In the morning, walk out into the bush with the men, women, children and the guides. The focus of the walk will be to provide a gentle introduction to the Kalahari and bushmen way of life. The guide will point out the distinct ecological characteristics of this area and its animal and bird species. Spontaneous gathering and discussions about the uses of plants and wildlife by your bushmen guides provide the link between culture and wild environment that we seek to offer our guests on these very special safaris. An adolescent bushman girl knows more than 200 species of usable plants and an extraordinary variety of plants and herbs with both culinary and medicinal value will be found.
Find suitable rhygozum plants with which your digging stick, the most important tool of the bushmen, can be harvested. Back at the village prepare your gathering tool for the next few days by the fire. After lunch and a siesta, return to the bushmen village where you will learn from the women how to prepare their bush foods using only the most basic of tools and an open fire. You will be able to sample a variety of foods from wild spinach and roast beetles to ostrich egg omelet cooked on the coals. Some of the women will show you how they make beads from ostrich eggs and the simple, but striking jewellery that they make from porcupine quills, seeds and ostrich eggs. Leather is also decorated with both glass and ostrich beads to complex and beautiful effect. The women will often perform the drum dance, a women’s healing dance, or the melon dance, an unselfconscious and free-spirited traditional dance representing the joyful celebration of a successful harvest around the afternoon fire. Return to camp for a rather more conventional, but still delicious, meal and retire to bed.
