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Out of Africa: Business Planning with the San People of Namibia
Damarland in Namibia is dry. Very dry. To the west is the Namib desert and to the east
is the Kalahari desert.
It rarely rains here and life is measured by access to water. Waterholes are rare and
aren't always reliable.
What vegetation exists hangs onto precarious life .... and when it dies it can persist
for hundreds of years.
In a sparsely inhabited country, ........ this is the least habited area.
But the nomadic San people have lived here for thousands of years. They are hunter gatherers.
And they've survived because they are careful planners.
The San, or Bushmen as they have also been called, have a rich tradition of cave paintings
and rock carvings. They are part of the San culture and record the animals they depend
upon for survival.
The animals etched in to the rocks cover all species .... and some of the carvings are
thousands of years old.
The animals include ostrich, zebra, hyena, rhinoceros, Oryx, and giraffe. Sometimes people
are included ... or as in this case their feet!
In many cases the detail is incredible and the observation and artistic skills of the
San are to be admired. Apparently this also served as a training aid. It helped the San
teach young members of the tribe what animals to expect and how they could be hunted.
Sometimes the merest outline of an animal is all that is needed. The seal in the bottom
right of this picture illustrates, with just a few lines, exactly what I remember of the
Fur seals up on the distant Skeleton Coast. It also indicates that the San were truly
nomadic and moved from area to area.
That means from waterhole to waterhole. Get it wrong and death quickly follows.
So the San planned ..... and recorded the position of the waterholes for hundreds of
miles in each direction.
Not only did they design this survival "roadmap" they added a lot of detail. Included on the
map is an indication of the game to be found in each area.
Because the presence of water was so vital they also indicted the predictability of each
well or spring.
Each water source is marked with a dot surrounded by a circle. The really sophisticated part
of their records and maps is the fact that the predictability of the water source, how
reliable it was, is indicated by the depth of the dot.
The deeper the dot the more reliable the source.
If the San people, with their nomadic lifestyle, can record and plan as carefully as this,
so should we in our businesses.
We need to plan ahead, consider the reliability of the factors we rely upon, be prepared to
amend our plan ...... and to train our staff.
If you need help with your business or marketing plan then why not contact me now.
I'll help you to put together a plan that will not only help you survive .... it will
help you thrive in a business environment no less inhospitable than that of the desert.
If this short video has inspired or provoked you in to taking action .. or even if you've
enjoyed my pictures of San rock carvings ... please like or subscribe to my YouTube channel .....or
leave me a comment on my website.