Sociable weaver birds often have large nests around campsites, and are friendly little birds, a bit like our sparrows. They turned out to be good friends as well as good photo subjects! We'd been camping in the same spot for a couple of days and the birds often came to clear up our crumbs, but one day they started to mass beside a log and make a terrible racket. Looking more closely we saw there was a horned viper very well camouflaged under it. We'd collected kindling from that area so we were glad our little friends had given us the warning. The snake soon got fed up with the noise and moved on, and we were a little more careful picking up wood from then on.
LISABukalders LRPS CPAGB EFIAP
nature and wildlife photography
Grassland Bushman Lodge is west of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Neeltjie, the owner, speaks fluent Naro and took us to meet a San group in a small temporary settlement and we were invited to watch as they played traditional games and dancing, and also to follow them around whilst they gathered food and explained how they use certain plants, then made a fire and cooked various items of bush food for us. We were extremely lucky to have what seemed like the whole community with us, the kids were not at school and joined in enthusiastically. They were gathering some food ‘for real’, not just for show, in fact it got quite late but we couldn’t make for home until they’d found a particular plant they wanted that day!
I am VERY wary of so-called ‘cultural experiences’, and usually find even the idea of them excruciatingly embarrassing. This was something totally natural and you didn’t feel that you were intruding, on the contrary they were so happy to be able to show guests their traditional ways, and got terribly offended if we didn’t take photos. It was also good to hear that it’s a good day’s entertainment for them too, they did it with such good humour and obvious enjoyment.
Unfortunately I didn’t take advantage of the experience to take better photographs, I am not comfortable taking ‘people pictures’, but I am happy to have a few photos to remember the day.
I later edited some of the photos to produce an AV presentation 'Bushmen of the Kalahari.