The People Of The Kalahari Desert Essay

, Research Paper

The People of the Kalahari Desert

Part One

Introduction, Location and Environment

The people of the Kalahari desert are extraordinary people. For centuries their hunting and food gathering

techniques have enabled them to survive in the difficult environment of the dry, hot and barren Kalahari desert.

They are known as the Bushmen. Or the Kung or the Gikwe since Bushmen is rather discriminating because the

“Bushmen” live among shrubs and trees and sand and such.

The people of Kalahari Desert live in a dry bush desert in South-West Africa and western Bechuanaland, bordered in

the North by Lake Ngami and the Okovngo River in the South by the Orange river and west by the Damera Hills.

The Kalahari is there all low with sand dunes and great plains. A hostile country of thirst and heat. A country with

scorpions, thorny bushes and of course sand as far as the eye can see and perpetual dust.

In the hot months it the temperature goes up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In the months of winter, which are June and

July, the winds from the Antarctic cold blow at night. But during the day it eventually rises up to around 80 degrees

Fahrenheit and drops down in the evening. There are only three months of winter and these begin in December and

in March the drought season starts and by August all the water holes that were made during the rainy season are

dried up.

It is not dead, the desert. There are boabab trees that give pear shaped fruits, flowers, and blossoms resembling

gardenias. There are tall grasses. There are bushes flowering either red, white or violet flowers, tsama melons which

very much look like watermelons and are the size of a small cantaloupe. There are also mogongo nuts that are very

high in protein. When in season one person can eat as many as 400 nuts.

These people who inhabit the dry, barren Kalahari have a hard life, so it seems… But, really, do they?

Part two

Food Resources and Technology

Living in the hot sandy Kalahari might seem very difficult, even impossible. But if one knows the secrets of the

desert. The desert will give you a living. The people of the Kalahari know these secrets. No fancy machinery

necessary. No modern technology needed. Only simple handmade tools and weapons such as digging sticks, little

axes, bows and arrows, small traps or snares, knives. Not to mention their senses and their wits.

They poison the arrows so the game will die faster when hit. The poison is extracted from a certain grub. Great

hunters know where the best place to shoot an animal so the poison will work best. Great hunters also know how to

make the finest arrows. They also know all the habits of all the animals from the mice to the antelopes, they know

what time of day that is best for hunting, too.

There are quite a few food resources such as tsama melons, mongongo nuts, roots, berries, wildebeests, kudu,

gemsbok, antelopes, steenbok, porcupines, elands, small animals like the mongoose and the chicken fowl, birds-

even babies-, wild boars as well as honey from the bees. And of course there are a couple of temporary and

permanent water holes around.

They use digging sticks to dig up roots, they gather tsama melons, mongongo nuts, and berries. They hunt game

with bows and arrows and spears on foot.

They cook mongongo nuts in hot ashes, eat the entire animal from the hide-which they work into leather sometimes-

to the marrow inside the bones. Of course this might seem like a lot a meat since the game is plentiful but really 80

percent of their diet is vegetables. Sometimes when cooking meat they cook it in the rind of the tsama melon with

the liquid still inside and it makes a stew.

The people are smart and know their land very well. Therefore as long as they know the secrets the hot desert holds,

the desert will give them a living and they’ll never go hungry.

Part three

Social System and Leisure

The size of the groups vary from 20 to 100 people or even 200 people per group. The groups have to be small or else

moving from place to place will be extremely difficult.

The roll of a man is to hunt and gather honey from the bees. The roll of the woman is to gather and dig for roots and

taste them to see if the root is sweet or sour. Although the women do not hunt they can set small snares to trap small

animals like the mongoose. Both genders cook and make clothing.

The children don’t really get a proper education or at least what we call an education. All the children do are play

and have fun. They play Tug of War and climb trees. But I guess they learn a lot by imitating adults which is one of

their favorite activities. But in reality they boys don’t start to hunt until their late teens and the girls don’t need to

make a living until they get married which in their case is around the ages of 15 and 16. They just move around from

camp to camp living with one relative or another.

In the case of some marriages, if you are recognized as a grea

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