Second night at Mukuri Village

Trip Start Jul 09, 2008
1
5
20
Trip End Jul 30, 2008


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Where I stayed
Mukuri Village, Bushmanland
(Windhoek hotels)

Flag of Namibia  ,
Sunday, July 13, 2008

We woke early mainly because of an irate weaver bird who became agitated at the closeness of our tent to its nest. Never was there a louder or more piercing alarm call! The Scottish family were leaving and were already packing up their tents. We were to go on a hunting trip with the young man we had met the day before who we thought was called Quera. He was accompanied by an older man from the village who spoke no English at all, just the clicking Khoisan language of the San, so we conversed in smiles and hand signals. They showed us distinctive tracks of elephant and leopard incredibly close to the campsite and I was reminded of our dark walk home the night before.
The baobab trees were incredibly common in the area and Quera knocked one of the large green fruits that hung from its branches and proceeded to cut it open. The white flesh inside tasted very sweet as is eaten a lot by the Bushmen. He also showed us the berries from which they make the poison for their darts. It is incredibly poisonous and would kill you if you had a cut and the poison entered your blood stream. In fact it was strong enough to bring down a kudu or gemsbok, the main source of meat for Bushmen. Another source of food was guinea fowl that they caught in a simply made trap consisting of a noose made from string and a piece of springy twig that sprung back when a bird walked into the trap and tightened around its leg. George was shown how to make one and then proceeded to nearly take Quera's eye out. Children in Mukuri Village
Children in Mukuri Village
 Next they showed us how to make fire by simply rubbing a stick until it was hot enough to ignite some of the dry grass that lay about this area. A few blows on the grass and it was fully alight. Then we were shown where they collected honey from one of the bee hives located in a large hole in a tree. They climbed up the tree using sticks that were put in the trunk to form a simple ladder. Quera made it look easy but it certainly wasn't and the idea of putting my hand into a hole full of bees to collect the honey  was not something I would like to do either.

We walked further away from the camp to a giant baobab tree home to black mambas that thankfully were not in residence. Black mambas nicknamed 'The Shadow of Death' are one of Africa's most venomous snakes. When cornered, they will readily attack and can rear up around one-third of their body from the ground. We passed a large waterhole where their horses came to drink during the day and often elephants came in the evening. Unfortunately there were no elephants there.  Looking round it was quite easy to locate our camp as its large baobab tree was very distinctive even from a fair way away.

Back at the campsite we relaxed and built our first campfire. Cooking turned out to be easier than we thought. We just chucked in the meat, chopped up potatoes, carrots, onions and put a tin of vegetables into the large iron cooking pot and added one of the powdered stew mixes we had bought from home. Very tasty!

That night there were a couple of loud frightening roars that seemed really close although nothing appeared to come into the camp, but it did remind us how isolated this place was and how careful we should be.
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