 |
|
| » |
|
| » |
|
| » |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Home > Sharing Your Stories > View a Story
|
|
My Children and the Bushmen
|
|
|
|
| |
I had the pleasure and fortune to travel on Wildland trips to Turkey, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. I had amazing experiences in every one of these places. So for me it is difficult to choose the most memorable one. But not impossible.
My most profound Wildland experience was the great fortune to take my four kids with me to Tanzania. We visited the bushman nomadic tribe in the remote Lake Eyasi region. As we drove through the bumpy bush road we saw a group of people who lie on animal skin mats beneath the stars every night of their lives, with no blanket or covering except their thin animal skin cloths. The men were smoking bowls of weed and sharpening their arrows.
I watched my three older kids go off for the hunt with these small, spindly men. Many hours later, hours during which I followed the women and children as they dug tuber roots, fetched water, and baked tubers over a tiny campfire, my youngest daughter and I saw three elder kids coming back to camp.
They looked like different peopleas if they had walked back in time into another world. They looked wiser to me. They had experienced a million-year old lifestyle.
My son had helped with the hunt and shot his slingshot and arrows. They watched these men start fire without matches, roast and eat small animals for breakfast, and run barefoot though the African bush country. The profundity of this experience undoubtedly changes their lives forever, adding depth to their souls.
The bushmen's finale of our visit was to engage my three kids in a bow and arrow contest, shooting into large gourds. Each of them made the marks. Words can't really explain how this experience touched my heart. It was deeply moving for all of us.
And that's just one of the many little stories I could tell.
|
|
|
|
