Three women and an object(ive) – experiences and insights from an encounter with the !Xoo in the Kalahari Desert

Abstract

This article is narrated by three voices – an American senior exchange student, and two South African Master's students. They tell the story of their first-ever journey to Botswana to visit the Bushmen in Ngwatle. They were faced with numerous questions, not only about the ‘Bushmen’ but also about themselves. The three students uncover their respective objectives, narrate their experiences, and expose their innermost thoughts through the recollection of various exchanges with the !Xoo community. The dialogue is a patchwork of thought concerning different trips. In moving from ‘here’ (Durban) to ‘there’ (Kalahari Desert), they followed in the footsteps of previous researchers and students who were also encouraged to rethink their research assumptions, identities and even their understanding of cultural studies (Tomaselli 2005: 9). The students also considered and reflected on their own identities and the nature of ‘Othering’ in relation to this remote community of impoverished people, the general group whom the media have romanticised as an original people frozen in time. Naivety is admitted. As the article progresses, analysis and self-reflexivity explain this position. Dialogue, the absurd and self-interrogation are amongst the methods applied as the students attempt to analyse their own methods, insecurities and sometimes liminal research states (see Lange 2003).

Keywords:

• auto-ethnography
• development
• expectations
• identity
• Kalahari
• perceptions