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!U's story
Part 1:
Our home is the Kalahari. We are the !Kung of Nyae Nyae. The Kalahari is a very big desert which takes up almost a third of southern Africa. Where we live, it is very dry. The big rains come in January, February and March but for the rest of the year, the rain never falls. During the season of the rain, water collects in pans. The largest of these is Gautscha. The happy people of Gautscha who live on the banks of the pan, delight in the water. Every day the children play in it, dancing and splashing and making patterns.
The land around us as far as you can see is very flat. There are no hills; nothing is higher than the termite hills and the baobab trees. For most of the year, we live without a roof. This means that you can always see the beauty of the morning, the setting sun and the blazing stars. The sky is also where our gods live and where the spirits of the dead move about.
"But don't you have houses?" you may be wondering. The answer to this question is that we don't have permanent dwellings. Although we return to the same waterholes, we don't reoccupy the old camp sites. We don't want to make new fires exactly where the old fires have been. To build new fires on the old sites might invite misfortune. Also, we don't like to tire out one spot of land.
Nobody owns the land and everybody has the right to use it. The place where we decide to settle is called our n!ore. Once we have decided where we will settle, the next act is to make a fire. This requires two fire sticks and a bunch of grass. Usually two men make fire together. As one pair of hands holds the bottom stick, the second pair is ready at the top to keep the twirling going. Making fire is the work of men and men carry their fire sticks with then constantly.
You can tell where a family has settled from its fire. The family hangs its possessions in the bushes near the fire, sits around the fire, cooks at it, sleeps at it Fire, water and food hold our live together. We have been so created Without fire, we would have no light, no warmth; food could not b cooked. Even an old person car live by his fire. Someone will give him food and water and he will be warm.
Oh, we do have shelters. It is the woman's job to build a shelter. Often we women do not bother to build shelters unless it is raining. A woman can build a shelter in less than an hour - and, of course, the materials are always available all around us. We gather some slender branches from the bushes and push each branch into the ground. Then we bend their tops together and weave them into each other making the frame of the shelter. Next we bring armloads of tall grass, which we pat into place over the frame, and the job is done!
"And what about clothes?" is usually the next question that people ask. Our clothing is very simple and modest. Women wear karosses made out of the whole hide of an antelope, which is scraped, tanned, pulled and rubbed by the men until it is like suede. At night, men, women and children wrap themselves in karosses and sleep in them, beside their fires. By day, the men wear only their breechclouts, the children perhaps only beads, but we women wear our karosses constantly.
Plants are at the centre of our lives. I must add that, except for mangetti nuts, meat is our main source of protein. Still, vegetables make up 75% of our food - there about a hundred plants we can in the Nyae Nyae region. We o use grass and branches for shelter; wood that bends for bows; n, strong wood for digging sticks; light, strong reeds for arrows; resins for glue; light, soft wood for musical instruments, bowls, spoons and ornaments -you see what I mean? So we, like all people all over the world, end on our environment. We take care not to kill all the animals use all the plants in one area. do this by moving from one a to another and giving the plants and animals time to grow again.
!Kung people remember an animal and a plant after they have seen it once. Then we can tell the difference between that plant and any other plant, even if they look nearly the same. We get our training from doing and from watching. Mothers carry their babies with them on a gathering day and the children learn all the time. When the children can walk, they play at digging, picking and carrying the food, copying what their mothers do. Little boys play with toy bows and arrows from an early age.