From 1973 to 1994, anthropologist Edwin Wilmsen lived & worked among the Zhu, Mbanduru & Tswana people of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. Thousands of miles from his home, immersed in what first seemed a radically different place & operating in languages he initially did not underst&, he began a record of his impressions & reflections as a complement to his scientific fieldwork. This book weaves together the multilayered experiences of his life among these Kalahari people, capturing the intellectual challenges an anthropologist faces in the field, & the myriad & strange ways that unfamiliar experiences come to resonate with deeply personal thoughts & recollections. Combining biography, poetry & anthropology, Wilmsen portrays the intense realities of life in the Kalahari & carries the reader across space & time as events in the present trigger emotions & memories. Images of apartheid, for example, evoke memories of Wilmsen`s childhood in the segregated South. Poems, journal entries & accounts of deepening personal relationships all intertwine as Wilmsen conveys the experiences he shares with his ”subjects” in spite of vast differences in their backgrounds
- extreme thirst under the desert sun, grief over the death of a child & the constant irritation of ubiquitous flies.