The family of warthog, mother, father and three half-grown babies, were busily foraging for roots, bulbs and tubers, using their long curving upper tusks to dig in the soft sandy earth. Trotting briskly from one clump of grass to the other, intent on their task, they were unaware of the two Bushmen hunters who watched and waited.
!Ka reached into his reed matting bag and brought out a flea-beetle pupa which he rolled between his fingers to soften. !Oma chewed on a wad of acacia gum, sticking his tongue into it, then churning it around in his mouth to mix it with saliva. When both the gum and pupa were soft, !Oma spat the sticky mess onto a saucer of bark and !Ka squeezed the orange coloured fluid out of the pupa and mixed it with the gum. They worked in silence, knowing the keen sense of hearing of their quarry would send them scurrying for safety at the merest whisper of sound.
!Oma nodded that the poison was ready. Dipping tiny arrow heads into it they rose quietly and, unseen by the warthog, moved to within firing distance. Without exchanging a glance both hunters sent their poisoned arrows to the same youngster. He was the biggest of the three piglets and some of the mud he rolled in earlier in the day had flaked off his flank, leaving the tough skin vulnerable.
The lightweight reed arrows seemed impossibly fragile as they danced towards their prey and bounced, like twigs, off his side. But not before their tiny sharp heads cut the tough hide sufficiently to poison his bloodstream. The injured youngster screamed at the sudden sharp pain and he and his family took off alarmed. The two Bushmen returned to collect their hunting kits before setting off after the warthog. They were in no hurry. They knew exactly where the animals were going.
The warthog sought cover in some old porcupine holes next to a dried-up waterhole, the boar being the last to disappear in a bottom-first, backwards wriggle. The hunters, who had followed in a deceptively easy lope which they could keep up all day if necessary, slowed and stopped. !Oma unstrapped an ostrich egg from his hip and offered it to his friend. !Ka sipped sparingly at the lukewarm water before passing it back. Then both men squatted down to wait, making no attempt to be quiet. They wanted the warthog to hear them and thus remain hidden.
They knew the poison would work slowly. Ideally, they would have preferred to shoot the animal at dusk and return in the morning to collect it. But with so many lions in the area, this was impractical. Occasionally they had to drive lion away from a kill, something they did readily, with no qualms. But a flying mantis passing briefly by their cooking fires last evening was taken as an omen that something either very good or very bad was in the offing and neither man wanted to put it to the test. The Mantis was a good fellow more often than not but sometimes he used his supernatural powers to play tricks on his subjects. Some six hours elapsed before they considered the poison would have done its work.
When the sun had passed its zenith and was halfway towards its journey into darkness, !Ka and !Oma rose and walked towards where the animals had assumed sanctuary. They stood atop the hole which the big male disappeared down and stamped their feet hard on the baked earth. The boar charged up and out of the hole like a shooting star which sometimes flashed over the night sky, snorting in anger and fright and, without looking back, took off at a fast canter with his tail held high. !Ka relaxed the tight grip on his spear. They had taken a calculated risk the boar would not attack and it had worked.
The sow was less obliging. She had her injured baby in the same hole as herself and, although she wanted to flee, maternal instinct held her back. Her head bobbed in and out of the hole as she changed her mind several times. Acting from instinct more than past experience, and from a deep understanding of wild animals, !Ka and !Oma stopped stamping on the ground and rapidly climbed a stunted acacia tree as the sow finally took a decision, boiled out of the hole, turned with incredible speed and charged. There was nothing there. Confused, she stopped dead. Then, calling her babies to her, she set off quickly in the same direction the boar had taken.
The poison, because it had been freshly made, was working well. The injured warthog, already unsteady on his feet, lagged behind, falling occasionally. The rest of his sounder milled near some distant bushes, waiting for him. The young warthog stopped, sniffing and disoriented, then set off in the wrong direction. Unpredictably, his family simply vanished, deserting him.
!Ka and !Oma jumped out of the tree and followed, spears held ready. The distress calls of the warthog would be heard by predators who would come quickly to take advantage of an easy meal. However, the young warthog did not manage to get very far. The poison, the heat of the porcupine hole, the weight of his mother sitting on him, had rendered him defenceless. He was lying on the sand breathing quickly and then, just as quickly, he died.
The two hunters took a minute to apologise to the dead animal. The old people had taught them that all animals were once people and, although it was permissible to kill for food, or in self-defence, all the animals belonged to the Great God and their lives could only be taken with due respect. Satisfied they had not angered the Great God, they set off towards camp, happy in the knowledge that their inner compulsion to hunt was blessed with good fortune on this day.
!Oma, being younger, carried the heavy animal first. After half an hour, !Ka took his turn. Chattering to each other, their conversation interspersed with a collection of clicks and loud pops, !Ka asked !Oma if his wife’s birth blood had stopped running.
‘No,’ !Oma replied morosely.
‘Can you wait?’
‘I must wait.’ To touch a woman at this time, or even during her monthly bleeding, made a man thin and took away the power of his hunting tools.
‘Do what the buck do. Go and rub your horns against a soft bush.’
‘Do not think I haven’t thought of it.’
Both men laughed.
!Ka shifted the dead weight of the warthog on his shoulders without breaking the rhythm of his steady half-run, half-walk. It had been a long day. Starting shortly after daybreak they had travelled thirteen miles before coming across the family of warthog.
Their conversation carried far in the hot, motionless air. They made no effort to be quiet; their natural love of spirited debate had them laughing and shouting as they walked. After all, no-one lived out in the desert but the San people and the two hunters had nothing to hide from their own kin.
They had covered more than half the distance back to camp and were near where they had seen the skeletal remains of an ostrich when they heard an astonishing sound.
!Ka stopped dead in his tracks. His small black eyes, brightly bird-like, scanned the way ahead. They heard it again. A baby was talking.
‘Over there,’ !Oma said, pointing to a clump of trees.
!Ka lowered the warthog to the ground and, very quietly, like stalking leopards, the two Bushmen advanced on the sound. They were intrigued by it. They knew no other clan lived in the vicinity. Besides, the child’s voice did not sound like one of their own. Living as they did, as instinctively as the animals they hunted, both men would have known of the presence of strangers in their hunting territory. This young child, they were sure of it, was quite alone. And yet, they knew this would be impossible.
As they entered the shade !Ka caught the dreaded scent of lion. ‘Si’isate.’
!Oma nodded and glanced quickly about.
Then they saw the child, dressed in blue towelling shorts with a nappy trying to escape down one chubby leg. He wore no shirt or hat but, on his feet, a pair of once white takkies without laces. The boy had, as yet, not seen them. He held a stone in his hand which sparkled and shone, flashing like a sunset one minute and a deep blue sky the next. The Bushmen had seen such stones before in the gizzard of ostrich. They always threw them away; pretty as they were, they had no useful purpose.
The boy hopped sideways, looking for more stones.
‘He is like !ebili [the water bug],’ !Ka whispered.
The little boy heard him and looked up at the two San men, unafraid. !Ka and !Oma advanced slowly, reluctantly. They had seen no signs of others but they were still cautious. The white man was a species about whom they knew very little. The little they knew made them distrusting.
!Ka dropped down in front of the child who looked back at him with blue-green eyes which never wavered and were full of innocent curiosity. His hair was the colour of spun silver, the colour of the moon. ‘Da,’ he said in a high clear voice, holding out his hand with the sparkling stone.
!Ka had no knowledge of the white man’s tongue but thought the child was offering him the stone. ‘Da,’ he repeated politely, stretching out his own hand to take the diamond.
The boy snatched his hand back, shaking his head.
!Ka looked up at !Oma. ‘This little !ebili will feed the lions tonight.’
!Oma pointed to the bush. ‘Her With The Bad Foot was here.’ He walked to the bush and looked at the sand. ‘She was ready to kill.’
‘That would be a very bad thing.’ !Ka knew lions. He knew once they had killed a human they lost their fear of them and quickly included them in their diet. ‘She must be very hungry. Her bad foot makes her bold.’
!Oma laughed. ‘Not so very much bold. She must still remember your spear for she ran away.’
!Ka nodded, remembering the day he had defended his kill against Her With The Bad Foot and very nearly lost his life. More by good luck than good defence, because she had taken him by surprise, he had jabbed his spear at the lioness and punctured her sensitive nose. He returned his gaze to the boy who smiled, showing perfectly spaced, even white teeth. ‘How did he come here? He is alone. We must take him with us tonight and try to find his people tomorrow.’ He rose and held out his hand. The child stood easily and took it trustingly. ‘If that is possible,’ !Ka added, worried.
!Oma agreed. He too had seen the frantic activity of the ants and beetles. Both men had read the signs: the weather was changing bringing something in, something big, the insects were never wrong. ‘I will carry the meat.’ !Oma concentrated on practical things for there was no point in worrying about the inevitable.
The little boy tried gamely to walk but stumbled. !Ka could feel the weariness in the small, sturdy body and wondered again where the boy came from. He hefted the child and was about to put him on his shoulders when he caught a whiff from his shorts. ‘Pooh! He smells like a dead thing.’ The child’s diet caused his faeces to be very different from that of San children.
!Ka pulled off the boy’s shorts and nappy and, using up their precious store of water from the ostrich egg, wiped the child’s soiled bottom with his hand. Then, leaving the clothing on the ground—for he could not imagine anything more uncomfortable, nor could he work out how the nappy was supposed to fit—he picked him up and hoisted him on his shoulders. The child shrieked with pleasure, chuckling constantly, remarkable considering his sunburn and exhaustion. Soon both !Ka and !Oma were laughing with him, particularly when the boy urinated and his warm water ran down !Ka’s shoulders and chest.
‘The little !ebili makes good water.’ !Oma cupped his hand and caught up some of the urine to smell.
‘His water smells good, not like his food’ !Ka agreed.
‘He is brave.’ !Oma remarked in admiration.
!Ka was certain that this child was why they saw the flying mantis last night. The Great God was testing them somehow. He had sent this young boy for a reason. !Ka hoped he was doing the right thing by rescuing the boy. He did not want the Great God to be displeased and send the Lesser God to punish him.
From his position on !Ka’s shoulders, the child was still fascinated by the shining lights in his diamond, holding it up to see better. ‘Da,’ he said, again and again. In this manner, the warthog and the child were carried back to camp.
The camp was semi-permanent, which meant the clan had lived there for some five months, a long time for a nomadic tribe. Accommodating some twenty-seven individuals, the camp was a simple circle of grass huts with doors facing inwards, set around a flat dancing ground. They were due to move on shortly as they had all but cleaned out the roots and nuts, wild honey, termites, fruits and leopard tortoise which were their staple diet. The clan had stayed longer than usual because there was an underground spring nearby which gave them an abundance of water. But they knew, because they lived as one with their environment, that if this camp was to be enjoyed at some time in the future they had to give nature a chance to recover.
One of !Ka’s children saw them coming and ran to tell his mother, Be, that his father was bringing something strange back from the hunting trip. The entire clan gathered in the centre of the camp and the murmur of speculation as to what strange animal !Ka carried on his shoulders quickly turned to excitement and disbelief. The young boy had fallen asleep, rocked by !Ka’s steady walk, his silvery head dropped over !Ka’s forehead, one hand resting on the Bushman’s left shoulder, the other tucked behind his neck, still clutching the diamond.
‘Oh, oh, oh, what have you done?’ Be cried, agitated beyond belief, for she truly believed her husband had killed the boy. ‘Why have you killed one so young?’
‘We found this little !ebili alone. The lions would have eaten him,’ !Ka told her disapprovingly. To take the life of another, particularly a child and especially a strange white child, would have been behaviour so alien to the San that he felt his wife should have given him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Ntsa, ntsa, poor little beetle. Here, give him to me.’
The movement of transferring him to Be’s caring arms woke the child. ‘Da,’ he said, staring at her face. She must have presented a strange sight to him indeed. Her yellow skin, tufted peppercorn hair, strong cheekbones, bulging forehead, folded eyelids and flat nose all set in a tiny childlike face creased with hundreds of wrinkles and bearing tribal scars representing a zebra’s stripes would have had most children his age screaming with fear. Instead, he beamed at her.
Be rounded on one of her older children. ‘Bring water,’ she ordered. Then she turned back to her husband. ‘Did you give him water?’
!Ka hung his head. ‘We used the water to clean him.’
Be clucked and shook her head, then taking a gourd from her daughter she offered it to the child who drank so fast he began to cough. Then he chuckled and drank some more.
‘He’s a brave little beetle,’ !Ka said.
Although most of the light of day had gone, it was still very hot. Be carried the baby to the waterhole, followed by the entire clan who were dumbfounded by the strange child. The boy sat in the lukewarm water and splashed, laughing and happy. Then he fell over backwards and got up slowly, spitting water, thoroughly enjoying himself.
‘Oh, oh, oh, what have we done?’ Be asked in a low, scared voice.
The clan looked on, horrified. The boy’s beautiful silver curls had been washed away, replaced by a darker colour which clung to his head in long straight strands.
‘We have washed away the light of the Moon,’ someone said.
They removed the child and carried him back to the camp. They sat him in the centre of an admiring throng as they stared and stared at his impossibly fair skin and blue-green eyes. Then a miracle occurred: in the warmth of the evening first one, then another, then another curl whitened and sprang back until his face was, once again, framed by silvery white curls. ‘He is a child of the Moon,’ one of them whispered in awe.
This explanation pleased them all; they distrusted the white man. Once upon a time, in the days when things were different, all the San and all the white men, as well as all the sheep and cattle and goats, lived together. But the white men and the San argued over who should own the livestock. So the white men said, ‘Let us have a tug-of-war to settle this matter,’ and provided a rope. The rope broke with most of it remaining in the Bushmen’s hands. ‘You have the rope,’ said the white men. ‘Use it to trap the steenbok and the duiker while your women gather other food. We will keep the livestock.’ This story, like all their stories, had been handed down through the generations. The little beetle was more palatable as a child of the Moon. For although the San have a great love of children, and often lamented that the Great God gives them so few, he was still a white man in the making.
Suddenly the child yawned and Be sprang up. ‘He must eat with us,’ she commanded. Her cooking pot was bubbling on the fire. Their meal this night was a mixture of tubers and tortoise meat, thickened with a paste of ground mongongo nut.
Visits by members of the camp to the cooking fires of others was a common enough occurrence. Hospitality was the key word. Children particularly were invited to try the food of others and no good wife would prepare a meal which could not cater for visitors. But the arrival of the white baby had the entire clan at Be’s cooking fire so she built it up and the women were sent scurrying away to bring their own meal to join hers. Everyone wanted to gaze at the little !ebili and touch his hair in reverence.
If the young child thought the meal and the attention of everyone strange, his appetite was not affected and he tucked into it with the same gusto as the clan members, using his fingers as though he had been born to eating this way. Almost immediately he finished, he burped loudly, piddled where he sat, watching with natural enjoyment as his urine sank into the warm sand. Then, crawling over to Be, he curled up against her and fell fast asleep, seeming to sense she was the comfort figure, despite her strange appearance.
‘What are we to do with this little beetle?’ Be asked, touching the fair head gently which rested on her thigh.
‘We will take him to his people,’ !Ka answered. ‘I hope we can track his steps tomorrow.’
‘How could they have lost him?’ she wondered, derision and disbelief clear by her tone. This child, with his silver head, infectious laugh and obvious courage had touched her heart. Maternal instincts had already stirred in her and she admired the boy and wanted to protect him. She wondered again how his people could have been so careless as to lose him.
‘We may never know,’ !Ka said sternly although, like Be, he wondered how the child came to be wandering in the vast Kalahari on his own. ‘But we cannot keep him, there would be much trouble for us if we tried.’
!Ka and his clan spent the next three hours enjoying a spirited debate as to how the boy became lost, and how best to return him to his own people. Wild speculations, laced with superstitious fear of the white race and the Bushmen’s own belief in the magic of the moon, spoken in their strange clicking language, were put forward, rejected, enlarged on, argued about and laughed over.
A pale sickle moon sailed lazily on its back above them and the clan fell silent, staring upwards at the shoe which the Mantis had thrown into the sky so he could have light. ‘Does he search for his son?’ !Ka wondered aloud, watching the silvery sliver.
!Oma expressed the worry of them all. ‘If he thinks we have stolen his son he will not send us rain.’
‘Do not be foolish,’ another said. ‘This boy is of the earth. I have seen others with hair like his.’
‘Perhaps he was stolen by the Hare,’ one of them suggested.
Diverted, the clan asked !Ka to tell them the story of the Moon and the Hare and, although they knew the story by heart, they listened avidly as !Ka, a gifted and favourite storyteller, related the tale of the origin of death.
‘A very long time ago, before we were born, before our fathers were born, the Moon and the Hare were having an argument,’ !Ka began. He rose, sucking on his pipe and then, holding out his arms to resemble the curve of a new moon he played the part of the new moon, and continued in a high and tremulous voice. ‘When a person dies, as I die every night, that person is reborn. Just as I come back the next night, so do men come back. All men die and return, die and return,’ he said, flopping and straightening, flopping and straightening to match his words. He inhaled more smoke with quiet contentment.
‘Tell us what the Hare said,’ a listener implored, although he knew the story as well as !Ka.
!Ka, by wrinkling his nose, baring his teeth and lowering his voice, became the Hare. ‘I . . .’ !Ka gave a hearty laugh, ‘. . . laughed at the Moon. “Dead people rot and smell,” I said to him. “They do not return.”’
!Ka began circling, his hands turned into claws. ‘The Moon and I argued and fought all night and all the next day.’ !Ka shot out his hand. Several men jumped in fright. ‘I scratched the face of the Moon with my nails. Now he carries my black marks for all to see our fight.’
‘Tell us what the Moon did!’ the same listener begged, hanging onto every word.
!Ka became the Moon. ‘I took a shoe,’ he said, bending and picking an imaginary shoe from the ground. He lunged forward. ‘And I split the lip of the Hare with the shoe. To this day the Hare’s lip is split in two.’
!Ka sat down again and his voice returned to normal. ‘These are the signs of their quarrel. The argument was won by neither. Since then, men have died and not returned.’ Heads nodded in satisfied agreement. The spirits of the dead lived in the eastern sky with the Great God. Sometimes they turned into bad spirits. It was comforting to know, however, that they would not return as bad men.
‘This child . . .’ !Ka said, ‘. . . has been sent to test us. We must return him. It is true he has been touched by the Moon but he is of men and to men he must be returned.’
‘How?’ !Oma asked. ‘We do not know where he is from.’
‘The Great God will show us the way.’
The clan then reminisced on past signs sent to them by the Great God and while the conversation ebbed and flowed around him, the child slumbered peacefully against Be, his small pudgy hand still clutching the large diamond, his dreams spinning with shining light images of brilliant reds, shimmering greens and incandescent blues.
!Ka had intended to leave at first light with the child. An excellent tracker, he knew he would have no difficulty in tracing the boy’s steps and hoped to return him to his people quickly. But the message of the ants and beetles in the sand, warning of a change in the weather, came true more quickly than expected. During the night, wind whipped up a vicious sandstorm which raged all the next day, leaving the San helplessly pinned down in their lightweight huts. Dust-devils, restless spirits of those who had taken their own lives, spun across their dancing ground ensuring no-one would venture into that raging, stinging maelstrom.
The sandstorm broke around five in the afternoon, only to be followed by a heavy downpour of violent Male Rain which came to the Kalahari only once every few years and had the sands running in gushing rivulets and the men shouting abuse through the open doors of their huts so the Male Rain would see they were not frightened. When the rain finally stopped all hopes of tracking the child’s footsteps were lost. Nature had wiped the sandy landscape clean. Be was delighted and began to think the baby had been sent by the Mantis for her to keep.
After the stinging, suffocating sandstorm and the clinging stickiness which followed the rain, the clan went down to their waterhole. Childlike, they all frolicked in the water, the white baby receiving a great deal of attention from everyone, his infectious laughter rising and falling with the delighted shrieks of the San who were always ready to laugh and play games. It was then Be noticed the boy’s birthmark—a small, brown half-melon shape on his left buttock. ‘The child has the mark of the Moon on his body,’ she said, plucking worriedly at the strands of hair on his head, trying to tease back the silver curls which she was convinced had washed away for good this time.
‘Do not look for signs that are not there.’ !Ka could see his wife was becoming too attached to the child.
‘You will not be able to find his people now,’ she replied happily.
‘I will find them,’ he said, ‘it will just take longer.’
The baby toddled over to them, still holding the diamond. ‘Da.’ He showed it to Be. They were used to this by now and instead of trying to take the stone she simply leaned over and admired it. ‘Da,’ she replied. He beamed at her.
‘He is very fond of that stone,’ !Oma’s wife told Be. ‘He will lose it if we don’t do something.’
‘He has already dropped it many times,’ Be agreed.
‘I have the very thing,’ !Oma’s wife said. ‘I made it for your husband.’
!Ka heard. ‘Then I give it to my wife.’
‘Then I in turn give it to the child,’ Be said, delighted that their gift-giving tradition had found the answer.
It was a small pouch, made from the skin of a springbok’s scrotum, threaded at the opening with sinew which acted as a drawstring. The pouch was designed to carry the flea-beetle pupa with which the San made their hunting poison. It was perfect for the diamond.
‘Da,’ Be said to the boy, holding out the pouch.
He looked at her, uncomprehending.
She reached out and took the diamond between thumb and forefinger, holding it in such a way so he knew she was not taking it from him. After dropping the stone into the pouch she drew it shut and placed the drawstring over his head. The child shook his head vigorously. Be gently removed the drawstring, opened the pouch and showed him the diamond. The boy smiled and those watching laughed, relieved he approved. Then, with an avid audience, the boy amused himself for a long time, opening and shutting the pouch, pulling the drawstring over his head, taking it off again and reassuring himself constantly that the beautiful shining stone was still here. He fell asleep against Be that night with the drawstring wrapped around his hand.
‘Why does he like it so?’ Be wondered aloud.
‘He is white. They are different from us,’ !Ka replied. It was the only explanation he could think of.
That night the men spontaneously initiated a dance. The women clapped and sang songs about the giraffe, the elephant and the mamba snake, strong medicine songs which would empower !Ka and !Oma to find the baby’s own people. Despite Be’s longing to keep the small white child, despite clear signs the boy had been touched by the Moon, they all knew in their hearts he had come from somewhere and belonged to someone and every effort had to be made to return him to his family.
After the dance, and to be sure that returning the little beetle was what the Great God wanted, !Ka threw his divining tablets, watched avidly by the rest of the clan. He took five discs from his hunting bag and touched each of the thick animal hide tablets in turn, naming them.
‘Earth. Water. Fire,’ he said slowly, touching the three ‘life things’. ‘Sun. Brown Hyena,’ he added, touching the ‘death things’. A superstitious shudder ran through the onlookers. Different people named their divining tablets different things but there was always a Brown Hyena among them and the position in which it fell was the first thing they looked for.
!Ka cupped the discs in his hands and blew on them. Then he lowered his hands and shouted, ‘Fire,’ before snatching them away, allowing the tablets to land where destiny took them.
A stunned silence followed. Brown Hyena had fallen upside down. !Ka studied the tablets impassively. Finally, ‘See that Earth and Water lie far from me,’ he said. ‘See that Fire lies close.’ He looked at the tablets carefully. ‘We will find the home of the little beetle but it will be very far from here.’
‘Which way do you have to travel?’ Be asked fearfully. The face down position of Brown Hyena filled her with dread.
‘I do not know,’ !Ka answered simply.
‘There is trouble ahead,’ Be said, hoping her husband would heed the warning and not go.
‘Yes,’ !Ka agreed. ‘But I cannot see who it is for.’
!Oma stepped forward. ‘We will face the trouble when it comes. This is what the Great God wants us to do. Not to obey would bring more trouble.’
!Ka picked up the tablets and rose. ‘!Oma speaks well. We leave after this night.’ He walked to his hut and turned at the doorway. ‘Come, wife, I will be gone three moons. You cannot send your man away with nothing more than senseless fears.’
Be followed him into their hut. He had made his decision. It was her duty to abide by it. It was what the Great God wanted. The ways of the Great God were sometimes hard to understand but she knew he had sent the little boy to them for a reason. Perhaps she had done something wrong. Perhaps she was being punished. It certainly felt like punishment. The child with blue-green eyes and hair like the Moon had already crept into her heart and she knew, with absolute certainty, he would remain there for as long as she lived.
In the morning Be smeared the boy’s small body with some of her precious collection of tsamma ointment. This greasy substance, made from a tangy wild melon and rubbed briskly into the skin, over which a fine layer of Kalahari sand is allowed to stick, would protect his fair skin from further burning. She paid particular attention to his birthmark, not wanting any harm to come to, what she considered to be, the mark of the child having been touched by the Mantis or the Moon or both. She gave !Ka more of the ointment so he could use it along the way.
Suitably protected from the sun, which threatened to bring on another very hot day, and hoisted naked on !Ka’s shoulders, Be approached the child to say farewell, her tiny black eyes brimming with tears. The baby felt her rough hand on his bare leg and seemed to understand her pain. ‘Da,’ he said, and traced his finger gently along the tribal scars on her wrinkled and weathered face.
‘Da,’ she replied, touched beyond belief.
‘We go,’ !Ka said, turning.
The last view she had of the baby was his plump little bottom bouncing on her husband’s shoulders, his bright and miraculously restored silver curls shining in the early morning sun. ‘Da, little beetle,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Go well, my son.’
There were shoe prints and car tracks at the place where the boy had been found. His shorts and nappy were gone.
‘A man and a woman were here.’ !Ka pointed, reading the signs.
!Oma agreed. ‘See how they searched for something.’ Two sets of shoe prints were clearly visible, going in all directions.
!Ka squatted. ‘The woman knelt here. She found !ebili’s clothing.’ He rose and studied the vehicle tracks. One set led straight to where the shorts and nappy had been left; the other weaved erratically, as though whoever made them had suddenly lost their sight. ‘There is great sadness here,’ !Ka said finally.
‘Will we follow these marks?’ !Oma asked, indicating the tyre tracks.
‘No,’ !Ka said quietly. ‘We will find these people our own way. If we follow these marks we will become as lost as they were when they made them.’
!Oma nodded. ‘Which way will we go?’ he asked. ‘From where did !ebili come?’
‘He did not come from behind,’ !Ka said, pointing back the way they had come. ‘We would have seen his tracks when we took him back to camp.’ He turned and squinted into the sun. ‘He did not come from where we killed the warthog,’ he added, ‘and I do not think he came from where the sun sets because there are many lion there. Therefore,’ he decided, ‘this little beetle must have come from the direction of the Mantis,’ and with that, and with no comment from !Oma who agreed with his observations, the two men turned north.
Thirty miles west lay a small outpost of police who administered the vast Central Kalahari district. Permanently manned, they had a radio which would have made finding the child’s parents easy. But, although the two San men knew the police were there they knew nothing of radios and how they worked. Nor would they have approached the outpost if they had known. It was manned by white men and several Bantu. To the north lay the barren wilderness of central Bechuanaland, 250 miles of flat desert country, practically waterless, unpopulated but for wandering clans of Bushmen and the occasional white hunter. !Ka and !Oma were undaunted by this land which they knew intimately. They knew where to dig for water, unearth succulent tubers and even where to find honey. They knew where the spring hare and the ant bear burrowed and where to collect the mongongo nut and the sour plum. With nothing more in their hearts than to find the family of the little beetle and return him to his rightful place, the two Bushmen headed towards some of the most hostile terrain on earth.
They met other clans along the way. Both men had distant relatives in many of them and the opportunity to catch up on each other’s news was eagerly taken. !Ka was delighted to be reunited with a younger brother who had left years earlier in search of a wife. !Ka had not seen his brother for twelve seasons. As they sat and talked far into the night he learned of cousins and uncles, nephews and nieces and he carefully memorised the details of each so he could relate them back to his own clan when he returned. Such was the way the San stayed in touch.
Wherever they went, they were invited to spend the night and !Ka always accepted, glad of a chance to hand the boy over to the care and attention of a woman, unless of course she had her monthly bleeding which might have affected the child’s health. He worried all the way that the boy would become ill and was always relieved to have the responsibility of his well-being taken out of his hands for a night. To protect the child he constantly wiped his hand across his own armpit, collecting up his perspiration which he spread on the young boy’s head. Sweat from the healthy was a powerful medicine and the child endured more than his fair share of it. !Ka and !Oma asked everyone they met if they had heard of a white baby disappearing but news of that nature does not affect the wandering clans and no-one had heard of such an event.
As they walked further north however, one person told them there was rumour of a white child being lost in the desert, but was unable to say from where the child had come. So !Ka and !Oma kept heading north, convinced they were going the right way.
Up around Lake Xau, a mainly dry lake south of the Makgadikgadi Pans, they heard more positive news. A young white child had disappeared down south and all attempts to find him had failed. The grieving parents had reluctantly returned to their home, far to the northwest, convinced their child had either fallen prey to the many lions in the area or had perished in a severe sandstorm. All that had been found of the baby had been some of his clothes.
Encouraged by this, !Ka and !Oma turned more to the west. A few days later they were told the child came from somewhere near ‘the bracelets of the morning’, those mystical hills the Bantu called the Tsodilo Hills. Neither !Ka or !Oma had ventured this far north before but both men knew the legend of how, long ago, when the world was not the same as it is now, the biggest of the four hills had actually been a man. This man had two wives but he loved only his second wife. There was a terrible quarrel between the man and his first wife and she took a stick and hit him over the head, causing a deep wound which can still be seen to this day. Then she threw down their youngest child and ran away.
The Great God came to the man and asked him where she had gone. When he learned of their fight the Great God thought that since they had no peace between them as humans, it would be best if he turned them all into stone. And they remain as stone, to this day.
The Okavango Delta came as a wonderful surprise to !Ka and !Oma. After a lifetime spent in the hot, dry, sandy southern Kalahari, both simply stopped and stared in wonder. ‘This must be the land of the Mantis,’ !Oma whispered, awed. Palms, wild figs, islands of living papyrus, reeds, thick woodlands and great open areas of lush grasslands stretched into the distance as far as they could see.
They did not know it but they were seeing the Okavango Delta at its absolute best, before the waters rise, as they do each year, from earlier rains in Angola, 600 miles from where they stood, and flow eastward, spilling out over the flat floodplains of the Okavango Delta into an enormous complex of twisting waterways and islands. But now, in the height of summer, the Okavango River flowed smoothly between well-defined banks, some more than a hundred yards apart. When the waters are high, walking through the Delta is difficult, if not impossible. The waters not having yet arrived, the Bushmen were able to follow ridges and navigate easily, some primitive instinct showing them the way. Naturally shy of contact with other Africans and deeply reluctant to make contact with whites, they avoided speaking with anyone other than those of their own race. Although the northern dialect varied from their own, at least they could be assured of a friendly welcome.
At Sepopa, on the northwestern edge of the Delta, they learned that the child belonged to white farmers only two days’ walk further. ‘You should give him to the police,’ they were advised. ‘They will take him home.’ But !Ka and !Oma had become deeply attached to the young boy and believed it was their Great God’s wish that they deliver him themselves. Once again they set off.
This strange little trio, two diminutive Bushmen and a small white child, had barely raised a flicker of excitement in the animals further south. But up in the Delta hunting had made the animals skittish. !Ka and !Oma, used to reading the signs of the wild in an arid desert, found the long grass and swampy marshes of the Delta most confusing.
A browsing herd of buffalo appeared from nowhere. The Bushmen had never seen such big cattle, for buffalo do not venture into the Kalahari. Not yet alarmed, they carried on walking, chattering to each other, expecting the very large cows would ignore them as the occasional herd of cattle they encountered down south always did. A large bull raised his head and saw them. He snorted at the sudden appearance of the Bush-men. Then !Oma, having a bit of child-like fun, made a rush at him, thinking he would run away as cattle always did at home. The bull snorted again and tossed his massive head.
‘Go away and eat your grass,’ !Oma told him gleefully, turning back to join !Ka.
The bull charged. Still thinking it was a game !Oma went shrieking and leaping towards the river. He could outrun most people and most animals. He could always climb a tree if necessary. He was having a great game.
But !Ka was having doubts. This bull was not halfheartedly chasing !Oma away with his head lowered and heels kicking. He had his head raised as he thundered after his friend. He looked as though he meant business. And he was gaining on !Oma very fast.
!Ka looked at the rest of the herd. Suddenly they did not look like the cattle at home. Another bull was trotting forward towards the front of the herd, his giant head swinging from the bull chasing !Oma and then back to stare at !Ka.
Reacting instinctively, !Ka turned and ran in the opposite direction with all the reserves of strength he had in his small wiry body, the child bouncing on his shoulders. He reached a large tree, threw the boy into the lower branches, clambered up past him and hauled the child to safety in higher branches. From there he had a perfect view of the fate of his friend, hunting companion, kinsman and clansman, !Oma. The divining tablets were never wrong. The little Bushman had not stood a chance.
It was several hours before he felt safe to leave the haven of the tree. He mourned for his friend. The bull had left little for him to bury. However, he scraped a shallow grave in the soft soil with his hands, and placed !Oma’s remains in it. He could find no stones or rocks to protect his friend from hyaena but he broke branches and stacked them over the grave. The child helped, carrying smaller sticks. He seemed to sense !Ka’s sorrow. He was unusually silent.
!Ka had done his best. He had not been able to bury !Oma in a squatting position as is Bushman custom but he arranged his remains so that he faced the Great God to the east and he broke all !Oma’s arrows and his bow and scattered them over the grave so that others would know what it was and keep away.
Worried that !Oma’s premature death would cause his spirit to try and capture his own to keep him company (because those who die young often resent it and resort to such tactics) but satisfied his friend was as suitably buried as he could manage, !Ka hoisted the boy on his shoulders and set off again.
They reached their destination the next day. A small clan of northern San who were camped close to a well worn vehicle track told !Ka that they had indeed arrived at the place where some white people grieved for the loss of their small son. !Ka took a circuitous route to the farmhouse, avoiding the cattle and the native workers, and set the child gently down at the gate. ‘Go,’ he said, pointing to the house.
‘Da.’ The child looked up at him and smiled.
‘Go, little beetle, this is your home.’
The boy looked over to the house. A sudden shudder ran through him and he started to run on his plump little legs. ‘Mama, mama.’
A woman came tearing out of the house, skirts flying, at the sound of her son. ‘Ali,’ she screamed. ‘Ali, my darling.’ She scooped him up in her arms, kissing him, rubbing his head, stroking him, hugging him. ‘Alexander, my darling baby, where have you been, where on earth did you come from?’ She burst into a storm of weeping and held him to her as though she were afraid he would disappear again.
A man hurried from the house and saw them. ‘Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it.’
All this was double talk to the little San but he saw the child was safe and he saw the love on the faces of the white couple and he knew he had done the right thing and he knew his friend !Oma had not died in vain. He turned away and left, unhurried and alone. He had over 400 miles to make on the return journey so he might as well get started.
The man lifted his tear-stained face from his son’s head and saw !Ka turn and leave. ‘Wait,’ he shouted. But the little San did not wait and the man was too distracted by his son’s sudden reappearance to go after him.
‘Da,’ Alexander said, reaching for the pouch to show his father the stone which sparked with hundreds of beautiful lights.
But the pouch was no longer there. It had snagged on a twig when they climbed the tree in their flight from the buffalo. And the little boy who had borne sunburn, separation from his parents, strange food and even stranger people, a gruelling six-week trek from the Kalahari way down south, to Shakawe right up near the Angolan border, not to mention a fatal buffalo charge, burst into heartbroken tears.