The Bushmen - Tapa dura

The creators of this book searched the Kalahari thirstlands to find the few remaining Bushmen who still lived as their forefathers had done for the past 20,000 years. Their quest led them to a people who had never tried to conquer their environment, but had instead remained an integral part of it.

The last of the Kalahari Bushmen are slowly disappearing, drawn irrevocably into the vortex of our civilization. Aware of the urgency of the task, the author and the photographers searched deep in the Kalahari thirstlands to find those few remaining Bushmen who still lived as their forefathers had done for the past 20,000 years. Their quest led them to a people who had never tried to conquer their environment, who had, instead, remained an integral part of it. The rhythms of the traditional Bushman are the rhythms of nature. The tempo of their lives fluctuates with its changes. It is integrated in their folklore, celebrated in their rituals and enshrined in their cosmology. Thousands of years ago, our own forefathers chose the path of conquest. In a sense, the author and photographers wanted to document the alternative their ancestors had forsaken. In these gentle and resourceful people, so totally aware and at one with their environment, the photographers found much that echoed their own ideals. In trying to capture on film the Bushman and his complete integration into the fabric of nature, they learned that the Bushmen are a shy people and slow to open their hearts to strangers. It took many months of living among them, sharing their campfires and their hardships, of joining their hunts and of being rationed to a liter of muddy water per day, before the photographers were able to obtain this intimate record of these remarkable people. This is their superb record: The last of the Bushmen living as hunter-gatherers.