Desert Cleansing: Sweet Treasure in a Thorn Tree

Around the hardscrabble fringes of the Kalahari survival hangs on closely held desert secrets, on good fortune and on sheer, sandy grit.  Life served up, you might say, by the skin of immaculate, hunter-gatherer teeth.  I landed on the doorstep of that world holding a privileged hand of world travels, knowledge of multiple languages, degrees in history and the study of sacred texts.  But of the thorny world of the desert, its mirages, demands and mysteries I carried only a blank, schoolboy slate.  It was soon enough chalked with wisdom.

I drew an assignment to make acquaintance with a certain humble settlement consisting of thatch dwellings and a well for watering the livestock of rich outsiders whose herds drifted the face of the desert.  Most days consisted for me in laboring through sand akin to a bed of live coals, in watching livestock slake their thirst at the trough and come evening, in staring at the cooking fires before retiring under starlight.  It was immersive in an ascetic sort of way.  And cleansing.  I recalled reading that somewhere in the Sahara religious communities had conducted ritual baptism – that ancient appeal for life – using sand as the cleansing medium.  I made personal acquaintance with this tradition.

One of those nameless days, an excited child appeared to say that a swarm of bees had settled in the thorny arms of a nearby acacia.  Here was the good fortune upon which life itself sometimes hangs.  A company of women rose immediately, with me following out of curiosity.  One plucked a feather from her thatched roof, another scrounged a match box and a tin can, while yet a third seized a well-used cardboard box.  I came empty handed.  With the child as guide we followed a livestock trail and soon happened upon a thorn tree where the bees, a humming black mass, had settled protectively around their queen.

Assignments were quickly made.  The savviest woman wielded the feather.  Another held the box which served as makeshift hive.  The tin can would hold the fire whose smoke would calm the swarm during capture.  Several others were charged with watching for the elusive queen whose capture would ensure success.  I was the remaining team member lacking the dignity of any assignment.  With a concessive wave of the hand, the woman with the feather – a scepter of authority – directed me to gather dried cowpies as fuel for the smoke, a task for which I had lamentably little training or experience.

The fire lit, and the smoke taking effect, the feather-woman gently stroked back layer after layer of the bees, many in a stupor falling into the box.  Finally, when the queen came to light, deft hands slipped her into the matchbox with the entire kit and kaboodle swiftly enclosed in cardboard.  Home we marched in triumph where the swarm soon had a proper hive and assumed the productive lives for which bees are prized.

Alone under the canopy of a desert night I pondered the day and my place in it.  In some other world I might have been considered a learned soul with a gift for an occasional happy turn of phrase.  But in this one, in the world of the Kalahari, it was mine to begin usefully with the collection of dried cowpies.  The miracle, after all, was that the women should find me of any use at all.  Believing that no one should be consigned as spectator, they took pity on a hapless outsider, including me as gatherer of sun-baked manure.  Call it a baptism of sorts.  Pure gold.

In time, I came to learn a Kalahari proverb: When the great, bull elephant crossed the sandy wash, he discovered that he was in reality, only a little calf.