Patricia Glynn will once again present her hugely popular talk, “What Dawid Knew”, at the Kloof Junior Primary Hall on Thursday 6 February.
In 2011, Patricia Glynn set off for the Kalahari to find traces of a long-dead Bushman by the name of Makai Kruiper – a legendary mystic, hunter and healer who roamed ‘The Thirst Land’ a century ago.
By her side was Makai’s grandson, Dawid, a man as legendary as his forebear. Dawid was 76 years old and easily the most famous Bushman in South Africa, having featured in numerous films, documentaries, books and academic studies.
The old man asked Patricia if she could help him mount an expedition to the places of great cultural and historical significance, further into the National Park, which Dawid had not visited since his youth and which his children had never seen.
Between April and June 2011, they did exactly that. In a deeply moving and poignant trek, the Kruiper family (spanning three generations) and Patricia’s team visited and documented mystical and sacred places; battle and hunting grounds; birth, death and burial sites.
Patricia’s talk is about what she witnessed on the trip: the fragments that remain in the Kalahari sand of a long-gone life; the extraordinary memory and tracking skills that helped Dawid find his grandfather’s artifacts, some 100 years after they’d been buried; the secrets that have been handed down from son to son.
The presentation is also about how losing their land brought the Khomani people to a state of utter despair and rage, and how going back to their heritage places helped to heal and restore them.
This is a story about just how much the Bushmen can teach us about respect for our natural resources and how to preserve them. But it’s also an amusing talk about a journey with a group of irreverent storytellers, free spirits, hilarious mimics and loving people.
Once again, Patricia and her professional team of photographers and filmmakers have brought back thousands of photos and hours of footage, the best of which have been selected to illustrate her talk about this grand adventure.
Tickets cost R50 or R35 for members of Friends and are available at Kloof Library.