Patricia Glyn

PATRICIA GLYN – synopsis of presentations

DAWID’S RETURN – A PRESENTATION BY PATRICIA GLYN

What can South Africa’s first people teach us? A great, great deal, as Patricia Glyn found out on a quest into the Kalahari with a family of Khomani Bushmen*.

The destination: The Khomani’s ancestral home, taken from them by the apartheid government to establish a national park, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (KTP).

The goal: to find traces of a long-dead Bushman by the name of Makai Kruiper – a legendary mystic, hunter and healer who roamed ‘The Thirst Land’ a century ago.

The guide: his grandson, Dawid Kruiper, an old man of 76 who is celebrated for achieving the greatest human rights victory for the Bushmen of Southern Africa – the return of this land to his people.

Patricia’s talk is about what she witnessed on the trip:

• the fragments that remain in the Kalahari sand of a long-gone life;
• the extraordinary memory and tracking skills that helped Dawid find his grand-father’s artifacts, some 100 years after they’d been buried;
• the secrets that have been handed down from son to son.

The presentation is also about how losing their land brought the Khomani people to a state of utter despair and rage, and how going back to their heritage places helped to heal and restore them. The talk discusses how winning the land claim did not necessarily result in a new and profitable life and the help that the claimants need in managing this complicated process.

This is a story about just how much the Bushmen can teach us about respect for our natural resources and how to preserve them. Patricia demonstrates how the ‘old’ Bushman attitudes hold the key to our environmental future. She shows how little they consume, how much they value what they consume and how much they share.

But it’s also an amusing talk about a journey with a group of irreverent storytellers, free spirits, hilarious mimics and loving people.

Once again, Patricia and her professional team of photographers and filmmakers have brought back thousands of photos and hours of footage, the best of which have been selected to illustrate her talk about this grand adventure. The presentation lasts approximately one hour but can be tailored to suit any conference timetable.

*The Kruiper family wish to be known as Bushmen, not as San.

FOOTING WITH SIR RICHARD’S GHOST

In the footsteps of her ancestors and with her dog by her side, she walked 2 200 kilometres from Durban to the Victoria Falls.

Patricia’s journey shadowed that of her adventurer ancestors, Sir Richard Glyn and his brother Robert who came to Africa in 1863 because they’d read David Livingstone’s account of ‘The Smoke That Thunders’ and wanted to see this mighty cascade and to hunt Africa’s big game.

Using Richard’s diary about the old party’s trip, Patricia found and walked their route along the 19th-century wagon trails that once snaked along the great river systems of South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe. She crashed through thick bush and deep Kalahari sand, walked unarmed in Big Five territory and consorted with Zimbabwe’s notorious ‘war veterans’. When her ancestors’ wagons moved, so did she, where they stopped for provisions, so did she – eventually reaching The Falls on exactly the same day as they had, 142 years later.

The talk highlights:

• how much the subcontinent has changed in the century-and-a-half between these expeditions, and is rich with illustrations and photographs from famous Victorian hunting and trading expeditions;
• wagon life of old, the great African leaders and eccentric Boer elephant hunters who helped Richard and Robert on their way to the Falls;
• the impact which the early guns had on the wildlife of Southern Africa, and the devastating impact which cattle farming is having on the land today;
• in many of the areas Patricia walked through, rivers are dammed, ravines are choked with alien vegetation and people no longer live with their culture and traditions intact;
• like that of her forebears, Patricia’s story is about reaching her destination through the kindness and hospitality of Africa’s rural people.

It’s also the story of her little dog, Tapiwa, who walked by her side, and the puppy they found dying in Botswana’s bush. It’s a tale about personal development, as the woman who could hardly read a map learned how to navigate by GPS and lead her two-person back-up team through the thirst land on the peripheries of the Kalahari. It’s about the crew’s near disasters, their highs and their lows. It’s about the wonder and simple delights of camping in the great African outdoors. It’s a tale about meeting challenges, facing fear and being rewarded with great insights and even greater peace.

The presentation is brutally honest, extremely funny in places and deeply moving.

Patricia’s talk has a strong conservation message and demonstrates the great health benefits of walking, as this 46 year old woman managed the tremendous physical task of slaving through thick sand and thornveld for 25 to 40 kilometres per day.

The one-and-a-quarter hour presentation is illustrated by magnificent slides (a distillation of 8 000 taken on the trip) and wonderful video footage, as the journey was filmed for a television documentary. It is inspirational, entertaining and thought-provoking.