Kgao wanted to be a man. In almost all ways he already was: at 37, he had a wife and six children, and as his family’s meat provider, he had single-handedly caught much game, including a large kudu antelope. It was not, however, masculinity he sought, rather it was gaining enhanced hunting skills, which would finally bring him the longed-for recognition of his status in the clan.

To achieve this, he and another initiate had to join a small group of the ‘big people’ – the oldest and the very best hunters – and walk with them more than fifty kilometres from his village to the hunting grounds. There he’d need to learn from masters of the craft and have them endorse his abilities by witnessing him kill a large antelope.

Kgao is one of a group of Bushmen living in the remote village of Cae Cae near Botswana’s border with Namibia. Game around the village has long been scarce and elusive. To find the highly valued eland and gemsbok, the acme of hunting achievement, the deepest reaches of the arid Kalahari must be searched.

On the Plains of Xai there is no water, only a gently rolling sandscape of dunes from a forgotten desert, dotted with stunted trees, scattered grass and thorn scrub that tears your limbs. On cloudless Kalahari winter days, the sun is relentless and there is no escape from its heat. But for all its inhospitable nature, Xai is the home of the big herds and it is here, from a base camp provided by a remarkable safari company, Uncharted Africa, that Kgao and his companions set forth daily.

The demands of traditional hunting are testing and extraordinary. The men prefer to travel light and dress traditionally: a simple loin cloth and skin kaross, thin leather soles tied with thongs, a bow, quiver, arrows and perhaps a spear. There will be little rest, no food except that garnered from the bush, and as much as twenty or thirty kilometres will be traversed each day. Carried between a group of four may be the luxury of one small plastic bottle of water, soon consumed and discarded.

In every quiver, a cluster of arrows nestles point down, each the bearer of certain, lingering death if properly lodged in the quarry. A shaft of strong grass, bound and notched, is linked by a detachable section to a tiny arrowhead, which was beaten into shape from metal scraps, sharpened like a razor and mounted on a short stem. Because of the risk of accidental injury, it is not the head itself that bears the lethal poison but the stem behind it.  The light-weight arrow travels at high speed and with great penetrating power, ensuring that the poison-laden stem is dragged deep into the victim’s body. Because of the linking shaft, the barbed head and the fatal cargo remain embedded in the victim, whilst the long stem drops free as the animal runs through the bush.

I watched whilst Kgao prepared his arrows beneath the approving gaze of the ‘big people’. The poison he uses comes from the larvae of a small beetle (Diamphidia simplex) that feeds exclusively on a Commiphora bush, common in the area. He broke the larvae from their cocoons of mud, eviscerated them and mixed the result into a paste. With the help of a binding agent, he thickly smeared the paste onto the stem behind the arrowhead and left it to dry in the sun. Bushmen claim there is no antidote for this poison. With fifteen arrows so prepared, Kgao was ready to learn and to prove his worth.


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