April 2010
My "aptly" I rented Volkswagen Polo to cross the southern Kalahari, Transfontier called Kgalagadi Park in South Africa, is about to prove once again that between improvisation and planning there is a middle ground that I rarely encounter. I remember going to a dealer in Cape Town to rent a car for more than 1.200 kilometers to the border with Namibia and Botswana. The brand new 4×4 cost 1000, the little Polo, 100. I get the Polo, thought, I spend the rest on wine and kudu meat. I did not look a map, I did not know where he was going, I cared not to understand that the tarmac there is made of hyena teeth. I was primer safari en África. I went to a park in the afternoon before I saw a travel guide. "Nobody is going and it is beautiful", read. The exact words to get excited. I decided to change the world unknown Lesotho. Days later the result is that poked two wheels, stones crossed rail profile and throw a ball falling down a mountain. In exchange, I drank too much wine and tried the kudu. In return I also found the most beautiful park of all who have been fortunate to cross Africa.
I look askance, are small, fragile, their skins are wrinkled and weather the blows
We had two hours and map. Last night we slept in the spectacular Augrabies Falls Falls. After an infinite line on which autopilot bored until we reached the first sharp curve to the right. A sign indicates that we are a few miles from the entrance to the Kgalagadi. Right there, under a tree, There is a group of Bushmen. The famous Kalahari Bushmen, the beginning of everything, the first inhabitants of the planet! But, for a seasoned traveler like me who wear those types of skin loincloths and carrying lances are few clear storytellers. It is because under the shade of that tree there on the floor selling goods, souvenirs. Slowed, one of my traveling companions tells me we stand. "This is a hoax", tell, as if we were in front of the Roman Coliseum in front of a man dressed in Roman legionary. I look askance, are small, fragile, their skins are wrinkled and weather the blows. My decision is firm, even makes me doubt that I am in the middle of a desert indomitable and many miles ago I have not seen a sign of life.
We arrived at the park. Mi primer safari en África. All my childhood dreams crowd behind the window. I want to cross the gate fast. Find lions, Cheetahs, Tyrannosaurus ... and there is, just start moving down a road full of songs, left, There are a wildebeest. It is only, walks slowly along a dry riverbed. Stop the car. Saco camera with TV out the window, far. I contain myself, I only 1.256 photos. I could not stop. I think it would have been the same with a cicada, the thing is it was my first wild animal in Africa. Ten minutes after I boot, turn right and then left. No more than 300 meters distance. There is a herd of nearly 50 wildebeest and behind Springbook another huge herd of stretching in the shade of a tree. Go, first lesson learned from African safaris: learn to wait. It was the first, the first and had received but did not know it: do not judge by the apparent.
January 2013
One of the most beautiful stories I have told from Africa arrives. Aenki Kassie has died, the 71 years, and Upington, northern city of South Africa (I slept on it the first night on my way from Cape Town). Aenki was the third last person left alive on the planet and could speak the language NLU, South Africa's oldest and one of the oldest in the world. There are only two people around the globe can communicate with the language. The funny thing is that the only two survivors of the NLU not known, living away, lost in the vast lands of South African Kgalagadi. When they die they will die with a language. Frankly, few stories seem more sad and beautiful that. I start to explore the history.
The funny thing is that the only two survivors of the NLU not known, living away, lost in the vast lands of the Kgalagadi
The NLU is spoken by Khoisan, generically called Bushmen. An ancestral tribe scattered several southern African countries and that make the human group genetically more similar to the first people who colonized the world from this place on the planet. Would, therefore, as close to the beginning of all, grandparents of all human. In this part of northern Africa and southern Namibia and Botswana live lost in the vast desert of the Kalahari. They use hunting and gathering fruit for subsistence. Some have approached the modern man and they sell handicrafts such as necklaces and bows. (What sounds?).
The language gave defunct NLU in 1973. The international community testified that there was no one on the planet capable of speaking. It was a land claim occurred in 1998, democracy in South Africa and, when further news of this language. That was a revolution for a country seeking its own identity. President Mbeki ordered to track down all the Kgalagadi in search of the NLU talkers or N / uu. Found 25 People. The Government decided to grant 400 square kilometers of land inside the park in 1999 and other 250 more 2002.
It was a land claim occurred in 1998, democracy in South Africa and, when further news of this language
But the time has gone annihilating one by one until only be only a couple of people who hold in their throat an ancestral form of communication. La fallecida Aenki, in fact, worked with Unesco on a program to not bury them that language. Young people are no longer interested in talking or learning an old language and opt for the Nama. The whole story seems a sad poetry to rush to find. Who would not want to speak to those two people? Find, explain, I probably would not know, they are the last two remaining humans able to speak a language. I imagine that one will die soon and then there will be someone on this huge balloon that is already the end of something, unable to have before him a partner who understands you in your language.
And then I remember that bend of the Kgalagadi. My stupid decision not to stop, not to talk to those guys, of not understanding anything beside. From not having bought a necklace and a bracelet. Surely they were not, who did not speak NLU. And if they were given equal, I would not have understood or knew the story. But now I understand that they were Bushmen, Khoisan probablemente, cornered in his world of ancient dunes and unaware that they alone, are the beginning and the end.
