Thomas J. Larson Ordine dei libri

"For years, I'd heard spark-eyed stories of Bliksem-my father's rapturous, fantastic tales of this wild, legendary, noble little savage of a dog. the truth is that dogs are the unfettered manifestations of the joyous, free-romping, utterly present state that we all long so mightily to be in. For my dad, Bliksem was this manifestation. Constrained and burdened from an early age by the religious piety of his well-meaning parents, Dad decided early on to reject the cold darkness of that worried world, and to step out into the clear, golden light of an adventurous life-to Africa, to Europe, and the great beyond.

This exciting Huckleberry Finn kind of story is about two African herdboys in 1950 going down the Okavango River in a dugout canoe. The beautiful river flows down out of the Benguela Highlands of Angola, crosses the Caprivi Strip of Namibia, then into Botswana where it spreads out through the vast Okavango Delta. The true-to-life adventures of Dibebe and Andara are about hunting, fishing, surviving, visiting friends and kinsmen along the great meandering river.The Hambukushu tribal ceremonies are true to the culture of these remote riverine people. Brave canoemen have traveled through the vast delta in dugout canoes. Bushman paintings can be seen in the mysterious Tsodilo Hills. It is possible that prehistoric peoples left their bones in a cave in these hills.The anthropologist author made eight expeditions from 1950 to 1994 to study the culture of these matrilineal, Bantu-speaking hunters, fishermen, farmers. All events in the story were possible in those long ago days of 1950. This story of karikaripamatango - the olden days - is most informative and educational reading for young people and adults alike!

In light of the terrible AIDS tragedy unfolding in southern Africa, onegets an enormous sense of sadness and loss when reading The HambukushuRainmakers of the Okavango. Tom J. Larson was one of the lastanthropologists to experience and record their ancient culture before itwas so radically impacted by modernization and the ravages of the AIDSepidemic. Over the course of many years, he earned the trust of theHambukushu and was allowed the kind of access needed to painstakinglyrecord the minutiae of every aspect of their daily lives. What emergedis a portrait of a complex, distinctive African culture defined by theabundance of their homeland, the vast and wild Okavango River delta, andby the powerful Rainmaker chiefs who controlled the very fabric of theirexistence. To read Larson's extraordinary book is to understand how thebelief systems that worked so well for them for centuries wreak suchhavoc on them today.