Rediscovering "darkest" Africa.

Expeditions can sometimes take unexpected turns. Such was the case for me on a recent expedition to remote regions of the Kalahari in Botswana, a nation in the heartland of central southern Africa.

Anyone who has seen Jamie Uys' 1981 motion picture, The Gods Must Be Crazy, or been touched by Lauren van der Post's moving tales of the lives of Bushmen (properly known as the San) can understand how I felt upon learning of this expedition, sponsored by Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. A dozen "hard core" Africa enthusiasts would be the first nonprofessional group to enter the Gwehaba Cave system, "discovered" in 1992. There would also be a trip to climb the lower reaches of the Tsodillo Hills to see some of the 3,000 rock paintings that have been found there. San history goes back at least 40,000 years, and we would be in the company of the internationally recognized scholar, Alec Campbell, who has explored this spectacular San rock art site for some 30 years. We would also be uniquely privileged to witness a San trance dance with John Hardbattle, founder of the First Peoples Foundation. Later on, there would be wildlife viewing in the enormous national game reserves located in and around the 5,000-square-mile Okavango Delta swamps and waterholes.

My application (along with several others) was late in arriving at Cambridge; fortunately, Gabriel Whitehouse of the Museum was able to arrange for a second group of 12, thus making it a go-go for me. A young friend asked me to check the truth thee, south of the equator, water drains counter clockwise out of the sink and shyly suggested that I might bring back a can to add to her and her boyfriend's collection of beer cans. My wife noted that there's hardly room left in our house for additional tribal artifacts and reminded me to take a Larium anti-malaria pill each Sunday.

Fourteen hours out of Kennedy Airport, we touched down in Johannesburg, South Africa. After an overnight stay, it was onto a plane to Garbonne, Botswana, and a change there to Maun, also in Botswana. Sherrie Briggs of Explore, who had worked six months organizing this expedition, met us in Maun, and shortly thereafter we were off in chartered six-person Cessnas, which landed at an airstrip near Xai Xai, a remote San village in the Kalahari. Several dozen villagers gradually showed up. Among them was a short San of indeterminate age. Civility radiated from his crinkled face and glowing eyes as he held out a small, crudely made animal skin quiver and arrows. It was emotionally wrenching to see this ragged, sensitive man parting with the necessities of his traditional way of life for the trappings of our so called civilized world--namely, money. Fortunately, the purchaser was Bill Morrison, an understanding Chicagoan. The Bushman then faded into the scrub and re appeared carrying a thumb harp (my name for this instrument). My breathing grew irregular, and both he and I became oblivious to the activity around us. In response to my gestures, he played and sang in hauntingly melodious tones heightened by consonantal clicks. Now I treasure this little harp and memories of the magical interlude with Zhu/aasi.

After five hours of bouncing along rutted and sandy roads in old game viewing Land Rovers, the expedition reached a mobile camp set up near the entrance of the Drotsky Caves, which had been "discovered" by a white man in 1937. These rock caverns had been formed through millions of years by the dissolution of carbonate rock by mildly acidic water.

Around the campfire, we learned that, just three days be fore, Botswana's government had closed the Gwehaba Caves to await scientific study of some of the fossils, including australo pithecine bones which probably were some 3.5 million years old. Tim Longden, a trim fellow with lively eyes who was the discoverer of these Gwehaba Caves, made the announcement. For a moment there may have been a feeling of letdown among those of us who had come almost half way around the world primarily to enter the caves, but as Longden continued talking, anticipation mounted. Here was an authentic modern day explorer destined to become a legend, who would be sharing some days with us in other caves with which he was equally familiar. To be able to have as our primary guides Mike Main, Alec Campbell, and Tim Longdon--individuals of unique perceptions--would be a once in a lifetime experience.

Interesting as the caves were, my attention gravitated to Campbell and Longden, who have spent years exploring San homelands, noting how for decades their culture and environment were in harmony. I believe Campbell and Longden have traits or energies as yet undetermined or unmeasured. They have similarities to what I sensed in Zhu/aasi back in Xai Xai: although separated by cultures, philosophical and religious myths, possessions, education, and customs, all three of these men are at home with themselves and the world around them and reflect a dignity and ease that I have rarely sensed in others. Brief sessions with these men, whose actions transcend the bounds of language, were to me the most rewarding part of the expedition and opened unexpected paths of social concern.

Bush pilots flew the expedition to an airstrip about 30 miles from a camp on the Okavango River, close to where it leaves the borders of Angola and Namibia. Since my first excursion into Africa in 1959, I have been careful not to drink river water. During the evening's dinner, I generously quenched my thirst with white wine. Nature called, and I scurried off into what I mistakenly thought would be bushes behind the dining area. I fell off into space--at least five meters down. It was two days before a bush pilot flew me to a doctor in Maun. Subsequent days I spent cot ridden.

Wonderfully helpful individuals included novelist Alfred Alcom (now known to me as "Alfie the Considerate") of the museum, who offered to fly with me back to the United States (I declined his offer), and Teddy Envik, a Clint Eastwood appearing professional safari guide from the Isle of Man, who frequently helped hoist me into Cessnas and game-viewing Land Rovers.

Our trip to the national game reserves was worthwhile. The variety of animals that we saw exceeded even my expectations. In the great Okavango Delta and adjacent reserves, we saw wild dogs, impala, lechwe, gnu, kudo, jackals, baboons, elephants, crocodiles, hippopotami, kons, giraffes, the elusive sitatunga, aardvarks, wildebeest, warthogs, fish eagles, sec retary birds, multicolored rollers, honeyguides, and a gokath heron. There even was an occasional spectacular baobab tree rising above the at times sparse vegetation of acacia thorn.

What had started out for me as a natural history expedition quickly became a sociological adventure into tracing the odyssey of the vanishing San.

To understand what is happening to this ancient people, one first needs to know something about Botswana. It is a country nearly as large as Texas--or California and New England combined--with only 1.5 milkon inhabitants, of whom about 5,000 are white. Estimates of the San population range from 20,000 to 60,000, including those in neighboring Namibia. Everyone I asked in the hospital and hotel in Maun and elsewhere gave me different estimates. One thing is certain, however: a migratory life is no longer possible in the region--for the San or anyone else.

In 1966, the British protectorate of Bechuanal and be came the Republic of Botswana and joined the United Nations. Botswana is one of the most successful countries in the world, according to various indices. Significantly, Botswana enjoys a financial surplus that could carry it along for a year or two without any external trade. An unusual source of revenue is the substantial charge to enter the extensive national game reserves.

Women in Botswana enjoy greater social equality in comparison to men than they do in Ireland. There is a higher percentage of women in leading governmental positions than in Japan or South Africa. The percentage of women en rolled in secondary education exceeds that of Norway or Australia. Life expectancy is greater than in Morocco and Indonesia, and, in terms of human rights, one study suggests that the situation for women is better than in Mexico or Israel. In some ways, however, conditions are worsening. Three out of 10 women entering childbirth centers are now HIV positive.

Early on in the expedition, I was on the lookout for migra tory San and Khoi Khoi (the latter formerly known as Hotten tots, a derogatory Dutch label mocking their speech), about whom I had been reading since childhood. There were several San employed at the mobile camps. Campbell and Longden provided me with revealing observations and legends, but my primary source was Michael McOmber, a fellow adventurer and business partner from Oregon who shares my interest in tribal cultures. McOmber gathered information from many sources. While at Jack's Camp in the Makgadikgadi Pan Lake bed, he met John Hardbattle, who is part San. With backing from his First Peoples Foundation, Hardbattle is working to restore some civil and land rights for the San people.

This is what happened to the San: from 1600 on, African tribes from adjacent areas moved into the greater Kalahari area. The San, who were migratory hunters and gatherers, did not have permanent villages. Gradually, the intruding blacks took over regions frequented by the San (who are ethnically distinct from these invading tribes). Now there are eight ethnic or tribal groups, each with its own communally held lands. However the direct descendants of the original San are without an area sanctioned for their own use. At one time, a small reserve was set aside for them, but the game was soon exhausted and the reserve--never a tribal property--continues as a government property.

In times of drought, which is not an infrequent condition in parts of the greater Kalahari, the San had long depended for sustenance upon underground tubers which store moisture. During the current century, however, blacks have drilled water wells for their cattle. These cattle would eat the above ground vegetation within a 10- or l5-mile red us, making it impossible for the San to locate the water rich tubers. When in need of water during a drought, the San would come to those who had the wells and, in exchange for water and sometimes food, look after their hosts' cattle. As a result, the San had to work for the resident blacks, often in conditions of servitude. More over, the children of a black man and a San woman have no social standing in terms of basic rights and are outcasts in black culture. In the past, they were sometimes shipped to what is now Namibia or elsewhere in servitude.

Even more shattering is the fact that until 1960 it was legal to kill a San, and over a period of years the population has been decimated. A self-reliant people who experienced themselves as part of nature, with clan members working in trust and harmony with one another, the San were gradually killed off or fragmented. This was not the work of white South Africans. I wish the common greeting of "Pula" ("Let there be rain") in the semi-arid region of central southern Africa might well be supplanted with "Let there be justice"

Even today, the remaining San are the targets of bigotry. The San believe that the black tribes who converted to Christianity look down upon them as nature worshippers in league with the devil. One San recently reflected: "Our religion, our knowledge of creation, our culture, our spirits, our ways, our thinking is different from that of the Christians with their God and their myths. I still think our beliefs and ways are better" McOmber quotes an old San: "There were hard times and good times. Now there are only hard times" It became, for me, a sobering reminder of how a nation of Christians can treat a non Christian minority.

In response to a question about whether the remaining San and half castes can reclaim some part of their ancestral home land, one of the white safari guides replied that the San have the perfect right to go to school and, through education, gain political power and establish claims. Might his response be somewhat applicable to many of our own inner-city disenchanted and dispossessed? They have a right to schooling if they have the will and the means. But the question remains: how does one who is very poor get together the clothes, transportation, and other essentials necessary to go to any school? How does one accomplish this? Although it is not a direct parallel, in some ways the might of the San and halfcastes in relatively prosperous Botswana may not be all that different from some of the extremely poor inner city people in our prosperous America.

For me, Harvard's expedition became one of glimpsing a late chapter in the lives of a once free, proud, and self-reliant people, each individual member of which had a respected role in a family or clan. For centuries the lives of the San had been harmoniously interwoven with the forces and subtle uncertain moods of the vast Kalahari. Today, humanistic insights and practices are needed to save even the present predominant peoples of Botswana.

Lloyd Morain is a 1994 Humanist of the Year. He has been president of the Illinois Gas company, the International Society for General Semantics, the Pritikin Research Foundation, San Francisco Films, and the American Humanist Association, as well as editor of The Humanist.