The Bizarre Truth

by Andrew Zimmern

  Our bush pilots took us on a ninety-minute ride past the Okavango Delta, the world’s largest inland delta. We circled over the water, which teemed with wildlife. Huge numbers of elephants and giraffes grazed in and along the delta as the sun set. This southward-tilting water system irrigates the desert as best it can until eventually it gets sucked down by the sand. The Okavango in Botswana is probably one of the last great animal paradises left on our planet that doesn’t feel like a zoo. Leopards, crocodiles, hippos, lions, giraffes, elephants, elands, and kudus flock there in tremendous numbers. As we bypassed the delta, I felt a pang in my heart. My assignment was to meet up with the legendary Bushmen of the Kalahari, but missing this once-in-a-lifetime animal experience bummed me out. I soon discovered skipping the delta wasn’t going to be such a big deal.

  We landed on a grass airfield a couple hundred miles to the west in the small town of Xai Xai, a teeny cluster of homes built around one of the most famous watering holes in the world. Between flights, pilots spend most of their time filling in gopher holes on the landing strip for the next incoming flight, which are often weeks apart. Occasionally, geology companies that are reconnoitering the area for mineral exploration will visit, but it’s thrilling to land on this grassy airfield while the entire town of 100 people turns out to greet you.

  The entire history of human civilization might not exist if it wasn’t for Xai Xai’s watering hole. The Bushmen of the Kalahari are one of the oldest civilizations in the world, with ancestry reaching back 35,000 years. The watering hole served as the hub of their activity, allowing them to survive there for all those years. Since the best theory of human growth tells us that all men are thought to have walked out of the Kalahari many years back, then we’re all potentially descendants of the Bushmen, which makes this watering hole one of the most culturally, historically, anthropologically, and sociologically important sites in the entire world. It’s not like Chichén Itzá in Mexico or the pyramids in Egypt. There are no lines, no tourists—it’s just a muddy hole in the ground, surrounded by a rickety old fence made up of twigs and sticks so the children and animals don’t fall in. You can gaze down into the somewhat fetid water, now used mostly by animals. It’s arguably the most important physical site of any kind in the world, and there’s no signage and very few even know it. I got goose bumps just standing nearby.

  Our main objective on this trip was to uncover life with a San tribe called the Juntwazee. It’s important to mention that the Bushmen of the Kalahari speak dialects within the Khoisan language family based on five or six clicking and whistling sounds. There is no written version of the language; therefore, Juntwazee is my best phonetic rendering of the tribe’s name. The Juntwazee tribe spend the majority of their time still living the way their ancestors did 30,000 years ago. No stores, no restaurants, nothing but a cluster of homes that some Bushmen take refuge in during the cold season when the desert is the least hospitable, when foraging and hunting are at their nadir.

  Gaining access to the Juntwazee was an extremely difficult feat. After months of lobbying with the Botswana government, we finally were permitted to meet these folks. It’s no wonder the government takes their custodial role of this tribe seriously. They’ve often been abused. Outsiders have often depicted them—through movies, photographs, articles—with a message that’s not necessarily on target socially. One company even tried to use some of the women in an adult film. However, the government also understands that documenting this tribe’s history is of utmost importance. But once we were finally allowed in, we needed an entrée to these people. There was not a better choice than Ralph Bousfield.

  Ralph’s great-grandfather relocated to Botswana from England in the middle part of the nineteenth century. He was an adventurer and explorer, and every generation of Ralph’s family followed in his footsteps, each with a seemingly more exotic story than the last. Ralph’s father, Jack Bousfield, is one of the most legendary hunters and safari specialists to have ever worked in southern Africa. To this day, he holds the Guinness world record for crocodile kills. During the fifties, Jack supplied the entire European couture handbag, luggage, and clothing houses with the most valuable crocodile skins.

  In the fifties, crocodiles were in such great numbers that few questioned the harvesting of these animals. These reptiles from the delta, with their silk-soft bellies, were almost blemish-free and in stunning condition. Jack Bousfield killed more than 53,000 crocodiles in his lifetime. The number could have been much greater, but he was also way ahead of his time as a conservationist. His ecological sensitivity and desire to preserve the biodiversity of Botswana prompted him to change courses. In the sixties, he abandoned crocodile hunting altogether and set up a safari camp, with the intention of preserving the Botswana he loved, and today that camp is known as Jack’s, established in the Makgadikgadi Salt Pan.

  Ralph took over the family business that Jack established in the sixties, called it Uncharted Africa, and developed it into a business. The company now leads tours to four locales: Jack’s Camp, San Camp, Kalahari Camp, and Planet Baobab, the last named after the legendarily fantastic-looking trees that grow in the desert. Jack’s Camp and the San Camp are the only permanent camps to offer a chance to explore and understand the Kalahari. There are buildings at Planet Baobab and Kalahari Camp, but that’s a pretty generous term to throw around. Uncharted Africa also specializes in roving, tented safari camps, giving Ralph the ability to lead safari enthusiasts straight to the action. He knows the best stuff to see in Africa and how to find it, making this the trip of a lifetime for anyone fortunate enough to run with an Uncharted Africa tour, rated as the best safari camp on the continent.

  With the number of tourists drawn to Africa to see the animals, game-preserve management is a very important aspect of tourism departments. It’s a necessary component to preserving the land itself and all the animals that live there, and not just the Big Five—lions, elephants, leopards, rhinos, and buffalo—but the baboons, go-away birds, honey birds, insects, scorpions, hedgehogs, porcupines, and pigmy antelopes as well. It’s just as important to be mindful of the animals that you don’t see as it is the Big Five. Tourism supplies so much money here, and has actually benefited the preservation of these animals in such big ways, that tourism management has taken on new problems for Africa. How do you manage the expectations of the experience, and what should the biggest take-away be? What message matters most?

  Ralph’s ability to find the Big Five is not what makes his company special. Instead, it’s his ties to the indigenous people of the Kalahari that separates him from the pack. Ralph Bousfield—and his father to a great degree before him—were the first to pick up on the idea of having archaeologists, zoologists, psychologists, and biologists accompany guests into the most remote regions of Botswana to experience the people and the culture firsthand. Along the way, you see some animals. Conventional visitors get entire days in the delta to observe wildlife if they like, but Ralph realized early on that it’s not about taking pictures of hippos. Africa is about people. And I agree.

  A little side note. I’ve visited many different game preserves in Africa. One day I saw a six-day-old giraffe being taught how to feed by its parents, and I was told by my guides—this was about three hours outside of Johannesburg—that this was the first giraffe born in that preserve in more than fifty years. The safari guides and the hunting guides who work that preserve were ecstatic; they were still beaming days later from what that birth represented to them. They had managed the land so well and they had restored so much of that part of Africa to the way it was 1,000 years ago, or 500 years ago or even 200 years ago, that some real firsts were being achieved. So much of the hunting in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries decimated some animal populations almost to the point of extinction, and it’s the land management that has been responsible for returning some of those populations in great numbers. So believe me, I know animal management works in Africa.

  …

  B
ut in Botswana, I spent no time looking for animals; I spent all of my time with the Juntwazee, a small group of twenty-four or twenty-five Bushmen living in grass and twig huts in the middle of the desert, which is not sand so much as fine red sand-dust populated with impenetrable thorny scrub. The people who live here lead a very simple life. They rise at the crack of dawn to hunt and gather, but the tribe spends only about 30 percent of their time hunting and gathering. The remainder of their day revolves around enjoying life and taking part in daily rituals such as beading, creating crude equipment, cooking, and other chores—all while telling stories and laughing. It’s quite a modern existence in terms of their social structure. I am so grateful for Uncharted Africa and Ralph Bousfield, one of the most charismatic and intelligent and committed individuals I’ve ever met, for understanding that the Bushmen’s extraordinary story must be seen and their stories told so that their culture can be preserved. It’s the story of a people who are disappearing faster than the animals. The Kalahari Desert is a vast, harsh place. Life there is hard. It’s amazing to think that the Juntwazee still hunt, eat, worship, and celebrate in exactly the same way their ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago.

  After spending a week with them, it really makes me question our definition of “modern.” These people seem to have skill sets that we’ve long since forgotten and now attribute to supermen. The Juntwazee can outrun antelope. They literally run them down for hours on end until the antelope are exhausted and collapse before being killed. Astonishingly, they can hunt and run all day in the hot desert without drinking liquid. I was told not to travel with less than 120 ounces of water on my person, carried on my back, just to make sure I stayed properly hydrated. Men, especially in the older generation, are slight, no more than five and a half feet tall, weighing no more than 100 to 110 pounds. I met men in their seventies and eighties who worked and hunted all day long and never seemed to tire. The younger generation is growing a little taller because of the healthy protein additions to their diet (they have access to beef, and trading routes for food have improved), and the government has stepped in to help feed and house tribe members when needed. The Botswanan government has also now mandated education for tribe children, which is another reason that villages like Xai Xai have sprung up and become a little more developed, complete with schools.

  The tribe elders are jacks-of-all-trades. They serve as shamans and healers, and can set bones, perform operations, cure illness, and act as pharmacist, internist, and surgeon. They track animals at night or during the day. They can tell you within fifteen minutes or as much as a week ago what kind of animal has passed, what it was eating, and whether it’s a male or female. Anthropologists tested their ancient tracking skills, placing collars on animals and charting their course, every move, over two or three days. They then asked the Juntwazee to follow their trail as well. When comparing timelines, the Bushmen were spot-on, even more accurate than a GPS system in some cases.

  The daily life of these people is extremely simple. They hunt in the morning. They can go all day if they are on an animal, but in the heat of the day they like to come back to camp and take a nap. That is, unless the excitement is brought back to camp with them. One afternoon during my stay, a Black Mamba snake slithered into camp. Known as Africa’s deadliest snake, this creature is colloquially called the “five-step snake.” If it bites you, you can take five steps, then fall down dead. I was two days away from a hospital, and frankly, seeing this territorial man-hunting beast in the camp was petrifying.

  While I scrambled, figuring out if I needed to run for my life, the tribespeople, barefoot and in loincloths, took off after the snake—all of them, women and children included. Their goal was simple: kill the snake no matter what, or how long it took. They eventually cornered it up in a tree and brought it down with a small slingshot fired by Xao’s son. He hit it from forty or fifty feet away with his slingshot, facing into the sun, landing three out of four shots right on the snake’s head. The head of a Black Mamba, despite this one being seven feet long, is only about the size of a golf ball. It was an amazing display of marksmanship.

  As I walked into the camp every morning, women cracked marula and mongongo nuts, two of the most important foods to the tribe. I saw them eat mostly nuts for breakfast, maybe some small pieces of leftover meat. Xao, the eldest shaman, the de facto leader of the tribe (technically, there are no leaders, but no one made any big decisions without consulting Xao), took small wooden oval discs made from a very special tree and threw them on the ground. This act of throwing the bones told the tribe which direction the ancestors wanted them to hunt on that particular morning.

  I joined them on a few hunts, tracking and hunting animals, laying snares for birds, foraging for roots both for medicine and for consumption. They dig false potatoes and desert turnips out of the ground, placing these bulbous root systems into their antelope-skin clothing, keeping different foods in the folds of their capes. Some men carry small kits with a bow, poison-dipped arrows, and fire-starting sticks. Their one vice is smoking, and every couple of hours, they pause to smoke a crude local tobacco from their pipes. They snack on berries, nuts, and fruits, and when possible, they eat hoodia, a plant some Westerners use to suppress their appetite and lose weight.

  Before the hunt’s end, if you’re lucky, they will have killed a small antelope, porcupine, or bird captured in their snares and bring it back to camp. This type of hunting takes a lot of patience. One day, we followed a honey bird, which led the tribe to a tree buzzing with activity. You can imagine how rare and delicious sweet honey is to the Bushmen, so when they see or hear honey birds, everybody joins in the hunt, sometimes walking or running for miles. Of course, the honey hives are populated by deadly African bees, but the tribe lights a fire, burns certain types of woods, and blows the smoke into the tree, essentially anesthetizing the bees. Then, using sharp-edged instruments, they hack away at the trees and retrieve gobs of honey. It’s regarded as a precious resource.

  The Juntwazee, a small tribe, avoid hunting big animals like elephants, despite their technical ability to accomplish the task, because it would be selfish to do so. They only take from their habitat as much as is needed, and an elephant would be overkill, literally. In fact, the tribesmen sometimes won’t even bother to track larger antelope if they are a small family. If a small eland or kudo crossed our path, great. That’s dinner. However, they’d let the larger ones carry on. More interesting to them, and certainly more interesting to me, was the rare wild giant African porcupine, which we ended up successfully hunting one evening. After the thick, rock-solid, and needle-sharp quills are removed, the meat is set aside. Trust me, it takes a lot of muscle to pull out a porcupine’s bristles, especially these giant spikes that were about a foot long. All that elbow grease was worth it—this was one of the most exotic meals I’ve ever eaten in my life. Under the quills you’ll find a carpet of fat and muscle, which is grilled first, along with the heart and liver. If you like pork belly, that fatty, meaty, melt-in-your-mouth sort of food that’s become the darling of chefs these days, you’d love porcupine skin—trust me. No part of the animal goes to waste. They make soup out of the bones. They even roast the feet, throwing them into a fire, gnawing away after the fur has singed off. It’s quite a treat.

  The porcupine was the gift that kept on giving. It served as a big lunch and then the soup for an early dinner that night around four or five o’clock. There was much celebrating, the mood was very festive, and that night the shamans decided they were going to do a Trance Dance and asked if we wanted to join in.

  For thousands of years, shamans in the Juntwazee tribe have believed their ancestors are all around them. In fact, if a tribe member becomes sick, breaks a bone, even loses a digging stick, they believe that their ancestors are behind it. If something bad befalls you, it’s really your ancestors trying to pull you over to their side of the spirit world. The shamans serve as a way to communicate with the dead. The tribe trusts the shamans to bring t
hem back onto the living side of the equation by communicating with the ancestors. It boils down to ancestors missing their loved ones—they create sickness and misfortune within the living tribe, hoping they will finally pass over and be reunited. Ancestors aren’t always out to harm the living. According to the Juntwazee, ancestors know and see valuable things that hold great value for the tribe, which is why tribes roll the bones prior to a hunt. Every important activity begins with the simple rolling of the bones. And tonight the bones said, Let’s dance.

  Contrary to what you’re probably thinking, the ceremony has nothing to do with drugs. The process begins in the early evening, with the women (and only the women) singing and dancing for hours. Over time, the rhythmic singing and dancing become more and more of a steady call and less of a fun entertainment. As the sun begins to set, the song and dance propel the men to begin dancing as well. For hours, they chant and dance, stamping their feet around a fire. Once the sun sets, and the moon begins to rise and the stars come out, the fire is built bigger. This is a group dead set against wasting resources, so normally they will build the fire only for as much light or warmth as they need. During the Trance Dance, they built it up higher than any other night I’d ever seen. It wasn’t a bonfire; rather, it looked more like a large fireplace in a northeastern hunting lodge. Slowly but surely, with the women encouraging the men with certain songs, rhythmic clapping, and sometimes physical assistance in order to help the elder shamans dance in a certain way around the fire, the men eventually fall into serious trance. For this particular ceremony, the three principal healers—Xaxe, Bom, and Xao—along with two older male healers and several of the other young members enduring the mental and physical anguish of training to be a shaman, all went into trance at the same time. Ralph explained he had experienced a trance as large as this, in terms of numbers of men “in trance,” on only a handful of occasions in his forty-odd years of being with these people.