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Tales From The Giraffe Pan

17th August 2006

What first people?

Went to Tsodilo Hills and then on to Lekhubu Island both very important sites, archeologically and spiritually for the Bushmen. And true to form they really left an impression on me. Apart from the fact that it was just before the full moon and it was so bright it was like someone had left a halogen light on and were shining straight in my face all night. Apart from that, Tsodilo was all it promised to be. Very enlightening, and I don't mean the moon.

There was one panel with paintings of some very tall men with long heads and very elongated penises. Now normally this would be hilarious but actually they are supposed to be depictions of the shaman when he is in a trance and healing the members of the clan. So I took all the photos my digital camera could hold and when I returned to giraffe pan I showed them to my grandma.

Well, it wasn't the reaction I expected. She said most of these paintings were from a time when man and animals were the same, part bird, etc. Was this a verbal record passed down through the millennia of a knowledge of evolution? But it doesn't stop there, when we mentioned that anthropologists had suggested it was an image of shaman in trance and the penis was supposed to represent the power emanating from his sacral or primal chakra, she then went on to say that as far as she can remember for our clan the trance dance is fairly new. In what way new I asked. Well, she says when she was a little girl our people did not dance the trance dance; the songs for healing were the eland song.

This was beginning to sound like a good story. She carried on to say that we don't sing the same songs either, in fact the songs we sing are from the macoco to the north, when Dabe came through here the other day, he taught them the new dove song. Wait says I, how can we have a new dove song surely these songs are and always will be the same. Apparently not. The songs and the tunes are fluid, they evolve, and what is more they appear to come from the north. Received and then passed on to the next tribe, clan or language group. So what does this mean grandma? Well she says, Tsodilo hills isn't just a place of rock paintings, they are where all our songs come from. They were composed in the foothills. This is why you have such strange dreams there; they are the ancients trying to communicate with you to tell you the new songs.

So the actual first people are actually the people who painted the rock paintings a long time ago. Yes she says but they moved away when my grandma's grandma was a little girl. They don't live there any more. Moved away. But they are still composed in the dreams and passed on to us. And another thing, and this goes back to the time when we lived amongst the animals, all the songs are based on animals. From the way they move, the way they forage, their individual personalities, even the gathering song played on the humble mouth bow is named after a bird.

So then, who are these first people of the Kalahari? This fragmented group of people who seem to have very little in common, in some cases the different dialects are so different that they cannot understand each other because the language is different. It seems they are all united by songs from the north, passed on by travellers to dialects to the south.

I don't know but it seems to me that if they really did speak with one voice, as was the original intention of the First People Of The Kalahari, they would get what they want. Through sheer volume. Singing the same 'song' as it were. But as things stand right now they are being fragmented by Survival International, The FPK has become just for the few who live in CKGR, which whether they win or lose this test case will not affect the rest at all. It will have been a waste of resources, but hey, when you have spent this much you can't back down now can you Survival International?

Kahn/a.

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