Hunting with the Bushmen!

It's 4:45 am. Sunlight doesn't come for another hour. I roll over after a long night of no sleep all groggy until I remember why I'm sleeping in a tent with Jen in the middle of Africa. Today we hunt with the bushman!! Suddenly, a long night of little sleep on a very thin pad becomes not so important. We roll out of our tent finding a lantern light on a little table by our tent. It's the exact same light that was on our dinner table the night before as we ate in the dark.

Just the day before, we were sitting in a land rover cruising through the wilderness of Africa. Highlights of the journey included loads of white birds and the trees literally covered in their poop, baboons in the road, and trying to figure out how these people survive in the middle of nowhere. Upon arriving, our safari leaders set up camp and started on dinner for us. 

Around 8 that night we were sitting around a little table enjoying a wonderful four course meal. The guides left the five us to enjoy our dinner in the dark. It was amazing how little light there was that night. Except for the bright light coming from the lantern, it was almost like a blanket of darkness was settled around our table. Suddenly there was a deep growl of an angry animal no more than 30 yards away. Heather's face went stark white and her eyes became the size of golf balls. I had heard that hyenas were in the area but I didn't think they would come so close to campers. Heather slowly grabbed her flashlight from the table, turned it on, and slowly turned around to see what was behind her, hiding in the blanket of darkness. I kind of didn't want to see what was there because I knew that as soon as the light fell on whatever it was it would most likely attack us. She slowly scanned the darkness when the light came upon our guide's face as he was crouching on the ground. We all started laughing hysterically. I thought for sure there was some animal out there. He was super good at making the growling sound, so good that he fooled all of us.

Landon with his machete 

The next morning we had some hot chocolate and cookies and set off to meet the bushman. Up to this point we had spent very little time traveling in the dark so to be driving at night was somewhat disorienting. All the sudden our land rover came to a stop and our guide and all of us hopped out. The girls snuck away to use the bathroom in the bush and our guide yelled out some sort of birdcall. In response from 10 different directions around us came the same call. The girls realized we were completely surrounded and came running back from behind the land cruiser and said to us "let's go!".

The bush people live with the complete basics. When we walked up to their little camp at the base of a huge rock we realized that these people really do live off the land. They wear baboon skins on their backs, make their bows out local wood, and eat the animals and plants from the local ecosystem. Our morning with them consisted of skinning and gutting a bloody dikdik and laughing at them smoking their morning marijuana. It was amazing though. The dikdik was killed by an 8-year-old kid with a bow. 

Of course, we wanted to be a part of the culture so I took of my shirt and put on one of the baboon skins. Jen joined in the fun smearing her hand in the dikdik blood and putting a hand print on my chest along with putting some awesome war paint on the girls' cheeks. 

Landon getting dressed in baboon skin

Bow and arrow practice

Heather and Jen ready to hunt!

Finally, it was time to hunt. We took off up the hillside looking for anything that moved. I began to get a little discouraged when it had been 30 minutes without any sign of life. I heard a bird in one of the trees next to me and one of the three teenage bushman ran over to the tree. He made some weird caveman sounds to his friends, pulled his arrow back and nailed the bird dead on. I was really impressed. I consider myself a decent archer and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with the bows they were using, yet they could hit a bird in a tree a good 20 yards away. 

After hitting the bird with the arrow, they bite the bird's neck and the bird goes limp. This kind of reminded me how my grandpa taught me to hit the fish on the head with a rock so the fish wouldn't suffer. I thought to myself how hardcore is that, I hit fish on the head with a rocks and they bite their necks. 

Not too long after that, the bushman came to a tree with a huge trunk. The tree wasn't particularly tall but it was super thick. One of the bushman climbed up the tree and started drinking water. That's right the kid found water in the middle of the tree's trunk. It was amazing! He said there was probably over 6,000 liters of water in there. We gave him one of our empty water bottles and he filled it with the water from the tree.

We sat down near the tree and the bushman made a fire. They didn't start a fire like normal people do though, they started a fire with two sticks. It was amazing. They would take a long, hard, skinny stick and roll it between their hands on a softer stick. After a few spins a tiny spiral of smoke would come up from the soft wood and they would drop the small amber into some dry bark they found. In five minutes we had a nice fire with our three birds roasting over it. The birds were actually not that bad. Ironically enough they tasted somewhat like chicken. 

Landon trying to make a fire caveman style

Plucking feathers from the birds for more arrows and roasting the meat in the fire

After breakfast, we walked back to camp and presented the squirrel the guys killed on the way back to the women. Before we left, they showed us their tradition tribal dance and we bought some souvenirs for the road.

I would have to say that the experience with the bushman was one of the coolest cultural experiences we have had so far. These people have been untouched by the outside world and have really kept to their traditional ways. I felt like we really were able to see what they do everyday instead of seeing it in a museum of read about it in a book. We were able to hunt with some of the last completely isolated societies in the world. Not bad for a weekend trip!