is what the San lived on. In addition, they declared a massive chunk of the country the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a National Park. They rounded up the San who lived there and moved them into “villages” far away from their native lands; villages with +1,000 inhabitants (note: this forced relocation started in the 1950's). They issued them with goats and sheep and told them to stop being nomadic and become farmers.

The World Wildlife Foundation and GreenPeace both tout the tremendous “victory” for the wildlife of the decision to ban hunting – though that ban is rapidly destroying a culture, just the way it puts intense pressure on that same culture in Canada and the USA for the same reasons. Now the San can’t hunt (and are checked regularly to insure they don’t), can no longer be nomadic, can’t live in their homeland, need to raise goats or sheep that they don’t know how to do and don’t like to eat anyway, are forced to live in villages much bigger than they want or are used to, and somehow have to get jobs to earn money to buy meat to eat. 

I guess Botswana hasn’t learned from North America’s mistakes.

Our 4 guides. Aged 28-36 

He looks 15. And cold 

How they carry... 

...water. In an ostrich egg. 

We shadow the work of digging up roots

At one point, they found a beetle on a bush...

No idea what kind, but it's cute

...grabbed it, pulled it's legs off, and said it was good to eat but needed cooking first. I thought they would save it for later, but no. They sat down and went to work.

For me, the best part was watching them make fire. I have seen it done before, but probably 35 years ago in outdoor survival training.

Two different sticks, two different woods. 

The fireboard part, obviously well used

Let the friction begin 

Slow to catch in the damp of the morning 

But catch it does 

The fire's on, where's that beetle? 

Cooking up a storm

The San don't build fires for fun. They build them to cook or get warm. The moment they are done with them, they stamp the fires out. First, the fuel is too precious to wast, and second, they understand the risk of unintentionally starting a wildfire that burns up the whole desert. 

As we travelled north, we passed one of the new “towns” created for the San.

Water is delivered, the only way water can be obtained 

The centre of town 

The school, which has a pass rate of 27%

We also saw our first baobab tree. Our tour guide, Leban, who grew up in a rural village in Zimbabwe 40 years ago told us about all the uses of the tree. We all got a chance to taste the fruit (tasty, sweet, but dry and chewy).

40' wide trunk on a 70' tall tree 

You eat those white lumps 

A sense of scale of the trunk 

Lots of mass to the tree 

Lots of shade, too

The area around Maun is heavily used for cattle grazing. There are cattle all over the road, and clear evidence of overgrazing in areas.

Ain't no grass left 

A typical "farm" 

Goats turning whatever is left to sand

As we got closer to the Okavango delta, we saw, for the first time since leaving South Africa, rivers that contained actual consequential water.

The Nihabe River

We got into our camp…

We pass a Namibian Ferrari on the way in 

Our camp no longer has the croc farm 

Home 

The inside of home 

The outdoor shower

…for lunch, then went into Maun. It’s not much of a town, but is a jumping off place for trips into the delta.

How the locals travel long distances

We did some money stuff (because despite everything we read and were told in advance, US cash isn't really useful in Botswana, so we had to change money to Pula, the local currency), then came home to prepare for our fly in adventure into the delta, a place I have always wanted to see.

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Today’s Africa Travel Tip: The value of a dollar

My mom always tried to teach me the value of a dollar. But it’s a concept that gets turned around in your head when you come to a place like Africa.

You might complain about them, but your ability to come to Africa puts you in that “1%” that everyone seems to hate these days. It is obvious when you come to Africa that most African people are managing just fine, but their version of “normal” is your version of abject poverty. Our Nomad guide tells us stories of his life in his village; that even though they left the house for the day to move their goats or sheep or cattle, they took no food, because they ate from the land. If they didn’t find food, they went hungry. You would not consider doing this. You take your $5 and go to Subway.

I have been in a bunch of grocery stores here, and the prices are kind of comparable to where I live. Some things, like meat in Botswana, are far cheaper (you can get a nice looking T-Bone for $3, a whole chicken for $4). The buying power of your dollar here is generally similar, maybe a little better. But you have money.

The San, for example, have no money. Makes it hard to shop. They can’t hunt. Makes it hard to eat. So $2 dollars to you is nothing, whereas $2 to a San is dinner for 4 days or more, since they can buy meat (remember, they can no longer hunt) and get everything else from the land.

After our tour from the San folks today, we tipped each of them $2. They were so happy and thankful for that; I thought they were going to kiss me. I lose $2 coins and don’t care. That’s my value. They get to eat. That’s theirs.

Sadly, near as we could tell, none of the other 14 people on the tour tipped them at all. I guess they must have figured that the $10 per person total cost of that tour was enough to pay 4 San, a translator guide, and the company they work for – even though they do exactly 1 tour per day. Somewhat less than anyone’s definition of a living or minimum wage.

I find it interesting on this tour that while (wisely) everyone wants things to be cheaper, when faced with the opportunity to potentially make a direct difference to someone through tipping that extra inconsequential (to them) dollar, they don’t do it. Virtually no one else tipped them when they danced last night, either. Sigh.

Amazing how people have different definitions of the value of a dollar.

So please, if you come here, tip heavily (it’s an extra $2, and you paid $7,000 to come), tip often, and make a difference because you can.