Namibia - The San People and Etosha
In Switzerland we celebrate Dreikönigstag or Three Kings Day on the 6th of January with a cake and crown. Evelyn had bought some buns for everyone the day before and hidden a button in one. Martina explains the rules to the Kenyan crew and the Australians, as each person takes a piece, checks carefully before eating. With a loud cheer, Katie is crowned Queen for the day after finding a button in her piece, happily excused from washing up, she wears her paper crown with her feet up on a stool while the rest of us wave plates dry.
We stop along the way for supplies and drinking water, the supermarkets here are better stocked and play good pop music loudly. The truck carries a dozen nineteen litre water containers and Erellah beckons Martina to take photos of the resupply process to stop her taking candid photos of Namibian police officers. We go through one and a half containers a day, refilling our flasks to save on disposable plastic bottles.
I’ve been trying in several places to buy a SIM card for data in Namibia so we can upload Martina’s photos as we go. In each place there is a long line out the MTC shop and we often only have an hour or so to buy lunch or snacks. We have to queue for a working cash machine as many are empty. WiFi has been spotty and the power too. Namibia shares its currency with South Africa and probably also the power network, I’m expecting more load shedding power outages when we get to South Africa but was surprised to find it here.
There is a strict health and safety protocol when working with poisonous arrows. Don’t handle the poison if you have any open cuts on your hands, work in isolation from the rest of the village to minimise risk of accidents. The village shaman is taking us on a bush walk speaking in his click language and his friend works as translator, they also make a funny duo explaining how they use the bush as a food source and pharmacy. The San people run a living museum where they can maintain their traditions and earn a living from it, wearing little but a small cloth to cover the essentials they show where they harvest the poison. There is a particular beetle that concentrates poison from a plant to protect its larvae, it is very potent. An arrow will bring down a giraffe in three days and smaller antelope within a couple of hours. A second poison complements the first causing irritation and swelling to further slow the prey down so it can be tracked and killed. “Ka-jaahh” says the Shaman meaning good, and motions us to follow him further into the bush.
The bushman’s toolkit consists of a small bow, an axe with removable blade that can be inserted to cut or scrape, a piece of hollow bamboo containing a small knife, a straw, twine and arrows. The straw is used to take water from the hollow of a tree, bash first with the axe to ensure it is free of snakes and test the water before drinking. There are a couple of the village ladies with us and they are looking forward to the dancing later, motioning happily with a few of their moves. We are shown the traditional medicines used for fertility, against tuberculosis, and high blood pressure. One medicine is familiar to us all as we sniff the pungent root, camphor, used of course by us and by them to relieve tired muscles. We try the local bush potato, it has a flavour similar to that of a radish but not spicy and a little sweeter, it can be eaten raw or roasted.
They say they are careful to only take what they need from the bush, not clearing forest to grow crops or raise livestock. With our bush walk concluded it’s time for dancing. The women perform the welcome song and dance for us and then beckon the other women in our group to join them. Linking arms and singing, circling through to bind the women together. They perform the rain dance and the elephant song. The latter is normally performed at night, the shaman leading the song, dancing by a fire burning hallucinogenic substances, for healing purposes. The men in our group try archery with the small bow and arrow. The shaman demonstrates creeping up quietly on the animal before letting the arrow loose. To everyone’s surprise, the bushmen and my own, I hit the target clean in the centre.
The rain dance appears to have worked as we return to camp, thunder rolls in the distance and we rescue the clothes hung up on the line.
Etosha national park gets its name from the Etosha salt pan, which means either great white place or place of dry water in the local Oshindonga language. Here the ground is arid, dotted with acacia bushes with long spiked thorns. The thorns don’t stop the Giraffes who crane their necks low over to munch on them. We have two nights in two camps within the park and use the truck for our game drive. Most people here are using 4x4 self drive hire cars but here the truck has a strong advantage; we can see over the small bushes to the animals hidden behind. There are blue wildebeest, steenboks, springboks, black face impala, kudus, ostrich, and zebra here in large numbers. The wildebeest and zebra are often found together, the zebra have good colour vision, the wildebeest have poor eyesight but excellent hearing, so they complement each other to protect from predators. The zebra prefer short grass and the wildebeest long, so happily eat together. Here the zebra have a light brown stripe between the black stripes to better hide in the dusty landscape.
Etosha National Park has many watering holes where often animals meet, some are natural and others man made, but neither are particularly busy at the moment, the recent rains have left plenty of pools around where animals can drink from. The San People are still working their magic rain dance for tourists as lightning and heavy thunder close in and it absolutely lashes it down. Truck windows closed, we head back to camp past bedraggled tourists huddled in an open safari truck.
The next day we find both a single white and a black rhino, both are dehorned and the same shade of grey. The name white rhino is a mistranslation of the africkaans word for wide referring to its mouth and the word black is just used to differentiate between the two. The solitary black rhino browses for its food walking long distances whilst the white rhino will graze often in a small group.
A family of cheetahs have made a kill, we had seen them earlier eying up springbok in the distance but they have caught a small desert hare as a snack. They leave the remains to the jackals who were trying to steal a bite and wander off in search of something bigger. As we return to camp we spot a rhino and her calf in the distance, no time to stop, as we have fifteen minutes to get back to camp before the park shuts.
The nights sleep is broken by the sound of car alarms, the rented 4x4’s have a tent on the roof. Why they are worried about someone stealing anything in a car they are sleeping on, in a remote camp patrolled by guards, surrounded by high fences and lions, I don’t know. Martina sleeps peacefully through the car alarms, but I awake later hearing “Lion!” shouted in my dreams, but it turns out to be Martina telling me to lie on my side to stop snoring.
As we pack up early in the morning Erellah tells us there is huge male lion by the waterhole next to the camp. We rush out as two lions are wandering away, stopping on the ridge in the early morning light. Martina declines the camera, preferring to capture the moment to her own memory.