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Makgadikgadi pans: San experience at Jack’s Camp Botswana

6/3/2018

2 Comments

 
Makgadikgadi pans: San cultural experience
​By Roxanne Reid
When you visit the Makgadikgadi pans and Jack’s Camp Botswana, you can tag along on a San experience to learn from the Zu/’hoansi Bushmen about their culture and way of doing things.

The Makgadikgadi pans area of Botswana is an intriguing landscape of dry savanna and featureless salt flats that are among the largest in the world. Here you can go on game drives into the Makgadikgadi National Park to see wildlife like lions, eland, zebras and gemsbok, as well as Makgadikgadi specials like brown hyena and aardvark, or venture onto the pans themselves to discover the giant baobabs of Kubu Island.

The San experience
The San experience is something different, a chance to learn about the culture of Botswana’s first people. Jack’s Camp in Botswana has been working with the San on this cultural tourism project since 1993. You can also join this cultural experience if you're staying at Natural Selection’s other Botswana lodges near the Makgadikgadi pans – Kalahari Camp and San Camp.
Makgadikgadi pans: San experience at Jack's Camp Botswana
The group of Zu/’hoansi we met included all ages from babies to young mothers and hunters, even two old men. Luckily, two of them spoke English and could translate the complex click language of the others.

In the past, we’ve been tracking wildlife across the Kalahari with the Khomani San, but this was nothing like that. Although the experience on the edge of the Makgadikgadi pans was described as a bush walk with the Zu/’hoansi, we barely walked 100m, just enough to give them a chance to show how they trap birds, make fire or ‘tame’ scorpions, and how important a digging stick can be.
Makgadikgadi pans: San experience at Jack's Camp Botswana
​We learnt some of the things they eat too, crowding around a purple-pod Terminalia as they plucked gum from it to chew. I tried some and it wasn’t sharp or bitter, as I’d expected. It was just a chewy texture that tasted of nothing at all. ‘We also use the pods to make tea,’ our interpreter told us.

They found a scorpion burrow and two young men started to dig it out. I’m all for leaving nature untouched, but they seemed excited to show it to us. It wasn’t easy, because scorpions are clever; they make a zigzag burrow to confuse predators and slow down the passage of rain water into their burrow. 
Botswana lodges cultural experience: the digging stick
How to make fire
While the digging continued and sand flew, the rest of the clan sat in the dust a few metres away and started to make a fire. They use acacia wood for their fire-lighting sticks. One stick has a sharpened end that fits into hole in the other, which is laid flat. The idea is to create enough friction by quickly twisting the vertical stick between your palms to create a spark at the point where they meet.

Three people took turns to keep rubbing the sticks together, taking five or six minutes of hard work to get a small spark. Once there was a whiff of smoke, they sprinkled grass and dried zebra dung on it and blew gently until it grew into a small fire. 
San experience: making fire
The scorpion whisperer
At last the scorpion was dug out. A self-appointed ‘scorpion wrangler’ grabbed it by the pincers with one hand and the stinger in the tail with the other. Then he  started licking it – ‘washing its eyes’, he told us. A scorpion has eight eyes, eight legs and two jaws. Two small wings on the underside are used to feel vibrations in the soil, so this creature would have known something was digging to find it and have tried to outmanoeuvre its opponent.
Makgadikgadi pans San experience: licking a scorpion
While we looked at the scorpion and thought about what it takes to put a venomous creature anywhere near your face, a young man started digging another hole with his stick. Turned out, it was for the scorpion – a new hole for it to hide in, replacing the one they had destroyed. Released, it scurried quickly away and disappeared down the hole.
Scorpion, Makgadikgadi pans
Setting a bird trap
The Zu/’hoansi demonstrated how they would set a trap for a bird like guinea fowl. Plant a flexible twig, about three feet long, in the soil and bend it over, attaching a rope made from the fibres of a plant called mother-in-law’s tongue. Use either a piece of gum or a few berries as bait in the centre of a small noose, with short sticks to hold it open. 
San experience: setting a bird trap
One of the young men mimed the bird getting caught, first scratching around in the dirt, then getting his hand (aka the bird’s head) caught in the snare.
Demonstrating how a bird gets caught in a trap
Games, song and dance
Fire lit and ‘bird’ caught, it was time to play a game around the fire. To my eyes, it seemed a bit like rock, paper, scissors. Much more dangerous, though, because the concept was that they were throwing lightning from one to the other. There was lots of laughing and singing until it was almost too dark to see.
San experience, Magkadikgadi - playing games
Back at the small encampment in a clearing, the women settled to a game played with a stone, singing a repetitive tune all the while. To the rhythm of clapping, one bashed a fist-sized stone on a piece of wood while a second slipped her flat hand quickly under the stone and out again. The rhythm was everything; get it wrong and you'd get your hand bashed by the stone. Later, they danced in a line, mimicking the movement of a caterpillar.
Makgadikgadi pans San experience - caterpillar dance
These are the things they do to entertain themselves when there is no TV, no books to read. There in the dark, under a vast canopy of stars, it seemed like a good way to pass the time.

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Copyright © Roxanne Reid - No words or photographs on this site may be used without permission from roxannereid.co.za
Want to learn about San culture? Join a San cultural experience near the Makgadikgadi pans at Jack's Camp Botswana. Learn how the San trap birds, how the San make fire or ‘tame’ scorpions, and how important a digging stick can be. #travel #culture #Bushmen
Want to learn about San culture? Join a San cultural experience near the Makgadikgadi pans at Jack's Camp Botswana. Learn how the San trap birds, how the San make fire or ‘tame’ scorpions, and how important a digging stick can be. #travel #culture #Bushmen
2 Comments
Gert
10/3/2018 08:28:16 pm

The bushmen have this mysterious fascination about them. I spent time with them in Botswana. They are truly amazing people. It’s a pity they are being absorbed into the western world.

Reply
Roxanne
11/3/2018 08:13:12 am

Their culture is certainly fascinating, Gert. I have no problem with them being absorbed into western culture if that is what they want, but it would be a tragedy if their knowledge and culture were lost forever. Maybe there's a middle ground where they can have the advantages of both worlds.

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    I'm an independent travel writer and book editor with a passion for Africa - anything from African travel, people, safari and wildlife to adventure, heritage, road-tripping and slow travel.
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