Living in the Kalahari

Last night I went with my neighbor Nikki to see and hear Patricia Glyn and the Kruipers, the Bushman family with whom she shared an amazing adventure in the Kalahari. Nikki is from the Northern Cape which is near where Patricia's book What Dawid Knew is set.

Patricia is an eco-adventurer and author who has previously written books about her ascent of Mount Everest and about her 2000 kilometer walk in the footsteps of her Victorian ancestor on the trade route from South Africa to Victoria Falls.

It was on this last adventure that she met Dawid Kruiper and was inspired to trek with him and his family from their home in northwestern South Africa on the border of Namibia and Botswana through the bush deep into the Kgalagadi Transfrontier, ancient Bushman territory where they are denied access. With Patricia's help, the Kruipers were allowed to return to the land of their ancestors and thereby re-establish the link to their history and legacy.

This is an inspirational story with which any American who has an understanding of the history of our own native indigenous people can relate. Occupation, domination, suppression, betrayal, diaspora, genocide, and the denial of access to the very land that defines who they are, the aboriginal Bushmen's story is all too familiar. It may be worse actually because at least our Native Americans did not have to live through government-sanctioned apartheid.

But it is inspirational because recently the Bushmen have been gaining some political ground. After years of court battles, they have been given back some token farmland and hunting grounds to return to after hundreds of years of dispersal, struggle and oppression. They have been given a future.

rock art made by the Kruipers

But what Patricia has given them is much more important to the Bushmen; she has given them back their past, the opportunity for the elders to show their descendents where they come from and to tell them their stories in the very land which holds the secrets of their ancestors.

For more information about the Kruipers, the Bushmen and visiting the ‡Khomani San Heritage Park, visit khomanisan.co.za and you can go to patriciaglyn.co.za for more on Patricia Glyn.