Instead of making a weekly trip to Meijer or Walmart for groceries, being able to purchase everything you need for the week in one location, imagine having to walk out into the wilderness to forage for food, water, and medicine. You would go out daily, gathering and carrying what you can fit in your handmade leather bag and taking the supplies back to your village to share with the rest of the community. If permitted, the men would go off on hunting trips lasting a few days while the women stayed behind to gather vegetables and herbs and care for the children. This would be your way of life, made more difficult due to draughts that occur frequently over the years. Does this sound difficult to you? Labor-intensive and hard work for little reward? This is the way of the San Bushmen of Africa, who have traditionally lived off what they could hunt and gather from the land.

Genetically, the San Bushmen are some of the oldest on the planet, dating back nearly 200,000 years. While collectively they are known all by the same name of “San”, this group is actually made up of many smaller tribes with their own unique identities and cultures. These groups have inhabited southern Africa for thousands of years, only recently having been forced to move to small sections of land designated by the government. For most of their existence, the San Bushmen have been hunter-gatherers and nomads, moving around the land based on weather patterns, wild animals, and proximity to other tribes. Nowadays, governments have forbidden hunting wild animals so they purchase their meat at a market. While their daily life and habits have changed over the years, with modern conveniences, clothing, and technologies, they all endeavor to keep their traditions alive and to share their culture with others.

Located in northeast Namibia, the Living Museum of the Ju/’Hoansi-San is an open and welcoming place to learn about the culture, language, and lifestyle of one particular tribe of San Bushmen. Visiting with our Intrepid tour group, we followed a handful of men and women around the land, stopping frequently to look at trees and bushes. Our guide, speaking only their native Ju/’Hoansi language, described the various plant roots, leaves, and flowers that are used for medicine and healing. Listening to the unique “clicking” language and watching him drink water from a tree transported us back hundreds of years to imagine how the San Bushmen have survived off the land. Our tour through the bush was interactive, offering us opportunities to try and dig for potatoes and water, wash our hands with liquid squeezed from a fruit, shoot a bow and arrow, set a snare to catch small animals, and collect rabbit dung (which was later used by the men, wrapped in leaves, and smoked around a fire). Upon finishing the tour of the area, we were joined by more men, women, and children who gathered together to sing, dance, and demonstrate skills passed along from one generation to the next.

It’s nearly impossible to describe the feelings that we had observing and interacting with the San Bushmen in Namibia. I think the best way I can describe it is to answer a popular question from one of my favorite travel podcasts (Amateur Traveler) which asks: “When is it that you felt closest to home and when did you feel furthest from home?” When thinking of everywhere we have traveled and everything we have experienced, I think my answer is the same to both parts of that question; it was visiting the San Bushmen when I felt simultaneously closest to home and furthest from home. For most, the ‘furthest from home’ portion of my answer is easier to comprehend; we were in the middle of the African wilderness, hearing people speak a language full of different sounds, learning how to live from the meager amount of food and water they have available. Their life is completely different than what we have here in the USA and in many places around the world and felt so far removed from anything I had experienced before.

My answer to the question about ‘closest to home’ may be a bit more difficult to explain. Being surrounded by people who have been living off the land, secluded from most modern advances in the world, I felt just as comfortable as I did when sitting at a restaurant in Michigan with friends I have known for years. The San Bushmen, being so isolated, rely and depend on their families and neighbors to survive and that sense of community is strongly felt when visiting. Sitting next to an old lady, covered in wrinkles and holding a pudgy baby, watching her smile and clap along with the other women who were singing and dancing – those little moments are what made me feel close to home, even though I had never met the people and couldn’t communicate with more than a smile and gesture. There was such a sense of kinship with one another that is hard to put into words. The San Bushmen are people without malice or hate; they help one another and put the good of the community first. They welcomed us with open arms, eager to demonstrate their way of life and share with strangers. We felt more accepted and comfortable in this place, so far away from home and everything we know, than we did in many other westernized cities around the world.

Later that evening, sitting around the campfire after dinner, our tour guide Makori asked us what we thought of our day with the San Bushmen. I told him that our visit was when I felt like I really got to know Namibia. Despite the vast and beautiful scenery and the exotic wildlife, it was spending time with people who had been living there for thousands of years when I felt that we got to see the real Namibia. Our time with the San Bushmen remains one of my favorite memories from our entire trip and has cemented our love for the country, making us eager to return one day soon.