The Healing Land: A Kalahari Journey. Rupert Isaacson
range, and said in slow, perfect English: ‘I am Benjamin. And this is /Kaece [he pronounced it ‘Kashay’], the leader of Makuri village. You are welcome here.’
I had assumed that I would have to get by with signs and gesticulation, so it was startling to be addressed in my own language. Kristin and I got up, told the man Benjamin our names and offered him and /Kaece some coffee, which they accepted. Benjamin squatted down by our fire, while the older man took a seat on a buttress-like bit of baobab trunk, which jutted out from the main body of the tree like a small, solid table, and watched with frank, open curiosity, his eyes round like an owl’s.
‘Where did you learn English?’ I asked, trying to open a conversation, and hoping it wouldn’t sound rude, too direct.
‘Mission School,’ answered Benjamin, holding his coffee cup in both hands and sipping gently. ‘In Botswana,’ and he gestured to the east.
‘Perhaps you have some sugar?’ he added. ‘We like our coffee sweet.’ He smiled. Only when four spoonfuls had been deposited into each mug did he give a thumbs-up sign, turn to me again and repeat: ‘So, you are welcome.’
I looked at this young, articulate man with his perfect English and his good, if slightly frayed, clothes. I noticed that he was wearing Reeboks. ‘Are you from Makuri too?’ I said, gesturing back towards where he and the old man had come from.
‘No,’ said Benjamin. ‘I live at Baraka.’
‘Baraka?’
‘Yes. The field headquarters for the Nyae Nyae Farmer’s Co-operative.’ He pronounced the official-sounding words slowly, as if they did not sit easily on his tongue, using the monotone of one who must mentally translate the words before speaking. ‘Maybe twenty kilometres from here … I am a field officer, an interpreter.’
‘The Nyae Nyae what? What’s that?’ I asked, never having heard of it before.
‘An organisation, you know, an NGO, non-government organisation, aid and development.’ His voice was sleepy, hypnotic. ‘But it’s a problem there. Many problems. Sometimes these people say they want us to be farmers. Then another one comes and says no, we should be hunters. Too many foreign people always telling, telling, telling … They don’t ask us what we want.’ Benjamin’s tone became more vehement: ‘We the Ju’/Hoansi’; pronouncing the name ‘jun-kwasi’, with a loud wet click on the ‘k’.
‘The people round here,’ I ventured, ‘are they farmers then? Do they still hunt?’
‘Oh yes, they are hunting. There is a lot of game here – kudus, you know, wildebeests, gemsboks, everything …’ He took a sip of coffee. Dusk was falling and the birds had ceased their song. He was waiting for me to speak again.
‘Do you still have those skills? I mean, do you still hunt?’ I eyed his Western clothes apprehensively.
Benjamin smiled, inclined his head. ‘Yes, even me, I still have the skills.’
‘Tomorrow …’ I said, suddenly emboldened. ‘Would you take us hunting?’
Benjamin smiled again, a smile that seemed to say he knew that this question had been coming. Perhaps I wasn’t the first to ask. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow at dawn we will come for you. We will walk far. Do you have water bottles?’
I looked over at Kristin, whose slim, black-eyed face, tanned dark beneath her freckles, was as excited as my own. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Yes, we’ll bring everything we need …’
Ten minutes later the two men had walked off into the dusk, the low murmur of their voices carried back to us on the breeze.
It was a hot night, full of flying insects. Small beetles, whirring into the firelight, committed suicide in our cooking pot. Occasionally, while eating our rice stew, we would crunch down on a hard-boiled wing-case. We didn’t care, so elated were we, but turned in early so as to be up before dawn, ready for the hunt. Hunting with the Bushmen. It was finally going to happen.
In the dim pre-dawn the bush came alive with the rustlings of small animals and strange chirruping sounds. The earth smelled greenly alive. It was just cool enough to raise a faint gooseflesh on the arms – a luxury when one thought of the heat to come. We made up the fire and brewed coffee, nursing our excitement, and listening to the chatter and whistle of the waking bush.
Imperceptibly, the blue darkness paled, and there came a lull in the birdsong. The pale light in the clearing blushed slowly from blue to rose, from rose to pink, with here and there a wisp of shining, gilded cloud, reflecting the still unrisen sun. Then, with sudden, astonishing speed, the sky became a vast roof of hammered gold and the sun itself came rising above the black boughs of the eastern bush.
But no one appeared in the clearing. We got the fire going again, made more coffee. Still no one came. Half an hour later, buzzing with the strong camp-brew, we could contain ourselves no longer, but picked up our day-packs, water bottles and cameras and went to find the nyore (village), which we knew lay a half-mile or so through the thick scrub.
We found Makuri village still sleeping. As we entered the circle of tiny, beehive huts, only the nyore’s pack of weaselly, starveling dogs were up to greet our arrival. They rushed towards us, barking. But despite the noise, no one appeared from the huts. We stood sheepishly in the centre of the village, throwing small stones at the dogs to keep them off. It was long past dawn now. The first heat was in the sun. Already some animals would be slinking into shady cover for the day. Were we too late? Had the hunters forgotten us and left already?
The rib-thin dogs began to fight among themselves – one had found a bloody section of tortoise-shell and the others wanted it. They chased and fought around the huts, yapping louder and louder until at last a flap in the low doorway of one of the little huts opened, and a wrinkled face appeared. Old man /Kaece crawled out, straightened stiffly, shouted at the animals to shut up and threw a tin mug at the nearest. He stretched luxuriously, raising his hands above his head, sticking out his hard belly and closing his eyes with the bliss of it. He yawned, then looked our way and, as if noticing us for the first time, nodded to us while energetically scratching his balls inside his xai and hawking up a great gob of phlegm. He spat it out, leant forward to examine the colour, and nodded, as if pleased with what he saw. Then, his morning ritual done, he shuffled over to the next-door hut and banged on the side.
There was a muffled noise from within and Benjamin’s head appeared, his sharp, handsome features bleared with sleep and, I realised later when near enough to smell his breath, with liquor. He crawled out, his good, store-bought clothes rumpled from being slept in. He yawned, looked at us vaguely, as if surprised to find us there. Then a pretty young woman with seductive almond eyes, and an ostrich-eggshell necklace draped over her breasts, ducked out of the opening in the beehive hut behind him, saw us, giggled, and darted away out of sight. Benjamin watched her go, stretching his lower back and obviously making an effort to collect his thoughts.
He nodded at us, looking irritated: ‘OK, yes. I’ll be with you now, now.’ He went to a tree at the edge of the huts and hidden by the thick trunk, urinated in a loud, splashing stream before returning and ducking back inside the hut’s low doorway to reappear a few moments later with his hunting kit. A bow of light-coloured wood, a quiver of arrows made from a hollowed-out root, a digging stick and a short spear, all hanging conveniently over his right shoulder in a bag made from a whole steenbok skin. He went over to another hut, banged on it, and roused a smaller, even slighter-built young man, similarly bleary and clad in T-shirt, jeans and running shoes. This, said Benjamin, was his co-hunter Xau; he turned to the smaller man and said something in Ju/’Hoansi, then looked back at us: ‘Let’s go.’
A moment later we were trotting awkwardly behind the two fit, fleet men, out of the village and into the tall grasses. Despite having just been roused from drunken sleep, they moved fast and fluidly, in deceptively small steps, seeming almost to glide above the ground, so smooth was their stride. Benjamin and Xau cast what seemed only the most cursory glances at the ground as they walked. Every few yards we would come upon a narrow track of red or yellow dust criss-crossed