In Kalahari Desert, You Can Find Both Water and the Shamans!

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In Kalahari Desert, Bushmen See the Shamans Turn Into Lions!

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Perhaps, there might not be a beautiful place in a Sahara like Kalahari Desert. However, this place seems not like a Sahara.

In addition, the endangered indigenous Bushmen with their magic and healings make it a wonder.

They indulge in the magic and they see their shamans turn into lions, just like that; and they see leopards conjured from the landscape. That makes the desert amazing.

Moreover, the silence, the shapes the sand made, the rare animals, some oasis, the wild rare small plants, the sun and the moonrise with the reflection of its lights on the sand and the meeting of the sand with the sky at the far horizon make Kalahari Sahara nostalgic and attractive to many people.

Let us follow the track into this desert through the following brief article. It is about this desert and about the endangered people's lifestyles in Africa, the Bushmen or the San People.

If you have more information about Kalahari Desert, the people who live there or near the area or about wildlife, parks, any plants, animals and birds, please use the form at the bottom of the page to share your observation.

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Kalahari Desert, San People, Africa, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia

Although Kalahari Desert does not seem like a Sahara, but like a basin, and has an entrance locations as much as a wildlife safari, this huge arid and semiarid Sahara stretches 350,000 square miles in south Africa to cover the north of South Africa, most of Botswana and the east of Namibia.

It is surrounded by Kalahari Basin, which stretches to more than 970,000 square miles to Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The basin spreads also as far as to South Africa, where the Cape Floral Region lies; Namibia, where the Naukluft Park lies and Botswana where the Okavango River creates the Okavango Delta in the northeast; where the wildlife is richer.

It is believed that the Botswana part of Kalahari Desert was covered by Lake Makgadikgadi more than two million years ago.

In the harsh climate of the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, the San people are always on the move, searching for wild fruits, berries and nuts, water and wildlife.

San people are believed to be descendants from the first inhabitants in South Africa. They are also known for their excellent hunting abilities.

By mimicking an animal's movements, can men sneak into a whole bunch of animals and kill them with their poisoned arrows. They make their arrows from the kokerboom trees.

Animals like gemsbok live near water holes in Kalahari Desert. San eat ants' eggs, birds' eggs, larvae, caterpillars, locusts and termites. They feed also on some species of grasses.

There are two hundred species of veldkos (a Dutch word for field food, which comprises native plants and even goes to animals) including tsama melons (which grow in central and southern Kalahari Desert), olives, figs, nuts and berries.

Mole rats are among the animals of the Sahara that live under ground and hunt for their food collectively digging under the ground hunting for food and gathering it in one place. They have their lips behind their teeth to avoid the sand and help them use their teeth as foraging tools.

It is believed that the San people, formerly known as "bush-men", is a descendant of the very first people who lived in Southern Africa.

Their ability to find water and food where no one else could have built them knowledge and that knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation.

Over time, European settlers, the armies and the farmers exploited the San people's incredible track-ability to prosecute poachers and guerrillas.

More recently, the San-tribal knowledge of desert plants led to the discovery of an appetite depressant drug that can treat obesity.

The San tribes have experienced several changes over the past 50 years than in the previous 40,000 years. Once there were millions of them, but now lives less than 2,000 San-people and lead a traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle.

Conflicts between the San people and both the neighbouring tribes and the European settlers have driven them out into more and more remote deserted areas in Kalahari Desert.

Today, the San-people severely affected by the transformation of the bush areas for privately owned cattle ranches.

Their search for fertile land will become even harder as desertification encroaches on the bush vegetation. They also face another problem.

Deep in the Kalahari Desert and in the dry vast grassland that stretches across South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, the San or the Bushmen walk searching for food.

Carrying on with their traditional way of life, they have the desire to keep following their culture, which is the oldest living culture in the world, and they need to survive in their dwindling hunting grounds.

Producing the myths of the Kalahari Sahara, they live in the myths through which they see things such as, shamans who turn into lions and leopards conjured from the landscape as though by magic.

Their myths still live with them and they engage in them performing their trance inducing dances and their way of healing.

The shamans use their magic to cure other sick people, predict hidden things and ocuurances, and to control the life around.

The Bushmen survived for over 60,000 years in peace and joy and they enjoyed their way of traditional living all these years. Through their mystical world, they built their own methods tracing God as a God of magic.

With rising temperatures and a rainfall that is expected to be reduced by up to 40% in the austral southern winter, desertification will ultimately kill the bush vegetation. Global warming could eventually prevent the last generation of the San people from hunting and gathering food on the desert plains.

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