The Khoisan of the Kalahari - Discovering the Genius of a Most Successful People

“It is said that if you haven’t mastered the San language by the time you are five or six years old, you will never master it because you haven’t developed the necessary muscles,” remarked my safari guide Johnny Minnaar, at the time assistant manager of Deception Valley Lodge at the northern edge of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

“Khoisan also mimic natural sounds and use their hands a lot to make gestures,” he explains. As I watched and listened, our Khoisan guides, Dagam and Xhase, who are employed by Deception Valley Lodge to help keep alive the language and heritage of their ancient, semi-nomadic, hunter-gatherer culture, began clicking and gesticulating.

It was, Johnny explained, their way of saying that it was time to begin a three-hour walking safari to learn how their ancestors managed to eke out a living in a harsh, unforgiving but utterly beautiful country where danger potentially lurks in, under, and behind every bush.

The Khoisan are masters at ‘reading’ the landscape. They instinctively know where to find food, water and natural medicines, as well as the wood necessary to make their tools and weapons. They also know from the most cursory of glances which animals have passed along a track and when.

Every few dozen yards, former policeman Dagam and former community worker Xhase stopped to describe, through Johnny, the importance to the Khoisan of various plants and insects.

“You can’t always distinguish between the different clicks,” Johnny continued, “So many of their words sound the same and are spelt the same, but the click for each is slightly different. Using the wrong click conveys a totally different meaning to the one intended!”

“These guys laugh when I get the clicks wrong. Fortunately Dagam and Xhase also communicate with their hands and you get to understand their gestures very quickly.”

The lavender-related fever berry plant, our group was shown, is part of the Khoisan’s natural pharmacy, for it is used to treat colds, flu and malarial fever. “In the old days, the Khoisan would also burn the green leaves of this plant, cover their heads in an animal skin and inhale the smoke. Nowadays they boil the leaves in water and inhale the steam, just as we do. The fever berry plant won’t cure you of malaria, but will certainly break the fever,” Johnny explains.

The Khoisan create fire literally by rubbing two sticks together. Getting a spark, however, is far from easy for soft, writer’s hands, as I found to my chagrin! Wood for fire sticks is obtained from several bushes, the corkwood being especially popular on account of its lightness.

After being cut to the required length, the wood is first heated in a fire to straighten it, then stripped of its bark and left to dry in the sun for three to four days. Next, a series of notches is cut into one of the two pieces of wood comprising the fire stick. Before a notch is used, it is lined with a few grains of sand for friction.

Then the hard work begins – rubbing the vertical, drill-like component of the fire stick rapidly between the palms of the hands to generate ash in the notch of the stationary bottom stick resting on a bed of tinder-dry grass. Within minutes, smoke begins to rise. The Khoisan then gently blows on the hot ash to set the grass alight.

The Khoisan traditionally hunted a variety of birds and other animals for food with a bow and venom-coated arrows, a spear and a throwing stick. Arrow and spearheads were once crafted from ostrich and giraffe bones, the hard core wood of the acacia tree and, in some places, even slivers of rock. But from about 2,000 years ago, Khoisan began trading ivory and gold for the harder metals they were unable for forge themselves.

Venom for their arrows was obtained from crimson beetle cocoons, the contents of which were smeared over the short metal shaft immediately below the arrowhead. “Venom was never put on the arrowhead itself to prevent accidents. Prick your finger on a venom-coated arrowhead and you are going to sleep forever!” Johnny warns.

Khoisan fired their arrows not into the vital organs of the animals they were hunting, but whatever soft part they could hit. The aim was not to kill outright but to create a wound so that the venom could enter the bloodstream. A small animal would die fairly quickly but a large one, such as a giraffe, might take three or four days to succumb to the venom that attacked the cardio-vascular system. The animal was then finished off with a spear.

Throwing sticks are cut from the raisin or brandy bush, the heavy, knobbly end coming from part of the plant’s root. Such sticks can be thrown with deadly accuracy, not only at small antelopes, but also at flocks of guinea fowl. The spin imparted by a skilful user often being sufficient to hit and kill three or four birds at one time.

The raisin bush also provides the Khoisan with small, orange-brown fruits that do actually taste like raisins. “In the old days, Khoisan collected many berries in a container made from the neck skin of a Kudu or Oryx,” Johnny continues. “Then they mushed them up and mixed them with water and partially-digested wood from termite mounds to make a powerful brew called xade.” After fermenting in the hot sun for about three days, the drink had an alcohol content of about 17 per cent. Xade is still made by the Khoisan and sold in local towns and other communities.

During our safari, Dagam and Xhase also showed us how their people made a powerful bird trap from pieces of wood and animal sinew; a device capable of snaring even an ostrich or kori bustard (the world’s heaviest flying bird) and catapulting it into a spine-covered bush.

The most precious of all commodities in the bush, especially during the long dry season, is fresh water. The Khoisan keep their water fresh and cool by storing it in an empty ostrich egg. After the spear-made hole at one end has been plugged with the leaves of a plant possessing antiseptic properties, the egg is placed in a hole in the ground. Sharp sticks are placed over the spot where it is buried not only to remind Khoisan where they left it, but also to prevent honey badgers and other animals from digging up the water-containing egg. “One ostrich egg is equivalent in volume to 24 chickens’ eggs but in nutritional value it is worth 36,” says Johnny.

As our safari ended and we bade farewell to Dagam and Xhase, I felt privileged to have been given a brief insight into the world of the Khoisan and how they have utilised and lived in harmony with the environment in Botswana for at least 30,000 years.