Namibia weblog 2005

April 26th 2005

VSO arrange regular opportunities for discovering more about the country, in sessions called ‘global education’. However, Michael and Rosanne like to decide for themselves what to do and where to go, and this time they wanted to know more about the dispossessed San bushmen. Their visit to the Sa Kao Community has given them some extraordinary insight into the San people - known rather derogatively as Bushmen.

Rosanne writes:

Our journey to the Sa Kao community was a 2,000 round trip, spread over six days and covering a range of activities. Our university lent us their eight seater vehicle and we took a group of us and all the camping gear. Day one: eight hour journey to Windhoek, some of us then hit the cinema, others the shops, some enjoyed a chance to pootle around. Assorted dinners and staying over with friends. Day two : further four hour drive to the San community trust (a self help group, very disorganised) and have a talk from trust members, visit their craft shop, set up camp, chill time and dinner out, all 29 of us. Day three: yet another six hours drive ….just think of all that driving……to the San settlement on the border with Botswana.

Once we were there time stopped and we had an extraordinary few days. The San people had established a campsite with the intention of it becoming a tourist venue where visitors could experience the traditional cultural customs of the bushmen. They had a VSO development officer working on a project with them and his goal was to try to help them become financially more independent and to boost their self-respect. The !Khoo San tribe welcomed us and gave us time to set up our little flock of tents and to skip around a bit and then we were taken to an open space and sat in big circles having introductions. Our programme had suggested we were going to have a language lesson which would have been mind boggling. This is one of the tribes who speak in clicks, shown in written form by ! or //. We had a feeble, hopeless, deafeating attempt to repeat even names accurately and sent them into peals of giggles.

They sat around quite comfortably, maybe a bit shy, and we were trying to be relaxed and not seem like a pack of camera waving tourists. They were wearing their traditional dress, just for us, having shed their tattered jeans and T-shirts and ragged frocks for the occasion. So the women were nearly naked and so too were the men. They all were adorned with quite complicated and sometimes surprising jewellery…one of the old ladies was wearing a rosary and someone else a jangle of Yale keys. The older women were refreshingly unconcerned by their folds of sagging flesh and wrinkles and they were so charming and dignified that their tired old bodies seemed somehow honourable.

They were eager to show us the jewellery they made and told us who had made which necklace and the men were making bows and arrows, of a not very high quality, for sale too.

We sat around communicating, through big smiles and through a blind interpreter who was the son of one of the old women. They told us they wanted to do a dance for us and three of the old ladies performed a totally mad little dance, which involved one throwing a melon provocatively over the shoulder and then the one behind having to catch it. Most of the melon throws went all over the place and then they all had hysterics running to catch it.

Later in our stay the men showed us their favourite game of running fast towards a hummock in the ground and throwing a thin stick hard on the hummock and seeing whose stick would ricochet off the hump furthest into the bush. It made a fantastic whooshing sound and everyone was cheering and shouting. Great fun. We all had a try at it, again failing to show any San skills at all. We fared slightly better with archery and the arrows with tiny metal tips landed in our target cardboard box with a satisfying thwack.

As night was falling light came from a few candles and two large fires which were blazing in the campsite; one was for our black pot of chicken stew and the other was in the middle of a gathering crowd of spectators. People from the nearby San community settlements, our own group of VSO volunteers and then the resident !Xoo San group who were hosting us and sharing their cultural traditions formed a big circle sitting on the ground. A sense of anticipation and excitement was in the air.

A very old and frail looking man in an oversized raincoat and cowboy hat joined the group and was immediately given a baby to hold. The women of the community were joined by others, all in the traditional attire of just leather aprons and beaded necklaces. One or two wore fur capes for warmth. Babies and toddlers were clothed in ordinary dresses and shorts and stood and swayed and enjoyed surveying the crowd around them.

Without much of an introduction the evening’s musical events started. Three of the women started a circular dance around a small candle, with small and vigorous stamping movements and clapping a complex rhythm and I think they were singing too. It served to focus us all and get an atmosphere going, because the next dances and songs were more serious. The whole group of women started singing an astonishing song of thin high melancholic lament. We were being given the preliminaries for the medicine dance. Their belief is that the dance works through the body of the medicine man, warming him, purging evil and causing the dancer to fall into a trance and healing the sickness that is affecting his people, whether psychological or physical. The medicine songs are without words and are given by the great god through his messengers, the spirits of the dead.

Whilst the women were singing, the old man appeared, transformed in a long cloak of fur and heavy jangling seedpod ankle bracelets. He was naked underneath the cape except for a leather loin cloth and a strange hat made of striped fur. He entered the circle and started his dance. The strength of his legs and the power of his movements were totally in contrast to his worn and lined face; he seemed a real source of energy and magic as he stamped and juddered to the clapping and chanting of the tribe. He danced around and around and around, stretching out his arms with the cloak flying out behind him, his shell ankle beads making loud percussion.

Normally the dance would have gone on for many hours with breaks for eating and resting and conviviality among the group, but always maintaining the seriousness of the dance (to protect the San people from dangers and dark forces). For our evening, the dance was quite short and included the ritual of anointing the nostrils of the group with ashes, after which the old man performed a ‘cure’ by sucking the evil spirits from one of the women who was unable to walk, giving a great cry and shuddering. The women also were wailing and in the commotion of song and clapping we were to understand that the medicine man was in a trance and a cure was taking place.

The old man then chose to play some music for us on two instruments. The first was a welded metal box with thin fingers of stick which he plucked to make a harp-like sound. The second seemed to be a musical bow and arrow. The bow was placed between his knee and his open mouth, and he moved his mouth to create a greater or lesser sound. The arrow was hit against the string of the bow and the sound was a haunting melody which seemed to speak of immeasurable sadness and regret. The power of his dancing had gone and once again he looked as if he was a hundred years old and knew all the grief of the disposessed San people.

More to follow...

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