Call of the Kalahari

Just a couple of weeks before the unforeseen pandemic took hold of the world, Pelly & an inspired bunch of wilderness connectors, nature educators & conscious awakers were invited by Louis Liebenberg (Nelsons Mandelas former head of Conservation in South Africa) & The Old Way Collective, to come sit with the last remaining elders of the Hoi San Tribe in the Namibian Kalahari

Here they gathered in a temporary village on the lands the tribes ancestors have nomadically roamed for many thousands of years

This was the very first assembly of a new conscious tourism concept developed by The Old Way

Imagine you found yourself in a position to help save the last fifteen tigers

Or you found yourself with the unique opportunity to preserve the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Bayeaux Tapestry

What would you do? What choice would you make?

Historically, there have been many crossroads that individuals, communities & nations have stood and decided which paths to take

& Consequences would follow

What position might we take now with the benefit of hindsight if we stood at an important historical crossroads

Well it so happens we are at perhaps the very last fork in the road, when it comes to helping preserve one of our own species most ancient and important cultural lineages - the Master Trackers of the hunter-gatherer culture of the Ju /‘Hoansi Bushmen

The Old Way Journeys took the team deep into the Kalahari, to this remote tribe, to play a part in helping to preserve this most ancient cultural expression of our human lineage

As there are only fifteen active master trackers & hunters left at the last count in 2018 the situation today is an urgent and critical one

The Kalahari San Bushmen of which the Ju/‘Hoansi are one group, are genetically the oldest modern people who once roamed over much of Africa

They have been exploited, persecuted & displaced for many hundreds of years, experienced enormous hardship along the way

The group were taken to a part of the desert, the last place in Africa where they still retain rights to their ancestral lands; where they are still able to hunt with a bow & arrow & where the community still subsist with some of their traditional life- ways intact 

In the crimsoned evenings they sat round the glowing fire, under a deep canopy of stars, talking about the Western worlds extreme ways & how this has affected & placed extreme pressure upon the San tribe 

‘These rare & pure beings, seemingly hold essential information about how we might rescue ourselves. They are living here in deep communion with nature & with an undertanding of their place & part in a larger picture, connected to a oneness which I could only marvel & take inspiration from’

In the sun-cast days, the group learnt the art of tracking & how to tune into the subtle signs of nature & her wild

They listened in the shade of the Camel Thorn tree, as the huntsmen recounted tales of life & death & humanities interconnected relationship to the great cosmos

It was a beautful meeting of worlds

Both parties departed with raised smile & souls full, grateful for the offerings & connection that had been forged here

& unknowingly had offered a rare panacea as pandemic gripped & the world trembled