Bird Droppings July 13, 2026

Can we find learning in the Kalahari Desert?

While out driving this morning, I pulled over along the nearby dirt road, taking pictures of wildflowers and grasshoppers, among other things I find worth pondering. I spent several minutes trying to photograph a seed from a broom sage plant floating along in the early foggy breeze. A bit of down just going where the breeze would take it. It is extremely hard to focus on a moving piece of down, and as I pondered, it was much like walking into a classroom and trying to teach kids who really do not want to be there. Sadly, their thoughts and ideas floated about, carried wherever the day’s breeze blew. I was listening as I drew near the back field, and the sound of crickets and frogs was nearly deafening. An author I found in my later years, Laurens Von der Post, came to mind as I imagined the sounds and images before me. Most of Von der Post’s early learning years were spent on the edge of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, being raised by a Bushman nanny.

“Not only the present but the future depends on a constant reinterpretation of history and a re-examination of the state and nature of human consciousness. Both these            processes are profoundly and mysteriously interdependent and doomed to failure without a continuous search after self-knowledge since we and our awareness are inevitably the main instruments of the interpretation.” Laurens Van der Post

It was in the remembering of a very poignant childhood event Laurens Von der Post was witness to, as he recalls in The Last Days of Man, at least the Bushmen or San. It has been several months, maybe even a year, since I last picked up a Von der Post book. Somehow, in an email last evening, I went looking for this author, and prolific writer he was. As I researched last night and went to Amazon.com, 61 pages of his books and variations and edited versions and translations are available. He died in 1996 at the age of 90, and he had been everywhere and done everything. He was Prince William of Great Britain’s godfather, the only non-royal ever to be so honored. He had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth many years ago. His writings, while covering his adventures and travels worldwide, are best known for his stories of the African bush. A Far Away Place was made into a family movie of children and their trek in the African wilds. But as I read, permeating all his writing is a fascination and deep understanding of a nearly lost people, the African Bushman, or San as they call themselves.  

“The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” Laurens von der Post

“Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us–and those around us— more effectively. Look for the learning.” Eric Allemburgh

Yesterday I was thinking in several directions; on one hand, I was discussing education in the US with a friend who just started graduate school, the pros and cons of public education. I interjected a comment about indigenous peoples of South America and how Amazonian Native peoples will often want to experience civilization. I mentioned a unique program in Brazil as well, protecting indigenous peoples from civilization, where land is kept intact and the rainforest left alone when a new tribe is found, literally keeping civilization out. Often armed guards patrol to prevent missionaries and civilizers from encountering these primitive peoples. I started thinking in terms of the learning environment, and for the indigenous peoples of the jungle, the jungle is the optimal learning environment for them to survive. Far too often we interject our modern societal values and say they should learn this or that. This led me to a statement by John Holt from the other day, one that has been on my mind for several days now.

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” John Holt

In that line of thought, I went toward the Bushman and Von der Post.  Last night I stood in the dark a bit longer than I usually do, even with graduate studies and my own writing, before heading to bed. The sky was still streaked with clouds, and a smiling moon who had been there earlier in the day was gone. I was standing on the porch listening to the night, almost silent. I went back out again a bit later in the morning, and by then all the clouds had engulfed the sky and were encroaching on the ground with fog. My shoulder has been bothering me, so I lay back down, putting off my writing till a bit later in the day.  So often in my days, a student who has an issue, or a friend or teacher, will find a Bird Dropping, and then a series of events follows; I often use the term “coincidence,” or more often synchronicity, and it will have been just what they needed that day.  For whatever reason, I am compelled to build on a thought that passes by as I think, never quite sure why.

“When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.” Mary Kay Ash

Yesterday my wife Pat and I were heading home from a sojourn to see my son and his wife’s display at the Southeastern reptile show. We had stopped for lunch, and I had the best eggplant parmesan ever at Johnny’s Pizza in Loganville to give a plug; however, the waitress was too intent on her phone to offer good service. The food was fantastic. While eating lunch, Pat recalled that a local nursery was having a half-price sale after July 4^th. So we headed to Kellums Nursery in Monroe. I was going what I thought was the quickest way and hit a detour. We ended up driving all over creation but did get to the nursery, and Pat found a few plants she had wanted half price.

“It’s easier to go down a hill than up it, but the view is much better at the top.” Arnold Bennet

Several days ago, I received an email from a person to be added to my morning meanderings. I added this person to my list and received another email yesterday. Here, in my rushing to get a Bird Droppings out, I had written exactly what this person needed. When talking with my son yesterday, he mentioned his former boss admitted she never read my meanderings, and one day she had been searching and by chance opened my daily thought, and again it was what she needed. I am wandering a bit from my learning idea, but it is the contextual framework that we seem to build that provides us with those learning activities and experiences.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” Taylor Benson

“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the windowpanes, which vanish with the warmth.” Soren Kierkegaard

As I sit thinking about the drawing together of thoughts and ideas over the past few days, I come back to my involvement in Foxfire teaching techniques, which is the basis for my one-day-to-be-finished dissertation. I thought about this while reading several passages this morning in Von der Post’s book The Lost World of the Kalahari.  There is a comment about witnessing the last of the Bushmen painters. It seems there was a time when the Bushmen stopped creating their primitive art, which was painted on the rocks in Kalahari caves. The last painter had been killed in an attack, literally a genocide, and no one knew how to take over the art. Laurens Von der Post writes how he heard those gunshots as a child.

As I looked at students walking the halls at my school and at the discussions we have had over the past months on the internet, it really dawned on me that I was where I was meant to be and doing what I was meant to do, offering at least a little more than is normally available. That could be hope, or it could be wisdom. It could be that talking about a Bushman ostrich egg with red-neck kids in Georgia, and preserving pieces of old Georgia in essays, photos, and PowerPoint projects as we go. Von der Post, in his book, went in search of the last of the Bushmen and found himself.  

“Coincidences have never been idle for me, instinctively, but as meaningful as I was to find they were to Jung. I have always had a hunch that they are a manifestation of a law of life of which we are inadequately aware and which in terms of our short life are unfortunately incapable of total definition, and yet however partial the meaning we can extract from them, we ignore it, I believe, at our peril. For as well as promoting some cosmic law, coincidences, I suspect, are some indications to what extent the evolution of our lives is obedient or not obedient to the symmetry of the universe.”  Laurens van der Post reflecting on Carl Jung’s work

For many years now I have read and pondered Jung’s words and ideas. About 20 years ago, an author, James Redfield, wrote about coincidence in a fictional story about a lost manuscript, The Celestine Prophecy. Redfield was trying to explain what he saw happening in his own life. Carl Jung, in the early 1900s, coined the term synchronicity. I simplify and say I am at the right place at the right moment. What is amazing is that when you look at life that way, you begin to see events unfold before you rather than just seeing them through hindsight. I was reading a friend’s note earlier about how everything happens for a reason. I responded jokingly that it only gains reason if we learn from it. As I sit here pondering this morning, it is in looking that we truly see and in listening that we truly hear.

“A continuous search after self-knowledge, since we and our awareness are inevitably the main instruments of the interpretation” Laurens Von der Post

I went to the internet to borrow from the Foxfire website the following:

“In the Foxfire Approach, learning environments are characterized by student involvement and action, by thoughtful reflection and rigorous assessment, by imagination and problem solving, by applications beyond the classroom for what is learned, and by meaningful connections to the community. In these classrooms, students build the ability to work collaboratively and assume responsibility for their own learning processes.” Foxfire Fund

Where and how do the Kalahari Desert, Bushmen, learning, and coincidence all tie in? An easy explanation can be seen by borrowing from a core practice in the Foxfire teaching process.

“Reflection is an essential activity that takes place at key points throughout the work. Teachers and learners engage in conscious and thoughtful consideration of the work and the process. It is this reflective activity that evokes insight and gives rise to revisions and refinements.” Foxfire

We build through reflection, and we grow through reflection.

“Not only the present but the future depends on a constant reinterpretation of history and a re-examination of the state and nature of human consciousness.” Laurens von der Post

I think reflection could be inserted just as easily into Von der Post’s quote; we all need to take time to see where we are and then participate actively as we go in life. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your heart and always give thanks. Namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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