Salt, Sand and the Heart of the Matter

More on the 2500km road trip.  After Augrabies we headed north towards the Kgalakgadi transfrontier national park, into country with no phone reception and one other car.  To use one of Larry Page’s favourite expressions, this was ‘uncomfortably exciting’ for someone who’s now sadly conditioned to email-and-SMS-on-tap.  The park itself is busier, with visitors converging from all three countries (Namibia, Botswana and SA).  The more-trafficked part was frequented by older-generation white South African 4x4 roadtripper couples with over-equipped vehicles, if not trailers as well.  (Thinking back a few years, the same breed would sometimes show up at campsites in Caprivi with the entire contents of a large house.)

We carefully followed instructions to find our meeting point, cutting it fine in terms of timing, but with a few spare minutes to enjoy yet another rice cake with avocado.  P. knows all about the rice cakes by now.  Two San and Mier guides from !Xaus appeared in a Toyota and accompanied us into the desert wilderness.  In these parts mileage is measured in dunes rather than kilometres, making the lodge 90 dunes from Tweerivier and 34 dunes from Kamqua.   34 dunes is about an hour’s worth of travel.  P. did a fine job of tackling the road, since driving in thick sand is no easy feat.  Only once did our guide have to take the wheel to conquer the largest orange dune at high speed, after which he announced in his singsong accent: “There’s nothing-wrong with this Hilux of yours…”

 

Traversing the dunes is well worth the effort.  The lodge is spectacularly perched on the edge of a giant salt pan, a kilometer in diameter.  You don’t grasp the scale of it until you realize that the dot about two-thirds across is in fact a stately oryx.  The pan is almost perfectly round, but for a small dimple which makes it more like a heart, giving the place its name, !Xaus, which is also said to reflect the spirit of healing and dignity brought by the restoration of indigenous land rights.   

At the start of Brody’s documentary Aftermath, #Khomani leader Dawid Kruiper describes what happened on the day that the land claim was formally signed, suggesting that even nature recognizes justice:

“The day Mbeki came with the helicopter and black car…there [were] lovely loose clouds, here a cloud, there a cloud, and the clouds began to speak…When they speak there, then they speak here…and from the top a faint rain already came. When the rain began to fall hard, the helicopter rose.  Within two days there were pools of water between the dunes.  After 30 dry years, on that specific day, it rained.  Those years when we were forced out were sad.  Then the land was given back, signed for.  And those bad things they did to us, we forgave them. That is why the blessing of rains came that day.”

 

Nor was this rain was not shortlived.  According to other interviewees as well, it was plentiful and extensive.  #Khomani children who’d never seen more than small quantities of drinking water bathed in it for the first time – and white farmers’ houses near the river were in danger of flooding. No rain during our autumn visit, but water is drawn from below the surface of the giant pan.  On a more trivial note than justice, it’s so salty and mineral-rich that it made my skin look ten times better than Lancome could ever aspire to.  I even filled two bottles with this miracle tonic to bring home, in the hope that I could prolong the ‘spa effect’.

The politics of the land claim, of community and identity, are obscure during such a short visit.  It was difficult to get any real sense of what was going on. ‘Shifts’ of people come to the lodge to preside in a ‘traditional village’ where they make crafts to sell, mostly jewellery.   This construction of Bushman-ness made me feel awkward – admittedly I’m over-sensitive to the identity politics, but others would argue that it is no different than any other ‘tourist village’, and a viable socio-economic strategy.  Our San guide grew up speaking Afrikaans, reinforcing what filmmaker Brody has documented among the elders: that the #Khomani language N/u had been strategically ‘buried’ during the process of land dispossession and assimilation into farm labour, because, amongst other things, it was not in #Khomani interests to speak a language which would brand them as ‘lowly Bushmen’ rather than ‘coloureds’.  Brody’s films provide a rich set of testimonies which explore over a decade’s worth of highs and lows, from justice and joy, to community power struggles, financial mismanagement and alcoholism.

Thanks to its remoteness and shelter from light pollution, the lodge is soon to qualify as an official international ‘Dark Sky Place’.  At night, the stars are a tremendous scatter of white sand granules.  You can admire them through the telescope, if the telescope is not being slept on by the tame guinea fowl.  The red dunes nestle amazing biodiversity, including oryx, springbok, wildebeest, ostrich, jackal, tortoise, kori bustard birds, and 9 lions recently recaptured after they disappeared over the fence into neighbouring farmlands for some fine dining. 

The park sees an extreme temperature range: 47 degrees Celsius in summer and -10 in the winter.  On our second day, a wind picked up at lunchtime and blew tirelessly through the afternoon and most of the night.  By early next morning the temps had dropped to 6 degrees.  Outdoor winters on the sandveld are not for the fainthearted. There is little protection in this vast and open environment, so going to bed between four walls was a true luxury.   At last light, on return from our game drive, we catch a glimpse of the silhouette of a male lion not far from our room: a little jolt to remind us about the other custodians of territory round here.