The most unique thing about the Kalahari landscape is an absence of surface water, anything but ephemeral. The ground underfoot is porous, truly a Mega Sand Sea.

Everything that walks about impresses upon it. What it means to grow up in such a place, where tracks are omnipresent and noticed everyday of one’s life . . . is a people whose tracking skills are legendary.

Elder (Lead) Camelback Trackers especially were raised on the land, gathering, hunting. Tracking, hunting, comprises a large part of their identities. The last special subsistence hunting licenses were revoked in 1997. Thereafter, hunting for food has been illegal and therefore justifiable access on the land constrained.

These trackers have worked piecemeal jobs for commercial safari hunting operators and wildlife researchers. What they’ve long wished for is real careers as trackers; working out on the land they love and proving themselves servants and heroes for wildlife, their community, their country.

This is their big opportunity.