Documentary "Desert of the Skeletons. Bushmen People"
Lüderitz is today a sleepy, somewhat surrealist German colony.
Just like a typical, small Bavarian town, but transposed to one of the most remote corners of Southern Africa, where the wind blows furiously all year round. The town is surrounded by almost endless diamond deposits, but these are transported directly to South Africa,
and have very little influence on the local economy.
But long before the arrival of the White Man, a nomadic people,
once to be found throughout the continent of Africa, had sought final refuge in the Namib and Kalahari deserts. They were probably the last survivors of the hunter people that had been persecuted and displaced by the Bantu tribes who arrived from the north.
Those who did not manage to escape into the desert were exterminated or enslaved, first by the Bantues and the Hottentots themselves, and later by the European conquerors, who rather contemptuously named them 'Bushmen'. Nowadays, the majority of the 100,000 Bushmen that live in the Kalahari desert are to be found in remote ghettos, in subhuman conditions. Some of them work for the White Men, or for neighbouring tribes, as hunters, farm-workers, or herdsmen, in conditions of near slavery, in exchange for food, clothes and tobacco.
Chonwati is a small settlement, inhabited by just four families, a total of 14 people. The Bushmen live in small, scattered groups, adapting to whatever the land can offer, the natural resources. Kushai, Samgao, Tuka and Bo are the heads of the Chonwati family. Several days ago they ran out of meat, the basis of their diet, and so have decided to set out to try to catch a hare in the area around the village. The technique they use to catch the hares is simple, but extremely ingenious. Their only tool is a long, very flexible rod, with a hook at one end, which they introduce into a burrow.
When the pole has been pushed all the way in, the men place the end against their cheeks. If they can feel the rod vibrating, it means a rodent has been trapped on the hook.
