/Kun of the Ju/'Hoansi-San

I've barely met /Kun, and doubt he remembers me at all from last week, but I wish he were closer so I could get to know him.  He's a guide at the Living Museum of the Ju/'Hoansi-San, outside of Grootfontein.  My U.S. friends K&K and I visited the museum, a recreation of a traditional Ju/'Hoansi village, during our tour of mostly, kind-of, north-central Namibia.  The museum is a great place, which I recommend very highly to Namibians, permanent or temporary, and visitors to the country.

/Kun introduces himself as Elias, which he uses as his English name.  He paired up with an older man, N/a!ad, whom he mostly called 'the hunter', to take us on a walk through deep, reddish sand and abundant bushes and trees.  They showed us how their ancestors started fires with two soft-wood sticks and a lot of dried grass, set snares, shot antelope with small bows and smaller arrows, and how they found water, poison, medicine and something to smoke in trees.  "We scrape the bark," he explained about the smoke-ables, "and pow it, and mix it with rabbit dung.  Then smoke."

/Kun has a gorgeous, frequent, infectious smile and great English.  He was very willing to answer a few questions and let me film a short video of him speaking Ju/'Hoansi.

First he wrote his name and the hunter's name, with help from several women colleagues:  the hunter is N/a!ad: pronounced n(clicking noise like when you say 'tisk tisk' but only one 'tisk', and it's really more 'tsk')a(popping noise like you're imitating a cork coming out of a bottle)ad.  Elias is just the 'tsk' sound followed by Kun.  Easy, right?

/Kun in traditional dress, holding arrows and a drinking straw.

/Kun is 27, though he looks about 17.  He lives with his wife and 3-year old son, his parents, four sisters and three brothers-in-law and a brother.  They are spread across six houses in the family group.  (I only had the back of my business card on which to write his answers to my questions, so I took brief notes and can't quote him directly.  Oh, how I wish I could.)

He works as a guide at the Living Museum "every day there are visitors."  He wears his traditional short-shorts or whatever that is whenever he's at the museum, and Western clothes when he's home at the modern village.  He says he prefers the traditional clothing, and if he could be a nomadic hunter, he would be.  I don't know whether the guides are coached to say things like that to hook tourists better, but he certainly seemed very happy in the hour or so we spent with him.

/Kun follows the hunter through the bush.

He attended primary school in the modern village near the museum, and went to secondary school in Grootfontein, about 80 kilometers south.  He left school after grade 10.  He has also been to Tsumke, about 150km east of his village.  That's the farthest he has traveled, he told me.  He speaks Ju/'Hoansi as his first language, and also English and Afrikaans.  He seems really smart.

I asked him what he would do if he suddenly had lots of money.  He said he would buy clothes, and help his sister pay her school fees, and pay for transport for sick people in the village to get medical help.  I infer this sister is the youngest; she's at secondary school in Grootfontein, living in the hostel for students there.  She maybe wants to be a teacher.