The Nomadic Alternative – Page 151

sporadic bursts. It is unpredictable, and he oscillates between extremes of idleness and energy. But the care of the children demands a woman's constant vigilance. Women are the true guardians of the species. Naturally they are more tenacious and teeth-gritting than their men. A woman often provides her hunter husband with the bulk of his diet. Her appreciation of the vegetable world has astonished taxonomic botanists, who have often accepted a native opinion as to whether a plant is, or is not, a distinct species, until a chromosome count in a laboratory decides the matter - usually in favour of the native. Kalahari Bushmen women are responsible for over three quarters of the total intake of food by weight, and half that comes from one species, the Mangetti nut (vicimodendron rautanenii). Yet some Bushmen can name eighty four other species of edible plants growing in their territory (apart from four hundred inedible ones). Nutritional diseases are virtually unknown among them. In years of drought their cattle-breeding neighbours seek famine relief from the government. The Bushmen remain untroubled.

In the spirit of science the woman takes her collecting basket and her baby each day and promenades for a short walk in the bush on a shopping expedition. Since she has already established a contract with her surroundings and takes what she needs but nothing more, everything is free. But she does not concentrate on vegetables alone; for she knows that too much roughage has never benefited the stomach lining. She puts into her basket any edible grub, 'vile worm', lizard, egg or shellfish she can catch conveniently.

On the northern ice the green things do not grow and Eskimo women go out to fish instead - but adaptation to the Arctic is a very specialized performance.

Even the hunters, who are forced to hunt on the fringes of settlement and whose territories have been spoiled by outsiders, can always rely on an alternative when their own resources run low.

The settler and his possessions are of themselves a recumbent crop to be looted on occasion - ardently prolific, both animal and vegetable, stupid yet dangerous: "We eat animals. We eat the