On Thursday evening we took a hike through the veldt over to our traditional Bushman village that we have built solely for filming purposes.
Its was too dark to take pics of them, but the internet provides and these are similar.
Of course our San Bushmen workers now live in proper little houses, this is just for filming.
We were told to keep our lights off and try to navigate by the stars. We were given a few pointers on directions and then split into groups to lead the navigation to the destination. My group ended up wandering round in circles in the bush and did far worse than the groups who came after us!! I suspect I am the only one there who has actually done any official navigation courses in particular with night nav experience - I was terrible!
"Navigation is easy. If it wasn't they wouldn't be able to teach it to Sailors" - James Lawrence
I dont think I would make a good sailor in that case!
Here are a couple of web stolen (as taking pics of the stArs is almost impossible) images of the stars we see here.
Southern cross - used for navigation
Milky way - we genuinely get skies like this most evenings
Once we got to the village we were met by one of our our guides who told showed us the constellations of the southern hemisphere and told us some of the bushman folk lore.
We were shown the hunter and scorpion constellations and the arrow that points north, along with betelgeuse which is apparently too big to fit inside our galaxy!
The Bushman stories we heard included the story about how our solar system came into being....
Traditional Bushmen were hunter gatherers and when they killed they would take the village to the kill rather than the kill to the village. One day an eland (type of antelope) was killed and the village feasted. At the end one child came out of one of the huts and having not eaten he was left only the head. He threw this up to the sky three times and on the final time this eland head became the sun. Another child came out and on finding only the fire left he threw the coals up and they bacame the milky way and stars. The moon is in fact the body of the eland constantly trying to find the head, which in turn is trying to find the body and round and round the earth they go looking for one another.
"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." - Henry David Thoreau
The other story he told us was that in more traditional times when a lion would hunt the bushmen would watch. Once the kill was complete the lion would rest before eating his spoils. Once he started to eat he would take the head and the legs in his mouth and shake them, letting the bushmen know that he would leave this for them. In return if the bushmen hunted they would take the heart and the innards from the antelope and hang it on a nearby tree for the lion, this way the lion would be fed and not attack the bushmen. Sounds very Rudyard Kipling to me, but apparently its true...
“Hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was: O my Best Beloved, when the tame animals were wild” ― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories
What is this," said the leopard,"that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?” ― Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories
Not sure I would be so keen on sharing a meal with these guys comfortably! though I like the ethos of the story!
"If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine." - Diana Wynne Jones
I find these stories fascinating, I also find it so interesting to hear about the skills that our bushmen who still track have. They would be able to tell you two days ago which way the wind had been blowing, and look at spoor (footprints) and the ways grass had been moved and things disturbed and tell you what had happened between two animals. No matter how good our science gets and what we know on a research level this instinctive ability to be at one with nature is amazing and so far in every instance our bushman trackers are always right.
"I remember one winter, when I was about five or six, I spent three days with another boy, tracking a bobcat that had been sighted in another county fifty miles away, but which I was sure had come into our neighborhood." - Terry Brooks
We also tried some of the traditional bush food - two roots, one like a bulb and one that contains so much water its like watermelon.
We had a lovely braai and a few drinks and then some of the staff and volunteers stayed out under the stars, but sadly I had to head back as I didn't want to get cold in my back and risk slipping a disc again!
Really lovely night.
In other news this week, our lodge called down to say they had a puff adder in the office, one of the most dangerous snakes in Africa which had simply slithered in the door and there was some level of pandemonium ensuing to get rid of it. Our newest member of staff apparently picked it up by the tail and slung it into a bucket and is miraculously still here to tell the story!!
"Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake."- W. C. Fields
Last night we went to one of the investor houses to look out over the pan at sunset and enjoy our sundowners - lekker!
"Every time you wake up and ask yourself, What good things am I going to do today?, remember that when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it." - Indian Proverb
Views over the pan
Sitting on the stoop
“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard
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