Special Bushmen Cultural Experience

Get a close look at the rapidly disappearing culture of the last hunter/gatherers. Stay in either a renovated farmhouse or real grass huts. Go on a walk through the veld with a small clan of San as they show you how they gather food, start fire with sticks, and get water from underground roots. You can also be mesmorized by the healing trance dance and the San's eerie bird-like songs.

You can either visit Dqãe Qare, a 18,500 acre farm owned and operated by the D'Kar Trust, a local San Bushmen Trust; or Trailblazers, or Kalahari Sunset Safaris, two small commercially run cultural camps.

Dqãe Qare is a CBNRM (community based natural resource management) effort where Peter acted as fill-in manager when the regular manager was away on leave.

Dqãe Qare and African Excursions are developing the TRAKS project which teams up to provide a special survival experience. Live the lifestyle of a hunter/gatherer. Learn how to make tour own grass hut, start a fire with a hand drill, make a bow and arrow, forage for edible plants and hunt your own dinner.

This special survival experiences can last from three to ten days. They are part of a new program started by the D'Kar Trust to preserve the hunting traditional of the San Bushmen. It has been over thirty years since any of the San Bushmen clans have truly lived a hunter/gatherer lifestyle as their primary means of survival. This last generation of true hunters is rapidly aging and, if no action is taken, this wealth of knowledge of natural history, animal behavior, and technical skills in the making and using of the various hunting tools, i.e. bow and poison arrows, snares, and spears, will die with them. This type of knowledge is not easily preserved by recording it in film or text, or transferred through "book learning". Adding to the difficulty of preserving this knowledge is that the traditional way Bushmen pass on their knowledge is through the watching of their elders and shared first hand experiences.

This new effort by the D'Kar Trust and African Excursions is attempting to provide a sustainable, economically beneficial means of utilizing this ancient knowledge and to pass it on to the younger generations. To accomplish these goals, we are combining the few old men who really did live a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, younger Bushmen men, and you as a means to allow them to hunt in the traditional way. By participating in these survival experiences, you will be providing an economic reason for the Bushmen to retain their hunting skills and pass them on. Please email me for mor einformation on this survival experience

Trailblazers, another camp we use, located just 10 km south of Ghanzi, is owned by Julian Butler, an old friend of Pete's from his Peace Corps days, run by Robert Camm. Robert is a fascinating person who speaks 8 languages, including four Bushman dialects. Robert acts as the interpreter on Trailblazers' bushwalks and is also an expert in bushcraft. One of the men who conducts the bushwalk is Xanate (pronounced Khan-ya-tae), whom Peter has adopted as a surrogate grandfather. Best guess would put Xanate in his 70's, but because he was not born in a hospital and he does not traditionally tell "time" as we do, there is no way to confirm his age. We do know that up until twenty five years ago, he really lived the hunter/gatherer lifestyle shown on documentaries. Xanate's one of the last of his kind. The world will be a smaller place when he leaves it. Peter was honored to be able to take him hunting. (San bushman generally do not get much opportunity to hunt these days because of government regulations and the cost of licenses.)

Shorty, Xanate, and Peter, "The happy hunters"

We also send guets to Kalahari Sunset Safaris. Kalahari Sunset Safaris is owned and operated by another friend of ours, Andrea Hardbattle. Andrea is the daughter of an English farmer who came to Ghanzi in the 20's and a Nharo bushman woman. Andrea, while raised in Ghanzi, was schooled in England. With her special understanding of both the bushman culture and the western world, she provides especially interesting insights to visitors. Kalahari Sunset Safaris takes place on Andrea's Buitsivango Farm, located about 50 km south of Ghanzi.