Having already made a documentary on the People of the Great Sand Face, what made you decide to write a book?
Sometimes it is life that decides what must be done, and one simply listens to what is asked.
Even while making the film, People of the Great Sand Face, all those years ago, I was acutely aware of how much more there was to say, how much more of the story of this ancient race needed to be told. I was writing the book then, in the desert, in the minutest of fonts into a tiny notebook, and the whole content thereof, after much thinking and learning is the foundation for my book The Bushman Winter Has Come.
Was it difficult to integrate back into modern society after seven years in the Kalahari Desert?
The first year was difficult ... I sat on my stoep with not much reason to get up and do anything ... it all seemed so purposeless, there were no men to hunt with, no snares to check. It was like living in a five star hotel with all the expenses paid. It was also funny ... I remember running my first bath, and keeping, and re-using the water for three weeks, simply because I could not bring myself to waste it. Where I had lived, that much water would have brought joy to many people.
It was very difficult integrating back into modern society, and it is perhaps something that, fortunately, I shall never entirely do. The difficulty lay mostly in the fact that I was trying to reconcile my journey from a fundamental existence into a largely incidental one. So much of what had become within me, had no place of recognition in the modern world.
What are three of the most important lessons that you learnt from your time with the /Gwikwe Bushmen?
I think the greatest lessons were learnt in the years after that time, the years of thinking and coming to understand the true nature of humanity in my own successes and failures. And the lessons learned in trying to bring the truth of this ancient race into word-form, so that in the reading, it would be said that I had honoured the SoulSpirit of these people. Life goes on forever, and I have come to understand the accountability of all my doings, of our doings.
I am still learning those lessons ... the true nature of my Being, and of my place here between heaven and earth.
What do you hope people will take away from this book?
A deeper understanding of who these people really are, and what they have brought into the context of our lives on earth, and what they have contributed towards the spiritual evolution of humanity.
I hope people will gain more truth with regard to our own nature, and how we stand in this world. I think it is an integral part of human evolution to carry, in knowledge, the truth of that which came before us ... the absence or presence of that knowledge reflects clearly in who we are now.
I would like to know that I have made it a little more possible for people to acknowledge and live within the world of Spirit ... to become certain, that it is acceptable to believe in that which you cannot see ... to know, that what is unknown, is also true.
Do you have a favourite memory from the time that you spent on the Great Sand Face? Would you mind sharing it with us?
Memories ... there are so many ... my relationship with the Gemsbok bull, the old man, my journey’s into the astral world and the memories which come with that, my still nights on the endless sand face, sounds, the smells, the women, the men, the voices of free children, my love for these people ... it is all a favourite memory, and I hope one day, to say that my life is my favourite memory, with all the good and all the bad, because the fact is, that I live ... and that, is worth remembering.
Find out more about The Bushman Winter has Come.
Read an extract from the book.