1969, South Africa

By Brigid Brett

All week long, it rained while our teacher lectured us on museum etiquette.

We had to remember to raise our hands to ask questions, to walk in single file, to talk in library voices. There was to be no pushing or pinching, and if we needed to ask directions to go to the toilet, we should use the word cloakroom, not toilet. We should never say toilet in public places.

At last, the day arrived, and we pushed and pinched and jumped as we waited for the bus that would take us to the Cape Town Natural History museum to learn about Bushmen. After a week of having to eat our sandwiches at our desks because of the rain, we didn’t care where we going - only that we were finally free.

We already knew quite a lot about Bushmen, like the fact that they lived in the Kalahari Desert, where they could go for days without food and water, and that they knew how to find water that was buried deep under the ground, then suck it out through a long hollow reed. We knew they hunted antelope with arrows dipped in the poison of deadly plants and insects. We’d seen a film about Bushmen and heard them talk in little clicks and pops.

Inside the museum, it was quieter than a library, and we stood around in silent clumps on the polished floor, waiting to be told where to go and what to do.

A lady with peacock feathers painted on her blouse came over and showed us where to leave our lunchboxes and hats. We followed her up two flights of stairs; our blue dresses no more than two inches above our knees, our shoes shiny black, our hair pulled off our faces in tight braids or pigtails. Nobody pushed or pinched.

At the top of the stairs was a very white, high-ceilinged room, with a big cage in the middle. Inside were four small brown people - a man, a woman and two children.

“This is a Bushman family, girls,” the museum lady told us. “Take your time and look at them carefully. Notice how they dress, the tools they use, how they live in the desert.”

The Bushmen children were completely naked. The man and the woman were also naked, except for tiny rags they wore in front of their private parts. The woman had nothing covering her breasts, which were like small balloons that had lost almost all their air. Their hair looked like caps of peppercorns that had been knitted out of wool.

There was sand on the floor of their cage, a small hut made of wood and twigs, a scattering of ostrich eggs in the sand, and a black pot on a pretend fire. A giant painting of the sun setting in the Kalahari Desert filled the back of the cage.

The Bushman mother stirred something in the black pot on the pretend fire, and the father leaned against a rock, a bow and arrow at his side.

It was hard to tell how old the Bushman girl was, but she must have been older than me because she was starting to grow breasts. She was sitting on an antelope skin that was draped over a tree stump, making lines in the sand with a stick.

The little boy, who was kneeling on the sand, kept banging an ostrich egg on a rock. He had a nice fat stomach. I wanted them to talk to each other in their clicks and pops, but they were quiet.

Our teacher took a big camera out of her bag and pointed it at the Bushmen. We watched as she took their pictures, moving around their cage, sometimes crouching, sometimes standing in one spot for a long time. They didn’t even look up. They hardly even blinked.

“Can any of you tell me why their bottoms are so big?” our teacher asked when she was finished and her camera was back in her bag.

Some girls giggled, a few even laughed out loud. All of us raised our hands. This was easy – she’d told us the answer just the day before. Their bottoms were so big because they lived in the desert where they couldn’t find water for sometimes many days, so when they did, they had to store water in them, just like camels.

I wondered if the Bushmen family knew we were talking about their bums, and how they felt, sitting in a cage, being stared at by so many people. Something about the whole thing felt funny to me, a hot prickly kind of funny that made me wish we were near the sea so I could run into it and then shake myself like a dog does when he comes out.

I looked at my teacher, who looked just the same, as usual, with her pale soft skin and her dark eyes that, on certain days, smiled at you, even when you didn’t get the right answer.

After we’d finished looking at the Bushmen, we were allowed to go downstairs for a quick look at the dinosaurs. Each one was as big as three elephants put together. One dinosaur was grabbing another one by the neck and taking a big meaty bite out of him.

The mouth of the wounded dinosaur was open in a scream of pain. Blood dripped and ran and oozed all over both of them. I wished my little brother could see this. I walked up to our teacher and touched her on the elbow.

“Can you take a picture of them?” I asked, pointing to the grisly scene. That way, she could give it to me so I could show it to my brother.

She looked at me for a moment, gave me that little smile of hers, then shook her head.

“We’re not learning about dinosaurs today, Brigid,” she said. “Only Bushmen.”

Originally from South Africa, Brigid Brett now lives in San Diego. Her op-eds, essays, and reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Times, the North County Times, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and the San Diego Jewish Times.'’

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 | Email This Post

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