With true Kalahari hospitality or "gasvryheid", I invite you to come and dream an electronic dream, of the Kalahari with me!
I had the good fortune of having the right parents, and my father, rest his soul, did something as a young policeman, that he told me about, but he would never say exactly what he had done. As a consequence, the Captain in charge said: "What is the furthest place you have? Please take this man and send him there!". |
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The full extend of what Thomas & Shaw, (1991) (see books about the Kalahari) calls the Mega-Kalahari desert, namely the total area covered by significant depths of aeolian sand (wind-blown sand), comes as a surprise to many South
Africans who may think of the Kalahari desert as a South African or Southern African
feature. Of course, if one refers to the southern Kalahari dunevelds, which many people consider to be the "Kalahari proper" or "real Kalahari" this is much nearer to the truth, although even then a significant area of southern Kalahari dune-veld lies within Namibia as well. In fact, as hard as it may be for South Africans to swallow, by far the largest part of the Kalahari desert lies in Botswana, and the second largest in Angola, where it takes the form of a flat parklike expanse of trees and shrub underlain by deep sand, rather than the more familiar sand dunes that is typical of the Southern Kalahari desert. The Southern Kalahari desert, with its orderly lines of dunes and which its people thinks of as the "real" or "proper" Kalahari desert, is the subject of this web site. The Southern Kalahari desert dune fields, straddles the border between South Africa, Namibia and Botswana as can be seen on the map of the kalahari desert. |
 Map of Kalahari desert basin The full extent of the Mega-Kalahari desert. |
| Plants in the Kalahari desert | Tribes in the Kalahari desert | Sands of the Kalahari movie DVD |
| Life of the Kalahari Bushmen | Kalahari desert climate | Kalahari desert pictures | Kalahari pans |
| Kalahari desert paintings | Kalahari dunes | Namib and Kalahari desert | Lost city of the Kalahari |
| Kalahari personalities | Some Kalahari policemen | Lost city of the Kalahari | Sights on your way |
| From Gondwanaland to Kalahari | Witdraai - Camel Breeding | Kalahari Camels | Scotty Smith |
| Kalahari Bushmen (Komani San, Saasi) | E-mail Site Owner at info@abbott-infotech.co.za |
Some American with a strange sense of humour, (maybe he was imported from the Kalahari desert?, can some-one please let me know!) have gone to the other extreme and today there is a huge water park called the "Dell Hotel Kalahari and Indoor Water Park", in Wisconsin.
The final inequity is perhaps the naming of what the French calls a "pissoir" or a "urinal" by the name "Kalahari". This item, unlike the "Dell Kalahari Water Park" which is a water park, is waterless (at least before being used!), so they got at least that part right about the Kalahari desert.
There are links to this Kalahari Water Park, and the Kalahari urinal, at the bottom of the page, just to prove that I don't tell tall tales.
Almost every web site or book about the Kalahari desert, makes the profound statement that "the 'kalahari desert' though it is often called a desert, is really a 'thirst land' or 'dorsland', rather than a true desert." Thomas and Shaw (1991), makes the even more profound observation that this hardly clarifies the situation, and that the term "kalahari thirst-land" is perhaps even more open to interpretation than "kalahari desert". Certainly, if one means by the term "kalahari desert", that it is water-less and devoid of almost all plant and animal life, the Kalahari desert is certainly not a desert. The Kalahari desert contains a surprisingly large number of plants and animals, and in years of good rainfall, the Kalahari desert is a veritable paradise for man, plant and animal alike.
When I travel from Gauteng to Upington, I get a song in my heart when I notice this telephone pole! I know I am getting closer to the Kalahari desert when I see the nest of the social weavers! These nests have lately become rare along this road due to the use of new poles and wire stringing for landlines.
You are getting closer!
A small while later, my spirit lightens and I jump out of the car to let the kalahari desert sand run through my fingers, when I see the first kalahari desert sand dune!
Your first kalahari desert dune!
When the above was written, I still lived in Pretoria. I have since, through the grace of God, relocated to Upington. Although my longing for the Kalahari is still intense, I can now at least on a Saterday or Sunday drive the 200 km to Witdraai ans back and spend a few hours and along the way take as many photographs as I wish.
Lets talk about the Kalahari desert and its essential characteristics:
In drought years, which comes in a cycle of about 13 to 17 years, the kalahari desert becomes a harsh and unforgiving environment, where only water from extremely deep boreholes, which more often than not yield very saline or brackish water, keep man and his animals alive. The Kalahari desert's indigenous plants and animals are better adapted and can survive in condition which to mankind appears to be impossible. Many other animals which, are not permanent inhabitants of the Kalahari, depend on "trekking" or moving over vast distances to utilize patchy rain and fresh grazing. Man, with his borderts and fences, built to be impenetrable to animals, has caused the death of millions of animals which could simply not "trek" any further, to where they knew the water was, because they were cut off by a fence. One hope that the so-called "peace parks" and "transfrontier or cross-border parks" of today will help to reverse the damage done by these fences.Every thirty to forty years, an extreme drought occurs in the Kalahari desert, and then even the best adapted plants and animals suffer and carcasses and skeletons litter the red sands of the Kalahari desert.
Floods in the Kalahari desert.
In true African fashion, these extreme droughts in the Kalahari desert are almost always broken by violent floods, that seem all the more extreme in contrast with the preceding dry spell. These floods, causes great disruption in the modern Kalahari desert, as almost all roads run in the dry river-beds. When floods come to the Kalahari desert, temporary roads have to be made in the kalahari desert dunes next to the rivers. Of course, the tarred road from Upington to Rietfontein (also known as the Mier nedersetting or "settlement" are not in a dry river bed of the Kalahari desert. The presently to be tarred road to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, or Gemsbok Kalahari Park, runs mostly in the river.
The Southern kalahari desert also sometimes called affectionately "Agterland" with a similar meaning to the Australian name "Outback", also called "Duineveld" (= Dune veld) or "Rooiduinwereld" (= Red dune area or world) is sparsely populated, with extremely large farms (up to 20 000 or 40 000 hectares!), where the house of your closest neighbours may be a comfortable 40 km away (surprisingly, even these people succeeds in picking a fight with their neighbours, but admittedly not as often as it happens in the cities!). Because they are rather isolated, the Kalahari has bred a people that is resilient, resourceful, self-reliant and masters of the art of DIY!
Unlike city folks, the kalahari desert folks are not forced to endure each other's too close proximity except from free choice, and perhaps because of this they are hospitable and friendly to a fault. As in most other places, You should, however, be careful not to criticise or appear to know better, as any perceived slight towards them or their customs, and indeed any personal idiosyncracy or weakness that you yourself displays, will be identified with unerring accuracy, and remembered for at least the next 50 years, if not longer.
In appearance, the Kalahari desert is typified by a light or tan coloured calcareous under-burden, which appear in places as a solid white "calcareous" rock, or rock faces, often with shallow wind or water worn "caves", a typical example of which can be seem in the photograph of my father, standing in what tradition has it was the site of the very first police office at Witdraai, and which, depending on the sun, is clearly visible if you stand in front of the gate at the Witdraai police Station and look accross the River. This calcareous under-burden is exposed mainly along the ancient river beds, as at Witdraai and in the Gemsbok Park.
This under-burden is covered with a "white" or "light tan" sand, visible in the straat or strate (plural) (=street in English) which are found in the low lying areas between each successive ridge of dunes. The dunes themselves are reddish orange to dark orange, from Iron oxides. The sand particles are rather uniform in size and quite rounded. It is claimed that the white sand of the "streets" is white because the colour-giving iron oxides have been leached out of them. This sound to me like an over-simplified explanation. There must be other factors such a differences in size and or density at work as well, to keep these sands separated so effectively and so continuously.
Roads in the kalahari desert tends to follow the dry river runs. The new Tarred road from Upington to Rietfontein, which doesn't is an exception, as are roads cutting through the dunes, which are only safe for drivers in 4x4s who know the area. The use of dry river beds as roads in the Kalahari, causes great havoc and inconvenience when the rivers does come down every 20 to 30 years, or even after heavy localised rains every few years.
This is what the movie makers
try to capture in "Technicolor"!
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kalahari desert people feel colour-deprived
in every other landscape!
The Kalahari desert is composed of such rich and pronounced colour contrasts, that people who have never experienced it, can hardly imagine its impact on the senses. This was brought home to me rather forcefully recently. I had some slides from the kalahari desert scanned and the person who did the scanning, obviously thought that there had been something wrong with my camera or my film, and carefully corrected the colour of the red "soil" to a rather bland beige!. In friendly retaliation, I will make him a present of a bottle full of Red kalahari desert sand, so he can see that this actually exists. Judging by the photographs of the kalahari desert available on the internet, this happen only too often.
After struggling for hours to find a photograph of the kalahari desert sand that shows the right colour, I finally dug out my bucket of kalahari desert sand, put some in a transparent plastic bag and scanned it! Here is the result, as close to nature as differences in monitors will allow!
A vivid blue sky, the bluest blue sky you can imagine, red dunes, white grey or beige streets in-between, snow white calcrete cliffs, dusty green Acacias and the gnarled white stems of shepherd trees with their verdant green leaves. No wonder we kalahari desert born and bred people forever feel a bit deprived of our senses in the dusty Karoo, or the wheat coloured Free state. All those names, such as "technicolor" that the film and movie-people have created for their colour films, I think this is what they had in mind.
If you think about visiting the Kalahari desert, you have to get to South Africa first and then to Upington South Africa, the unofficial capital of the Kalahari desert.
Click here for facts about South Africa, and how to get here.
Once you are in South Africa, you must get to Upington, the unofficial capital of the Kalahari,
Click here to go to my Upington test page!
To browse and order fine art, craft, game leather and skin products from the Kalahari and Green Kalahari regions, please visit the web site of my good friend, Estelle Visser at Kalahari Living by clicking on the link:
http://kalaharimarketing.com
Estelle sells and exports a number of Kalahari products. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Upington and the Kalahari, you are welcome to visit her shop for Tourist information, a friendly chat and even a free cup of coffee or tea! If you have any questions about facilities, or things to do and to see, Estelle always seems to know about everything that happens in the Kalahari! I have recently helped Estelle to upgrade her site a bit, so one of these days it will contain a lot more info and should get a lot more traffic.
More information
| HOME | Map of Kalahari desert | Animals in the Kalahari desert | Roar of the Kalahari movie || Plants in the Kalahari desert | Tribes in the Kalahari desert | Sands of the Kalahari movie DVD |
| Life of the Kalahari Bushmen | Kalahari desert climate | Kalahari desert pictures | Kalahari pans |
| Kalahari desert paintings | Kalahari dunes | Namib and Kalahari desert | Lost city of the Kalahari |
| From Gondwanaland to Kalahari | Witdraai - Camel Breeding | Kalahari Camels | Scotty Smith |
| Kalahari personalities | Some Kalahari policemen | Lost city of the Kalahari | Sights on your way |
| Kalahari Bushmen (Komani San, Saasi) | E-mail Site Owner at info@abbott-infotech.co.za |
| Tour South Africa.com | Facts about the continent of Africa | Facts about South Africa |
| Kalahari Marketing |
| Tripod Kalahari page |
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| Upington test page! | Upington test page1 | Upington test page2 |