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!U's story
Part 3:
How big is a family and who belongs to it? A family consists of a mother, father and children. A man can have more than one wife if he wants to. Three or four families, that is between fifteen and forty people, usually live together in what we call a band. Everybody belongs somewhere and no one has no relative whatsoever with whom to live. The territory to which a person belongs may be that of his father's people or that of his mother's people:
whatever territory his family is settled in will be his n!ore, that is the place in which he lives or comes from, the place to which he belongs.
We have no chiefs or political leaders. No one gets treated in a special way because of their status. People do not want to stand out or be above others because this draws unfavourable attention to them and may arouse envy and jealousy.
But, I was about to tell you about !Kung weddings. At the time of a wedding the first marriage is usually arranged by the parents. The boy must bring an animal that he himself has killed to his bride's parents. Then the mother of the bride rubs her daughter with the fat of this animal and draws lines on her cheeks with red powder mixed with fat. All men go to live with the parents of their brides and serve them. We call this bride service. This takes the form of hunting. We explain bride service in terms of meat. The bride's family wants meat and they also want the boy to feed his bride while she is young, believing that this unites the two. Bride service should go on for long enough for three children to be born.
And, of course, there are often fights. But, we have a way of handling conflict. We talk. When a quarrel breaks out between a husband and a wife, relatives and lends get involved and help them stop the quarrel. We don't quarrel very often but I do remember one terrible fight I had with my husband. He tried to force Le to leave with him when I wanted to stay visiting my parents. You know how he did us? He snatched my baby from my arms and walked off with him. I was so cross, I could have killed him. I ran after him and hit him on his head with my digging stick, went round in a circle stamping my feet in great, high stamps and then followed him home.
But, mostly we solve conflict by talking. To have a fight is to have lied to find a solution by other means. Fighting is dangerous becaause someone might get killed.
We !Kung, like all other people in man history, live in an uncertain world. We must face ness, bad luck and the biggest loss of all death. Our beliefs help us to understand and accept these things. We believe in a high God, a lower god and many other spirits that bring good luck and bad luck. But the main spirits that affect our lives are those of people who have recently died the 'gangwasi. When serious illness strikes, it is almost always the 'gangwasi who cause it. Longing for the living is what drives the dead to make people sick. They miss their people on earth. And so, they come back to us and put sickness into people saying, "Come, come here to me."
We have many spells, herbs and forms of magic, which make people better. But, if these fail, we have the most powerful spiritual medicine or energy given by God to men and women called n/urn. Trained healers have this energy. To reach this energy within themselves, they usually dance all night. The women sit in a circle around the fire, clap to a rhythm and sing special medicine songs. The dancing, the singing and the clapping cause the n/um to "boil", as we say, and to rise up the healer's spines. When it "explodes" in their heads, they enter into a trance. Then they can heal the sick, change the weather and so on. Often men and women work in teams on seriously ill people.
And you know what I've noticed? Different people were created by God with different things to use, different skins and different medicines. The Tswana have their sangomas and their muti, the Europeans have their medicine in pills and steel needles, and we !Kung have our medicine in the form of n/urn. Different medicine, very different ways of living, but when you cut any one of us, our blood flows the same colour.