Hunting and Gathering

Apparently, it's already beginning – the hasty blog entries due to time constraints, or laziness.

It's Saturday night, I've just made myself a somewhat delicious Middle-Eastern-inspired chicken dinner, and tomorrow at 7AM sharp I leave with the health team to go visit the settlements – I'll be gone from Sunday till Friday, and I'm sure I'll have more stories when I get back from that, so I'm going to have to give a highly selective account of my trip to Dqae Qare now.

Dqae Qare is about 14 years old. It was stocked with animals purchased from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), and has the following facilities: main lodge, with comfortable accommodations, kitchen, bar/lounge pavilion, bonfire circle for traditional dancing; far campsite, with plumbing and an “ablutions block” (bathroom area); two boreholes, both with solar-powered pumps, which provide water to the two accommodation sites and the two permanent water-holes/pans. There are several other natural pans that fill with water during the rainy season. While I was at Dqae Qare, for those who are interested, I saw the following:

porcupine

greater kudu

hartebeest (kongoni)

Southern oryx (gemsbok)

bush duiker

springbok

steinbuck

blue wildebeest (brindled gnu)

warthog

mongoose (not sure what species)

Cory bustard (I'm sure I'm misspelling that... sorry)

ostrich

vulture

many other birds – I really need a bird guide. There are so many beautiful birds, but I can't identify them.

The workshop was interesting, but mostly for the chance to spend time in the presence of the San elders, some of the few remaining people on earth that know first-hand the true gatherer-hunter way of life. (I've chosen to reverse the accepted order of “hunter-gatherer” to draw your attention to the fact that the gathering was actually much more important in terms of day-to-day caloric intake – and, the feminist in me screams, thus the women's contribution was equally important to the men's, despite the glamour of hunting. I hope to write a more complete entry on this topic later on.) They spoke only in Naro and another Bushman languages (I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the language they speak in Bere, but P came along to translate for those people), so I couldn't understand a word of it. However, I learned a lot about the way of the San people just by being around the elders, and we had the chance to go on some bush walks, which were enlightening.

The most exciting bush walk was with three of the old men. One was a man with eyes so small and engulfed by wrinkles that he seemed not to be able to see at all. His protruding cheekbones were draped with leathery brown skin that drew deep wrinkled creases down to the corners of his mouth, and he wore a bulging white-and-blue striped ski hat, despite the 40 degree weather. The second was a man with a wide, full mouth, large eyes that communicated a quiet patience and weariness, and rounded cheekbones that sunk to a very narrow jaw and chin. The third was a man rumoured to be able to transform into wild animals when in a trance; a sprightly guy who was a bit younger than the others, he had thin, electric-shocked dreadlocks and twinkling eyes. He wore a wide-brimmed green hat, and had a face that seemed to have been squashed vertically, the features compressed and sprightly, always amused. The three of them, along with W, one of the workshop leaders, and me, walked away from camp one morning before the workshop activities had started up. W explained that they were tracking a porcupine – they hadn't seen its tracks the previous afternoon, so it had gone by in the night.

I looked down at the path beneath my feet. Red sand, churned to chaos by the passing of many animals. Dents, holes, scratches, lines dragged along. If I looked closely, I could distinguish the prints of my Chacos, with their heavily-grooved Vibram soles. Pathetic! There were prints that might have been something dog-like, and prints that might have been something bird-like; but then again, they might not have been. And I certainly couldn't pick up the trail – a few prints here and there, but inevitably they ended, obscured by other footprints, wind, a change in direction, or a rocky patch in the path. “Here,” W said, pointing vaguely with his foot. “The porcupine.” I looked down. Smudges. Blots. Indistinguishable dents in the sand that I would never have thought were tracks at all.

“Oh, right,” I said, trying to sound confident.

“Sometimes you can see where its quills were dragging behind it,” he added, helpfully. In fact, I could see the thin scrape-marks of the quills much more clearly than the blobby prints (I never did end up being able to identify them), but I never would have noticed them if W hadn't pointed them out. “Let's go,” he said, pointing to the old men, who were already 50m ahead of us, rapidly disappearing into the bush. It took me a long moment of searching to see a print – a comparatively clear print – even when W was pointing it out to me. How could they follow the trail so fast? I trotted after them, amazed. When they lost the trail, they would split up in three different directions to search for it, invariably finding it within a few minutes, and then rejoin and keep tracking it. W explained as we went along that the porcupine was a very lazy animal – it would forage at night, and then return to its burrow, but sometimes it didn't make it back and then just went to sleep in the nearest convenient spot. The old men were hoping that it had gone to sleep somewhere easy-to-reach.

Eventually, after tracking it for nearly a kilometer, we reached the burrow. It was surprisingly large – there were several large entry-holes, with the burrow spread underneath them, covering an area of about 20 square meters, I'd guess. The old men set to with a purpose, crouching down to look in the holes, prodding long sticks down them, their bony limbs protruding hilariously from the porcupine's burrow as they tried to flush it out. They emerged covered in red sand, and conferred about what to do, then quickly decided to build a fire and smoke it out. Efficiently, one of them climbed down into a hole and started stuffing it with dry grasses, as another one searched for more fuel, and the third – the one who can transform into animals – broke a dead branch off of a nearby tree, to use as a club, and stationed himself near the hole that they thought the porcupine was most likely to emerge from.

Within a few minutes of setting the fire, the porcupine burst out of a different hole, obviously panicked, its long ungainly quills bouncing as it dashed into the bush. The men shouted and leaped up from their posts, and the man with the club yelled most excitedly of all, and immediately went sprinting off after the porcupine. I had no idea that such an old, frail-looking man could run so fast! But off he went, waving his branch, shouting at the porcupine as he pursued it through the bush. The other two watched. W burst out laughing, and I couldn't help joining him. Soon, the porcupine circled back around, the old man in hot pursuit, but before he could catch it the porcupine shot back down another hole into its burrow, and could not be persuaded to come out again, no matter how much they stomped or prodded, no matter how much they fed the fire. It was terrified, and determined to stay safe in its burrow. The old men waited – the one who had chased the porcupine stood poised above the hole it had emerged from before, branch cocked back and ready to club it in the head if it jumped out again. I was caught between excited amazement – they tracked it! We're going to GET it! - and bemused horror – they're going to club a wild animal to death, right in front of my eyes!

As it turned out, the porcupine wouldn't come out, and so they plugged up all the holes with dirt, stating an intention to come back for it later, as we had to get back to the workshop for the next session. “Won't it just dig itself out?” I asked W.

“No,” he replied. “The porcupine is a very lazy animal.”

Naturally the biologist in me does not accept the explanation that the porcupine is a lazy animal – clearly, it dug itself into the burrow, and should be capable of digging itself out, and to survive, it will have to dig out eventually – but on the other hand, the Bushmen have doubtless tracked and caught hundreds of porcupines. Who knows. They never went back for it, to my knowledge – probably because if they HAD caught it, they would have been poaching, and Dqae Qare would not have been very happy about it. (In fact, it's probably not a good idea for me to be posting this story, so let's pretend that they never intended to catch the porcupine, and it was just a demonstration of tracking prowess for the benefit of the dumb Canadian tourist...)

I also went walking with the old women, and helped them gather some kind of tree sap, as well as some small plum-like fruits. I tried them both – the tree sap sort of tasted like plastic, a not-unpleasant, mild, fatty taste. The skin of the fruits was unbearably bitter, but the flesh was good, though sour. They were so small, though, and had such big pits, that the skin was practically half of the fruit. Bummer.

OFF TO THE FIELD AGAIN!

DDT

On friday, D'Kar was sprayed for mosquitoes. It reminded me of an article I read a long time ago, for my American Environmental Movement writing seminar - “The Mosquito-Killer.” I forget the name of the guy, but there was a man who tried to eradicate malaria world-wide by the strategic use of DDT. There had never been such a cheap, effective, and long-lasting insecticide before, and he saw it as a golden opportunity. Basically, his idea was as follows: when DDT is sprayed on the walls of a house, the effects last for six months. When a mosquito feeds on a human, it flies to a wall to rest immediately after its blood meal. The lifespan of a mosquito is less than six months, so within six months, every mosquito that carries malaria will be dead – any surviving mosquitoes have not bitten a human, and thus do not carry the disease. Any mosquitoes that were carrying malaria before the DDT spraying have either died naturally, or have bitten another human and died from the DDT when they went to rest on the wall. This man's idea was that if he could spray the walls of every house in a given area, malaria would be essentially eradicated from that area – and if applied on a large enough scale, in a short enough time, he could eliminate malaria from the entire world. (Clearly some mosquitoes bite humans who are not in their houses, but since mosquitoes are generally active at night, most bites occur in the house.)

This was his crusade. And for awhile, it looked as though he might succeed – he had a lot of government support, his plans and methods were seemingly foolproof – but before he could finish, he began to lose his support. The harmful side effects of DDT were discovered, and there was backlash against his procedure of simply storming into a village, providing minimal levels of explanation, with varying degrees of success in translation, that all of their houses were going to be sprayed with a dangerous chemical. It was necessary to his plan that everywhere be sprayed quickly, so he didn't waste time getting permission from villagers who didn't understand what was going on – he just marched in and sprayed the hell out of their homes.

It's an interesting question – yes, there were obvious problems with his methods, and there are obvious problems with spraying DDT into the houses of people that don't understand what the chemical is, and what it can do. But to eliminate, or at least extremely reduce, the prevalence of malaria in the world? Isn't that a price worth paying?

I ask both as a rhetorical question – which is the lesser of two evils? - but also as a literal question. Is that price worth paying? With a question like this, is there any way to tally it up – any way to quantify the harm that would befall the people as a result of DDT spraying, as opposed to malaria? For myself, I'm tempted to say that the DDT would have been more than worth it. As far as I understand, most of the really problematic aspects of DDT, for humans, animals, and the ecosystem at large, come as a result of DDT spraying on crops – the plants are covered in it, and it is absorbed and further concentrated into any animals that eat the plants. The effect is further concentrated in any carnivores that eat the herbivores, and it is this increasing concentration that really does the damage. By spraying the walls of houses, not only do we spray far less than we would to cover huge fields of crops, but we also don't face the problems of concentration – there are no animals eating off of the walls and leaving, no animals coming into my house to hoover up the dead bugs and move the DDT through the food chain. The DDT stops in the house. It sits on the walls for 6 months, killing thousands of other insects along with the mosquitoes, and then its job is done. It is not passed on through the food chain, reaching deadly concentrations as it reaches the top.

So, on Friday, my house was sprayed. The Botswana government arranged for all of the malarial risk areas in the country to be sprayed during this month – in most of Botswana, aside from the Okavango Delta area, it is too dry for there to be much malaria, and the risk is there only during the rainy season. So, by spraying in mid-October, just before the rains fall on most of the country, the government is hoping to protect itself against malaria. A smaller-scaled mission, particularly because they don't do every house – they try to, but if people aren't home, or don't want them to spray, they won't. As the pick-up truck full of cannisters of DDT and men wearing thick coveralls, goggles, and surgical masks approached my house, I felt torn – on the one hand, I'm a liberal environmentalist, and just the word “DDT” sends shivers down my spine. Rachel Carson, what would you have to say about this?! On the other hand, I know what a toll malaria can take on the developing world, I personally don't want malaria, and I'm fascinated by the story of the would-be mosquito-killer.

So, I took all the pictures off of my walls, put all of my food and cooking implements into my cupboards, covered my belongings with sheets, and waited outside while they sprayed my walls and ceiling with DDT. “I'm protecting myself, and I'm helping protect the town of D'Kar,” I reasoned.

I didn't know what it would do, really. I didn't know if it would kill all bugs – if they would absorb it and then leave the house, later, to die (like in the advertisements for RAID), or if they would die right away – I didn't know how many bugs, really, there were in my house. The window-screens in my living room work, thankfully, but I often leave the front door open a bit, so that Melissa can come and go. Let me tell you, a lot of insects come through that crack in the door, and let me tell you – DDT WORKS. The first night after my house was sprayed, my floor was speckled with a grim snowfall of dead insects – large, small, all different kinds. The litter of insects was thickest right beneath the light, of course. Poor things. They flock to the light, rest on the ceiling, and the DDT kills them. There is an ant colony that discovered my sink before I even moved into this house, and now every morning I see the carcasses of the ants that bravely tried to return to their former cornucopia, and were poisoned as they marched from their entry-point at the top of the window frame, down the deadly wall towards the sink. Some of them made it as far as the faucet – others died on the wall and fell to the floor.

“Don't touch the walls,” the spraying supervisor warned me. “Don't lean on them. It will make you itchy.”

So, my house has become a morgue for all kinds of foolhardy insects. I'll admit it's disturbing to know that my house is a poison-box for bugs, and will be for the next six months. (Does the effectiveness decline over the six months? I have no idea. Is it used up? Will the area around the lights become less effective more quickly because so many insects die there?) But on the other hand, I won't get malaria, and the overall prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases will go down.
And the ants are gone. Possibly this is a bad thing – I now feel less motivated to do my dishes, because I am no longer worried about finding my peanut butter-smeared knife swarming with hungry ants. Ah well.

The maize-cricket has appeared as well, a horrendous new visitor to my house – they are enormous, and won't be killed by DDT because they don't sit on the walls. Apparently they wreck havoc on corn crops. They remind me of the biblical plague of locusts – when they come to my house at night, they just leap and batter themselves against the windows, too stupid to find a way in. If they do blunder in, I smash them with a book. Apologies if that sounds cruel, but some of them are as long as my hand, and there isn't really a way for me to shoo them back out. They're too big for Melissa to tackle, either. Besides, lately I have been feeding her so much catfood that she hasn't been eating many bugs.

This afternoon I'm heading off to the Dqãe Qare game reserve for a workshop with the Media and Research program – they're conducting the workshop with representative elders from the communities, to bring together information about traditionally used medicinal and food plants. I'm very interested in the project, but I'm not sure how much I'm going to get out of the workshop, due to the fact that everyone will be speaking in Naro, or other Bushman languages, if their Naro isn't adequate... Anyhow, we'll see how it goes. Just the chance to see Dqãe Qare again is good, as it stands as an example of a successful community-run campsite/game reserve, and can hopefully provide me with some inspiration of what to do with Komku's similar projects. Simply to be be in the bush will be nice as well.

Adios till Thursday....

p.s. - have just realized – what if concentration of DDT in the bugs starts to harm Melissa, who does, after all, eat a lot of those bugs? (Though not as many as before.) Furthermore, cannot decide if she is pregnant or just fat.

Languages

Notes on the languages spoken in D’Kar, and my efforts to learn them.

I realize I have been writing a lot of long, somewhat analytical, boring entries – but I want to get down the basics of my situation here, so that there is some context for more narrative, descriptive, INTERESTING entries later on. Bear with me.

Three primary languages are spoken in D’Kar: Naro, Setswana, and English. Naro, one of the San click languages, is the mother tongue of most people. There are approximately 17 Bushman languages, each of them as different to the other as English and Hindi – although all include clicks, many of the clicks are different, and there are extremely few word similarities. Naro is the most widely-spoken Bushman language, and most San can at least understand Naro in addition to their own language.

Setswana and English are the official languages of Botswana, and are taught in the schools. Beyond the first couple of grades, however, there is no schooling in Naro available, and at the moment it isn’t even available as an accepted language/literature elective in high school. All of the residents of D’Kar can communicate in Setswana out of necessity, but most strongly prefer to use their mother tongue, and their Setswana is full of mistakes and sounds strangely accented to other Batswana (or so I am told – at this point, I certainly can’t recognize different accents in Setswana!)

It’s an interesting comparison to India; in Botswana, and in Africa in general, there is a great deal of fear of tribalism. Certainly, when one takes into account events like the Rwandan genocide, there is ample reason to fear tribalism. But the Botswanan government is so afraid of it that they won’t allow mother-tongue education or community radio, worried that they will promote tribalism. India is very much a contrast to this – each state proudly uses its own language, generates its own mother-tongue entertainment industry, and provides schooling in its own language. In Tamil Nadu, many people barely speak Hindi. Not to say that India is without its problems, and certainly having 60 million or so Tamil speakers is a different kettle of fish than the small number of Naro speakers – I don’t have a good estimate, but the population of Botswana is about 1.7 million, so Naro speakers are probably under 200,000. The point is, we are talking about VASTLY lower numbers than in India.

Aside from the numbers, however, Botswana is very proud of the fact that all citizens can consider themselves Batswana; that beyond their tribal identity they should be proud of their country and hold a strong sense of national identity and belonging. This is easier in Botswana than in many other African nations, because the country is actually functioning quite well – due mainly to wealth in the diamond mines, which has been well-managed by the government. However, the national pride almost makes the situation of the San more difficult. It is hard for them to be supported as a unique and independent cultural group without incurring the suspicion and resentment of the other Batswana, who believe they should be Batswana above all. Speaking Naro comes with a certain stigma, and other Batswana believe that the San should be speaking in Setswana all the time. [Disclaimer: I’m simplifying a very complicated issue, and my understanding of the situation isn’t complete, so please take this opinion with a grain of salt.]

This situation makes it rather frustrating, though exciting, for my own language studies. On the one hand, I want to learn Setswana – it will be useful all over Botswana and in parts of South Africa. It is much, much easier than Naro: I can make and recognize all of the sounds, it is written using the Roman alphabet and pronunciation rules are straightforward, and the grammar is relatively simple. On the other hand, I want to learn Naro – it is the preferred language of the community I live in, and the best way to communicate with the people I work and live with. But it is much, much harder than Setswana: though I am making a lot of progress with the clicks, they are totally foreign and difficult for my tongue to produce, and there is also some degree of tonality to the language, which is almost more difficult for me to grasp than the clicks. (Setswana has some tonality as well, but not as much.) The grammar of Naro is also more difficult – without even getting into the rest of the pronouns, it is one of the extremely rare world languages that has a separate male and female version of “you.” (Naro is also written using the Roman alphabet, but due to the clicks, pronunciation is much more confusing.)

I have been working hard at my Setswana, with occasional forays into Naro, and I am happy to say that I’ve been making significant headway. I say this with no little surprise, because I’ve always considered myself to be hopeless with languages – but here, however hopeless I am, it seems necessary. If I weren’t present in the office, nobody would speak English. Around D’Kar, I simply can’t communicate with most of the people I see. In the settlements, I’m a nuisance – everything has to be translated, and I feel as though I can’t be considerate to the people I meet. So I must learn Setswana.

Of great assistance has been H, the pastor – or the muruthi, in Setswana. As I mentioned before, he is fluent in Setswana and Naro as well as a variety of other languages, and he has an insatiable curiosity and delight for languages. He inundates me with new words and grammar every time I see him, and never seems to tire of helping me. It is a source of great disappointment to him, I think, that most of the volunteers who come to work in D’Kar never learn to communicate in anything other than English. All of the Peace Corps volunteers do some intensive Setswana training before they start their positions, but most of them stop there and continue to use English. Virtually no-one makes any headway with Naro – I can’t promise that I will, either, but H is persistent in teaching me, and I would like to learn enough to at least be courteous. I feel rude here – the worst kind of arrogant American. My goal is to master conversational Setswana and be able to pepper it with enough Naro that the San know I am trying.

Thankfully, everyone has been extremely supportive of my language-learning efforts. Perhaps they’ll withdraw their support in a month, when I’m still pestering them for new sentences, but at the moment I have all the help I could ask for. Every smile I get when I spew out another Setswana sentence or Naro greeting makes my efforts more than worth it – people here aren’t snobby about their language. They try to help me learn, rather than turning up their noses at the way I butcher “ntlogetse” (Setswana) or “qãe tcaor ko” (Naro). I’m having enormous fun learning, practicing on everyone that comes my way, and if I continue to make progress hopefully I won’t become tiresome.

Frankly, I feel handicapped as a person with fluency in only one language. It is true that you’ll never thoroughly know a new place if you cannot communicate with the local people. I was never able to do that in India, and it’s one of the reasons I took this position - I wanted to be in a situation where I was forced, beyond my own shyness and awkwardness and Western snootiness, to be a part of the local community. Even here, I’m removed. I work in an office; I speak through translators. But I’m steadily learning more and more, and I think I have the marvellous opportunity to become close to the San. They are a wonderful people, with the most ancient of heritages, and I am privileged to be able to work with them. On Monday night I went with H to the Dqãe Qare game farm (a project started by the D’Kar Trust) to see traditional trance-dancing. It was a performance put on for a busload of German tourists staying at the game farm, but when they danced, the feeling was not that of a performance tailored for a paying audience – it retained its roots, its essence, as a community healing dance. The dancers paid little attention to the Western onlookers, but instead devoted themselves to the women clapping and singing for the dance, holding each other up when they swayed into deep trance, treading a deep double circle of ruts in the sand around the fire. It was beautiful. It is why I am here.

What I Do, What I Don't Do

An incomplete description of what work I will be doing.

My position at the Komku Trust is undefined. This is the first time that Princeton in Africa has placed a volunteer with Komku, and the first time that Komku has had a volunteer like me. (They have had specialists come in for a couple of months at a time, to help with specific projects or problems; but they have never had, for example, a Peace Corps volunteer.)

Komku is part of the Kuru Family of Organizations, a group founded in the 1980s to promote community development among the San, or Bushman, people. When it was founded, Kuru was one organization with several different departments, but at some point the directors decided that it was getting too large and unwieldy, and it would be better to split the organization, each department then becoming its own independent non-profit. Komku, thus, is one of about 6 or 7 different groups all operating under the umbrella of Kuru. There is a lot of overlap between the groups, and all are linked and coordinated by an administrative body called Letloa. The complex politics governing the interactions between all of these organizations is too much for me to get into right now, and I don’t understand it completely myself. Suffice it to say that it is complicated. On the other hand, it is very interesting to be linked with such a diverse array of organizations, and to have the opportunity to see what all of them are doing.

Komku itself has three departments – the community health outreach program, the media and research program, and the livelihoods program. On top of that there is the coordinator, the accountant, and various drivers, helpers, etc.. I think we have 16 employees altogether, though only 6 or so seem to do any work on a regular basis. At the moment it seems most likely that I will be working with the livelihoods program, which exists to help the San develop sustainable sources of income. There are a number of projects on the go at the moment, in various stages of implementation: cultivating hoodia, a cactus used traditionally to suppress hunger and thirst in San hunters when they were tracking animals and away from food and water for days at a time; a community-run campsite in Chobokwane, which is currently rather decrepit; cattle syndicates set up to allow the San to actually purchase land; and other projects which I haven’t learned about yet. In an ideal world, I would work with the campsite and cattle syndicates to increase ecotourism and make sure everything is ecologically healthy and sustainable. For the moment, though, I am simply trying to figure out how everything works.

Last week, I spent Monday-Wednesday out in the field with the health program, visiting four of the settlements that Komku works in. Komku does not technically work with any of the residents of D’Kar (that is the domain of the D’Kar Trust, another Kuru organization), but instead assists a number of mostly-San settlements in Ghanzi District. So, traveling with the director of the Komku health program, one of the employees of the Letloa health program, and a driver, we set out to visit the clinics in the settlements and collect reports from the nurses and the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Supporters – they help people with TB stick with their treatments).

I spent the rest of the week attending various meetings, listening and trying to take in a million things I don’t understand yet, and helping write up the report on the settlement clinics. I also attended the award ceremony at the local primary school, which was a lot of fun, though I couldn’t understand a word of it. Highlights: traditional dancers, coached by one of my new friends; drum majorettes toting battered batons, marching to the beat of a stick whacking a cardboard box; just being in a school again, which I miss.

I hope to spend the next few weeks doing the same thing with the other programs – going out into the field and seeing what’s happening on the ground; helping to write up reports and seeing the official side of things; attending meetings and gradually understanding more and more. Though it’s completely up in the air at the moment, I suspect I’ll end up working with livelihoods, because that’s where I have the most to offer; the health program is interesting, but it seems to be well in hand, and I don’t have much experience with health. What I want to do is help the livelihoods program to mold one of the campsite/game reserve projects into a viable, independent, ecologically-friendly business. But I have so much to learn, and before I can help anyone do anything, I need to understand more about how Komku works, how D’Kar works, what the San people want, and what the obstacles are.

Nothing is clear-cut, and nothing moves quickly. Meetings go on for many hours, in several languages, as people gradually raise their concerns – someone will sit silently for the first hour, and then hint at their idea, and then an hour after that will voice it fully, leading to an entirely new line of argument and discussion. Everyone’s opinion is considered. Emotions are expressed. New ideas are raised. Old ideas are reviewed, over and over and over again. People are very open about raising disagreements, which is sometimes productive, and sometimes agonizingly repetitive. I do a lot of listening.

Looking forward, I think I may spend the entire remainder of 2008 bouncing from project to project, helping out in small ways – report-writing, computer support, etc – and doing my best to understand all angles of Komku’s work. It’s not really possible for me to take a lot of initiative at this point, because all of the programs are winding down for the year. Any remaining projects or workshops have been scheduled, there isn’t time or money to be starting new ones or making major revisions. So I’ll sit tight, listen hard, and make my move in 2009.

Two weeks in Botswana, and I’m full of plans – wait and see, I’m sure I’ll have something totally different planned by the end of the month.

D'Kar Arrival

ABSTRACT:
The arrival in Botswana of one intrepid mongoose. Observations of heat, dryness, and sunlight. Brief description of the town of D’Kar, to be expanded upon in later entries. Recounting of the first few days, including the village Independence Day celebrations: explanation of the kgotla, description of slaughtered kudu hanging from a tree, tasting of kudu liver, meeting and greeting of local personalities. Finally wrap-up, and looking towards the future. Request for emails.

Dear Readers –

I write to you from a new house and a new home – my own little flat in the small town of D’Kar, Botswana. An astonishing variety of bugs are flying, crawling, and scuttling around my house, keeping me company as I write. The heat of the day is still seeping out of the walls, an oven-like, ever-present desert heat that oppressed me when I first arrived, but has quickly become an acceptable part of daily life. The little yard outside is reddish-brown sand, with two brittle trees and a line of cacti – this, for D’Kar, is an unusual profusion of plant life. After all, we are in the Kalahari.

By now, my eyes have adjusted to the unadulterated desert sunlight; they have become familiar with a subtle new palette of ten thousand shades of sand. Lizard-greys, the hundred yellows of dry grasses, the gradations of silver-beige on a long acacia thorn. When I first arrived, everything looked bleached, distorted, pared down to the barest bones of colour and shadow. This is what I wrote in my journal, on the view from the airplane flying into Maun:

The land was flat, flatter than anything I’d ever seen, flatter than the surface of a calm sea. Flatter than a piece of paper. And it was dry: uniformly gold-white-beige in the early afternoon sun, dotted with acacias and low scrub, on and on in endless uniformity as far as I could see. The town was random, boxy houses connected by roads that were just slightly lighter ribbons of dust strewn upon that vast plain of dryness. No well-defined lots, no grey pavement among greenery. Just light-coloured boxes and light-coloured, scarcely distinguishable threads of roads, scattered heedlessly upon the veldt.

I felt a deep thrill at the strangeness of it, this remote settlement, the landscape utterly foreign to me. Can one imagine anything more removed from the Pacific Northwest? Here we are in the desert, in the Kalahari. There are fewer variables. Seen from above, the scantness of shade seemed incredible – how open, how exposed everything is! Not a tree, nor rock nor cave nor even a hill or dune to take shelter by. Nowhere to hide from the elements; only our fragile, widely spaced human shelters being baked by the sun, like little boats upon the open ocean.

I was greeted at the airport by G, my eyes struggling with the onslaught of light, the roads bleached and white, the houses bleached and white, the very sky seemingly bleached and white. Surreal. I spent one night in Maun, and the following afternoon (jet-lagged, heat-drugged, out of it), we drove to D’Kar – my home for the next year.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit D’Kar, do not judge it on your first impression. As G joked, somehow the villages of Botswana never found a good city planner. There is no real structure to the town – most of the “main attractions,” widely spaced, are along the one main gravel road. There are two stores, which are open whenever they choose to be open, and carry a highly uncertain stock of goods. There is the D’Kar Museum, a very good though very small museum about the Bushmen, funded by the D’Kar Trust (another one of the Kuru Family of Organizations). There is the vibrant primary school, and at the other end of the road there is the dingy bar, right next to the defunct petrol station. At times, D’Kar reminds me of a cowboy town in the Wild West of America – one dusty street, bits of garbage blowing across it, and one rickety donkey-drawn cart rattling along, carrying a family and their provisions.

Spread out from this main road, completely at random, are the houses of D’Kar’s twelve-hundred-odd residents. Some are brick, some are (strangely) log cabins, but the vast majority are made of mud and the trunks of spindly trees, with thatching or corrugated metal for roofs. These little houses are perfectly comfortable for the moment – and who needs to be indoors, anyhow, when the weather is sunny, dry, and warm all night long? - but I wonder how they get along in the rainy season. In a few months I’ll find out, I suppose.

My first few days in D’Kar were spent in a state of total confusion and extreme loneliness. I had the misfortune to arrive on Sunday night before the holiday week – we came into the town in the dark, and most of the residents were well on their way to celebrating the upcoming Independence Day (Tuesday, 30th of September). Monday was a bit of write-off because Tuesday and Wednesday were both public holidays in honor of Independence Day; almost nobody was around the office. Monday evening, G left to go stay with his family in Maun, and I was left in the guesthouse alone, without any contacts in D’Kar. I was armed with the knowledge that I ought to show up at the office on Thursday, and that in the meantime I ought to “go around and introduce myself.”

So, on Independence Day, feeling ridiculous, somewhat terrified, and still jet-lagged, I set off to introduce myself. I met the Dutch couple that runs the remarkable Naro Language Project in D’Kar (more on that later), and they in turn introduced me to the pastor of the local church, H, a robust Afrikaans man who was wearing a rather short pair of khaki shorts and riding a bright-red quadbike with the KFC logo emblazoned on the side. (As it turns out, the quadbike had been a gift from a South African friend, who had won it in a contest sponsored by KFC.) He announced that he would take me to the kgotla so that I could see the Independence Day celebrations, and gestured for me to get on the quadbike. I hopped on, and we zipped over to the kgotla.

Here I must explain what the kgotla is. My own understanding is still incomplete, so let me just give a brief summary – I’m sure I will come back to it later in the year. The kgotla is a place where the local court is held. Each village has one, and the village chief presides at kgotla meetings to decide, in discussion with the community, what should be done about all kinds of village issues. Sometimes punishments are meted out; sometimes consensus is reached about various problems or decisions; sometimes ceremonies, meetings, workshops, or presentations are held. Overall, the kgotla is an open forum in which any resident can voice their concerns and have them discussed. The D’Kar kgotla takes the form of a rough circle of logs erected around a twisted tree, which creates a striking, visceral, and somewhat creepy image. The uneven logs jut from the ground like a circle of jagged teeth closing around the barren tree, making it look like a meeting place for witches or demons.

When we approached it, however, it was lively and cheerful, stuffed full of schoolchildren in their blue uniforms who were listening to someone making a presentation about Independence Day in the middle. H dropped me off to have a look, and I stood behind the children, drawing hundreds of unabashed stares. I listened but couldn’t understand a word – the speaker was using Naro, the click-language of the local Bushmen – and after awhile I left the kgotla to join H by the cooking area.

I had already noticed the focus of the celebration and feast that was to come: outside the kgotla, hanging from a half-dead tree, was the roughly butchered carcass of a kudu, a large antelope. Huge sides of meat were hung from an overhanging branch, raw scarlet with marbled white fat, the flesh stretched over the long, splayed ribs. The entrails were spilling out of a crook of the tree, lumpy and waxy and covered in flies. A smaller tree held the legs, dark red and thick with muscle. Two young boys walked around bearing the severed head and forelegs of the kudu so that everyone could see them.

H was chatting fluently in Naro and Setswana and teasing the cooking ladies, who were stirring enormous iron cauldrons nestled in open fires, under the shade of some low trees. When I walked up, H requested some food, and a hugely fat woman in Herero attire brought over a ladleful of steaming kudu liver, thrusting the twisted grey-red-brown bits of meat towards me. I had never tasted liver of any kind before, much less kudu liver, but I scooped it up with my fingers and ate it – delicious! Everything I had imagined organ meat might taste like. She grunted and returned to her cauldron.

Presently a couple of men brought over one of the enormous shanks of meat from the tree, set it down on a fallen tree branch, and began unceremoniously hacking it into smaller pieces with some kind of machete. The chopped-up chunks of kudu were then passed to the cooking ladies, and they began stewing the meat, stirring their pots with branches that looked to have been broken off of nearby trees.

I spent my time talking with H, who was kind enough to translate for me so that I could talk a little with some prominent local citizens, including his co-pastor at the church, a village elder, and the chief. (The chief is a source of some controversy – he’s not a D’Kar local, but was “shipped in” by the government to act as chief – many would say because the government doesn’t consider the San fit to govern themselves). We ate thick, filling home-made biscuits, drank tea, and at last got our hands on a large bowlful of shredded kudu meat – again, delicious. I really enjoy game meat, when I have the opportunity to eat it.

I finished that day feeling exhausted by the strangeness of it all, but exhilarated by the beginning of my journey. It was, in retrospect, a very good introduction to D’Kar – the scene at the offices of the various Kuru organizations operating in D’Kar is quite a contrast to the earthy feast of Independence Day, though at the same time this “office” is certainly a far cry from any office environment I’ve encountered in North America.

I will save my descriptions of Komku for the next entry, but I believe I am starting to find my way there. It is a slow process, and it is only barely beginning – I imagine it will be some weeks before I can give you a clear idea of what, exactly, I am going to be DOING. But I am learning. This week I spent Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday out in the field with the community health project, visiting most of the settlements that Komku works in (New Kanagas, East Hanahai, West Hanahai, Grootlaagte, Qabo). The trip was invaluable on a number of counts – introducing me to the settlements, improving my Setswana, and having some fun with my coworkers. Full report hopefully to follow.

For now, though, goodnight. Everything is so new to me here – I can practically feel my mind expanding, pushing at my skull with the swelling of new ideas, new perspectives, new possibilities. Everything I thought I knew - about life, Africa, people, the world – has been challenged. Provided I don’t get distracted, expect a lot of blog entries… The one thing I don’t really have yet is a social life, so I’m stuck with a lot of time and a lot of ideas. For the time being, that suits me fine. I’ve been practicing yoga every morning and reading a lot.

Please email and/or write! I miss you all and I would love to hear from you.

Two further notes:

My second day here, I saw a mongoose. I think it was a good omen.

I am befriending a cat who lives nearby. I believe she is pregnant. I have been feeding her a mixture of tuna, milk and potato, and she spends a few hours with me every night – last night she even sat in my lap for awhile. She also likes to catch and eat the bugs that crawl around my house (bonus!). I have named her Melissa.