The safety message served its purpose, I had been warned about a specific danger and how to manage in “the unlikely event of a water landing”. More importantly, I had been given notice that I’d entered a new sphere of knowledge about which I knew very little. Over the course of a week, Matsaudi and…

the manager of Delta Camp, Lenamile Baikgodisi, provided instruction in bush literacy. Listening to them, I often thought of the people who over centuries through trial and error had created this useful body of knowledge, and I wondered what chapters had been lost to time.

After a week in the Okavango Delta, I traveled a few hours to the Tsodilo Hills, an elbow and knee of bedrock that sticks out of the Botswana sand sheet. Inhabited by humans for over a 100,000 years, the hills have been consecrated with 5000 rock paintings and a three dimensional image of a Python, believed to be one of the world’s first sculptures. These artifacts are a trace of people who lived lives with days that had a rhythm filled with actions that had a reason. What were their lives like? How did they get through the day? And again I wondered what knowledge has been lost? Perhaps there is an echo of an answer in the following images from Tsodilo Hills and fifteen tips on bush survival provided by Matsaudi and Lenamile.

1. If you find a warthog hole in the morning, do not stand in front of it. Knowing that lions have a habit of waiting outside for their morning debut, warthogs back into their holes at night. In the morning the hogs shoot like cannon balls out of their dens, breaking the legs of anyone unlucky enough to stand in the way.

2. If you surprise a leopard, do not make eye contact. It will pounce on your back for the offense. Pretend not to notice, look away and slowly move out of the area.

3. If an elephant gets a whiff of you and is feeling grumpy, he will charge or mock-charge and you must make a quick determination of his intentions. If it is a mock-charge, the animal will raise its head and flap its ears as it moves toward you. If this is the case, slowly back away. But if the elephant trumpets, lowers its head, tucks its trunk between its legs and flattens its ears, it is a real charge and you will be lashed with the trunk, gored with a tusk and stomped into chutney.

4. If an African buffalo charges, there is nothing to do but run. Old male buffalo get tired of roaming with the herd and live a sedentary and solitary retirement. If disturbed, the old male will either flee or charge. If he charges, run and climb a tree, but be sure to climb the side of the tree opposite the charging beast, since he may not stop but slam full steam into the tree.

5. If you need to improve your scent, the San people, aka Kalahari bushmen, recommend wild basil as an excellent perfume.

6. If you love a girl, go directly to her and tell her how you feel. She will say come back tomorrow. When you return the next day, she may say, “I forgot about it” and tell you to come back again tomorrow. This may go on for months, if she is too shy to tell you how she feels. You may need to send an emissary to get an answer.

7. If you urinate and it’s too hot (a sign of STD) use the wild asparagus plant, called Mabele, translated from Setswana as “tits of the goat” because of its utter like shape. Dig the root of the male plant, which is thinner and longer then the female. Chop and boil while fresh. Mix with the bark of the jackalberry tree or the feverberry tree and add wild sage. Boil together and drink for three days.

8. If you have an infected wound, use the buffalo thorn (Ziziphus Mucronata) to heal it. First, choose a leaf the size of the wound and place it over the sore. Leave it on over night. In the morning there will be a little hole. Squeeze the wound to remove the infection. Boil the root of the same tree and drink half a cup of the tea once a day, until the infection is gone.

9. If you have the flu with a fever, collect cough grass with roots attached, the leaves of the rain tree and broad leafed “Tappington” grass. Take the tops off the grass and boil all three in a big pot for one hour. Pour the hot liquid into a metal basin and breath the vapors, using a blanket to create a tent to capture the steam. Repeat once a day until the fever is broken and the sinuses are clear.

10. If you get lost in the daytime, look in palm trees for the nest of the Red Billed Buffalo Weaver, who always build on the west side of the tree. You can also take a census of termite mounds, whose tips most often lean to the northwest. Termites work only at night raising the mound with spit and sand. The sun, which travels across the northern sky in the southern hemisphere, dries the new construction more quickly on the sun-facing side bending the nest.

11. If you are caught in a lightning storm, find shelter under an umbrella thorn or the African mangosteen (Garcinia Livingstonei).

12. If you are hungry for antelope meat, dig a hole 3 meters wide and 3 meters deep. Collect branches of silver cluster, sharpen into stakes, harden in fire, dry in sand and sharpen. Line the pit with the stakes facing upwards and cover the pit with twigs and grass. Sit by the hole downwind from the prey. When the prey is on the upwind side of the trap, walk around behind them and run toward the hole.

13. If you hear the Black Plover at night, there may be predatory cats in the area. The Black Plover has only three toes and can not hold a branch, so it must nest on the ground. Baboons also give helpful warnings of predators. A “hoo” indicates the presence of humans, a cough warns of a cat and a high pitched squeak chased by a bark is a sign of a snake.

14. If you hear the Fork-tailed Drongo before sunrise, the time is 4 am. By 5:30 am the coucals start with a sound like water coming from the bottle, “glug, glug. glug”. After that it’s the fish eagles by 6 am.

15. If a bird craps on you, it’s good luck. So be happy.

Near where the women once slapped and wrung the laundry, lives a Python. I heard of her at a picnic, days before I set up on Woman’s rock to paint. She comes out of her home under the rock during these winter months to sunbathe. Although innocent of eating babies and livestock, she provokes stories of deadly Python encounters like the story of the missing truck driver who stopped to pee. A policemen found his truck idling on the roadside and went to investigate. The feet of the truck driver were found protruding from the mouth of an enormous snake. The moral, said the story teller is not to pee under low hanging branches.I set up my easel on a crest of barren rock. The air was clear and bright and one could see the gentle curve of the horizon as if standing on the deck of a ship looking out to sea. From here I could see the Python should she come. In a moment of distraction, I would miss the first glimpse of her behind a rock. Silently she slid to me, condemned by god to make tracks like a river in the sand. She bit me over the kidney and threw her first coil over my shoulder to trap my arms. I fell from her weight and as we rolled she wrapped me up like cable on a spool. Her coils trapped my arms before I could reach for my pocket knife to saw at her side. She tightened her grip each time I exhaled. Her mouth opened, her jaw unhinged to put me inside her, the course lubricated with hideous quantities of mucous.
I never saw the snake, but fear of her fired my imagination like kerosene. I began to paint in earnest, wondering how I could use the willies to make a good picture. The distant horizon was placed high on the panel with a stroke of turquoise tempered by ochre. For thorn trees a few green dots were scattered across the plane and a knife on edge made blades of dry grass. I imagined the Python below my feet, huge and turning. Woman’s Rock was drawn like her side pushing up through the flat plane. To my right a man appeared on a rise of rock a hundred feet away and he called and waved as if I knew him. I returned the wave and continued to work. He paused and watched and looked around. Soon, two young men came up on my left. The older man also advanced. I was alarmed by being approached from two sides. My adrenal glands gave a squirt and I imagined a knife. They spoke to me in Setswana and I said that I only spoke English. To this, the older man said through broken teeth, “Five Pula, drink”. Pula are the local currency, so either he was asking me to give him money for a drink or he was offering to buy my water. Optimistically, I offered the water. Wrong, he wanted the money. The other men were still and watched with interest. I patted my pockets and said “no Pula”. He did not look happy and he did not back away, but continued the negotiation and brought the price down to “two Pula”. One of the younger men kept a heavy pair of pruning sheers on his shoulder. I saw the bludgeoning. The other held his body obliquely to mine and kept one hand in his wind breaker. A memory of being mugged on the Brooklyn Bridge came to mind. Something was needed to keep this engagement positive. I had a very showy new camera hanging from the easel, a big red back pack at my feet and I’d just been to the cash machine, so I offered them my lunch. They took all but one cookie, which I made a show of keeping to maintain the pretense that we were sharing and having a spontaneous picnic. The men sat to eat and I squatted with them. I was scared but also angry at losing my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If only they’d asked nicely! Slightly amused by the vehemence with which I defend good manners, I kept the tone light and told them of my friendship with Rre Motsewabeng, the farmer who owns Woman’s Rock. With this information the tone seemed to change. Was it that they could not rob and injure me because I was no longer alone and anonymous? Or were they relieved, no longer apprehensive of me, a stranger, since I had proven a local connection? Fear of the unknown, the Python, made it difficult to understand.