Kalahari Quotes

“The entire Blue Pride, nine in all, surrounded us, nearly all of them asleep. We were quite literally in bed with a pride of wild Kalahari lions.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“At times, we need to be like the weed, which bends in the wind,' the old shaman eventually says.”
― Arianna Dagnino, The Afrikaner

“The !Kung are strongly set against violence, and accord it no honor. To have to fight is to have failed to find a solution by wiser means... “Fighting is dangerous—someone might get killed”.”
― Lorna Marshall

“At last it was raining. Water was streaming through gaps in the window frames and trickling into our laps. “Smell it! Smell it! God, how wonderful! How beautiful!” we shouted over and over.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“She knew as well as anyone that the world could be a place of trial and sorrow, that there was injustice and suffering and heartlessness - there was enough of all that to fill the great Kalahari twice over, but what good did it do to ponder that and that alone? None, she thought.”
― Alexander McCall Smith , The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine

“But,” I asked, “ why insult a man after he has gone to all that trouble to track and kill an animal and when he is going to share the meat with you so that your children will have something to eat?”
“Arrogance,” was his cryptic answer.
“Arrogance?”
“Yes, when a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle.”
― Richard B. Lee

“Because of the heat and the lack of water and materials for shelter, much of the Central Kalahari has remained unexplored and unsettled. From our camp there was no village around the corner or down the road. There was no road. We had to haul our water a hundred miles through the bushveld, and without a cabin, electricity, a radio, a television, a hospital, a grocery store, or any sign of other humans and their artifacts for months at a time, we were totally cut off from the outside world.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“Because it often receives somewhat more than ten inches of rainfall, the Central Kalahari is not a true desert. It has none of the naked, shifting sand dunes that typify the Sahara and other great deserts of the world. In some years the rains may exceed twenty—once even forty— inches, awakening a magic green paradise.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“Especially after our Makgadikgadi experiences, we were very aware that the two absolute essentials for survival in the Kalahari were water and the truck.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“As we stood watching the ominous cloud, a strong wind, gusting to thirty miles per hour, struck us full in the face, tugging at our clothes and bringing tears to our eyes. Only miles of dry grass stood between us and the fire.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari

“After the fire passed us it marched on across the dune tops into the Kalahari, lighting the night sky like a spectacular sunset. Behind it, the cool pink glow of burned-out trees and logs remained, until the fire’s crimson was lost in the blush of dawn.”
― Mark Owens, Cry of the Kalahari