Simon in Namibia

My good friend Simon in Germany recently took a trip to the Namib and visited the San Bushmen. He was able to get in a little "dirt time" with some real bushcraft experts. I have posted his personal narrative below.

See you on the trail!

Col Tomahawk

During my recent travels in africa I got the chance to stay at a San village for several days and accompany them on a hunting trip.

"The San or Saan people are members of various Khoisan-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer people representing the first nation of Southern Africa [...]"
- Wikipedia on the San People, search it up for further information


THE GEAR OF A HUNTER

A San hunter carries all his gear in his quiver, together with his arrows, or attached to the sling of that quiver.
Appart from that quiver and his loin cloth, he's not wearing much anyways. 
The typical gear consists the following items:

- A drinking straw, made of tall gras, to drink rain water out of small holes in trees or rocks
- A blown out egg of an ostrich, filled with water and plugged as a canteen 
- A small knife, either from stone or nowadays homeforged from scrap metal. Full tang style, with sheat and handle made from the same piece of wood and the blade edged on both sides
- A small hatchet, made from a hardened piece of root, with a detachable blade that can be turned to use it as a hoe. The handel also functions as a pipe for tobacco.
- A pair of fire sticks
- The quiver, made from a branch of the quivertree
- The bow & arrows, more on that later


ON THE TRAIL WITH THE SAN

As you might have noticed, the San bushman don't carry any food with them. Since most hunting trips are daylong only, they rely on food they collect while on the move.
With their knowledge, there's plenty of food avaible in the bush.

"Bush Potatoes" can be dug up and eaten either raw or roasted over a fire.
Different berries and fruits provide nutrition and water at the same time.
When they start the hunt, they start to sweep towards a cardinal direction, navigating by the sun, the group scattered over several hundred meters width, communicating by short calls and 'click-noises.
Once they pic up fresh tracks of an animal, they follow them, considering the wind direction, and close up to its hideout.
When I was with them, we stalked an antelope until we were only 10 meters away from it, without being noticed.
Once within the reach of their primitive bows, they'll shoot a poisoned arrow at their prey, and the poison will do its work.

This also describes why they only use were simple bow constructions, since they don't need penetration or range for their way of hunting.


BOW & ARROW
 The bow is made from a green branch, with both ends carved slender and the center hardened over a fire. The string is premade from plant fibres, and they always care some spare string with them.
The arrows consist of two pieces. The shaft made of wood has a precisely carved piece of bone that makes the arrow perfectly balanced and the use of fletching obsolete.
The arrowheads are from bone or metal, and they are only loosely attached to the shaft with a drop of tree gum, so the shaft will drop when the arrow hits an animal, while the poisoned head stays in the flesh.
This way the shaft doesn't break when the animal breaks through the bush, and the hunters have the place where the shaft lies on the ground as starting point to follow the wounded animal until where the poison finally kills it.
The poison is made from a special kind of maggot that gets crushed, and they never apply it to the tip of the arrow but half an inch behind it, so if a hunter accidentally pricks himself with one of his arrows, he doesn't gets poisoned.
By the way, the poison gets non-dangerous once the meat is heated.

Following some pictures of me making a bow in the bush and different arrow heads.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS: