Tsodilo Hills location scouting
The Tsodilo Hills are located in the North-West of Botswana. They are not right beside the road for the typical overland tourist busses to be visited as just another attraction. For this reason they stay exclusive for those who make a conscious effort to visit. There are three significant hills connected to each other, which are defined as the Male, the Female and the Child. The Tsodilo Hills and the land around them is a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage Site not only for the extraordinary amount of Bushmen painting and for the spiritual importance to the San, but it is in fact the most historically significant art site in the world. The hills are the resting place for the spirits, while hunting animals or causing death near the hills will lead to misfortune and bad luck. In 1958, Sir Laurence van der Post was describing in his book 'The Lost World of the Kalahari' that when his camera team was hunting down some animals, the next morning the cameras have been inexplicably jammed, tape recorders ceased functioning and the entire crew got attacked by a swarm of bees three mornings in a row.
The hills accommodate hundreds of caves and other possible early stage habitat, which archaeologists date back to at least 100.000 years of occupation. Some of the paintings have been radiocarbon dated to be as early as 24,000 years ago with one of the most famous being the 'Whale painting'.
Arriving at the entrance gate at dawn, there was not enough time anymore to find the way to the Female mountain where the museum and other facilities are located.
Pitching the tent close by the entrance we immediately got bothered by thousands of small flies, as if they have been waiting for us. This may have had something to do with driving over some butterflies on the road to get there. The massive amount of butterflies collectively feeding on either animal droppings or water, which were encountered every other kilometer or so. Although I took very much care to avoid driving over them. Because it was raining the weeks before, the surrounding was extremely green and big waterholes in the 'road'.
Meeting the next morning the very friendly people at the Museum and explaining them what I came here for, they gladly pointed me to the village close by. The people in the village were warmly welcome to me and immediately brought me to a piece of land in their village to place the World in a Shell.
The only sign to the village from the main road was this one. Ju/'hoansi means 'the real people'.
This is the view at sunset from the female hill looking South-West.
The Bushmen of the Kalahari were first brought to the Western world's attention in the 1950s by the South African author Laurens van der Post. San people are generally short in stature, yellowish brown skinned and they are a pure race people of southern Africa, consisting of several groups and numbering over 85.000 in all. They have few possessions as a rule, generally only what they can carry. Traditionally, in San society men and women enjoy equal status. Their hunting is conducted sparingly and always under the assumption that the prey has as much right to live as the hunter. The San have undergone great changes in recent decades, as described in the following citation from Wikki: 'Starting in the 1950s, and lasting through the 1990s, they switched to farming as a result of government-mandated modernisation programs as well as the increased risks of a hunting and gathering lifestyle in the face of technological development'. In other words, in the name of 'progress' practically almost all San land had been disowned or bought by wealthy people over the last hundreds of years. A prime example is D'Kar village, a San settlement owned by the Dutch Reformed Church and administered by the KuruTrust. Close to this village is the San game farm Dqae Qare, which was bought by the Dutch government in 1994. It is the only game farm in Botswana owned by the Bushmen. This resulted in years of relocation, during which they experienced widespread degeneration and problems such as alcoholism, and in the last decennia also AIDS. Nowadays the way out of despair and misery seems to be the integration of the Bushman into the ecotourism industry and support the training in handicrafts.