Replying to LO28076 --
Dear Organlearners,
Daan Joubert < daanj@kingsley.co.za > and Andrew Campbell
< ACampnona@aol.com>have > began a thing and I am being
drawn into it like a lamb unable to escape its lot ;-)
Andrew asked and Daan replied:
>>Daan, could you find, for US here, a new lamb
>>in the desert
>> :: Daan, are lambs born to live in deserts
>
>Dear Andrew, At is the one who knows about deserts.
Greetings dear Daan and Andrew,
I am sure there are other fellow learners who have had some experience
with some desert, perhaps merely driving through one on some journey to
another place.
Driving through a desert with no purpose connected to the desert itself is
a torment, especially when in some stretches of 100 km or more nothing
changes. I have often heard of people, after having driven on the
Trans-Kalahari "Highway" through Botswana (some 800 km) from South Africa
to Namibia, swearing that never again they will do it. In future they will
fly by plane.
It takes me sometimes 4 days to travel through a desert (not to stay in
because I want to get to another desert) which takes others less than a
day. I might see a "meerkat" and suddenly this cute little animal draws me
like a magnet.
I know of a husband-wife team who studied "meerkatte" (plural) for two
years in the Kalahari. These animals have a complex social system. For
example, each day one of them have to keep watch. It is highly paid job
because others of the clan would often run to the sentinel and offer him
(this is a job for males) a tasty morsel like a lizard or a scorpion.
Although a highly sought after job, each day another male does the job.
Speak of rotating sentinalship, not to speak of rotating leadership in
human organisations!
The clan also have a child-nurse during the day whenever the clan has
young in good times. She (this is a job for females) set up a kindergarten
close to the holes leading to their underground homes. She and the young
are cared for in the same manner as the sentinel. But here there is no
rotation among females. The same female does the job until the young can
care for themselves. Next time it will be another female acting as child
nurse.
One day a female of the clan (which the husband-wife team had been
studying for months) had babies. After some days more (I cannot remember
how many any more) she brought them out to be cared for in the
kindergarten. She took one look at the woman sitting close by and decided
that from now on this woman will have the job as child-nurse. She brought
her young to the woman and then ran away with the rest of the clan to
search for food or play games. The woman knew that she had gained so much
in trustworthyness that she simply had to accept the job.
Now come the interesting parts. After some time the first meerkat came
back, offering her a scorpion to eat. She just had to accept it with the
same thanksgiving ritual as the meerkat. Then another one came with a
snake, etc. She had to hide these morsels carefully away so that they
would not become offended. During the night she and her husband had to
bury these morsels far way so that the clan would not become the wiser.
The woman's ordeal did not stop here. She had to teach the young just as
the meerkat female would do. The job has great responsibilities. Can you
imagine how much "meerkat sense" she had to make out of her past
observations so as to succeed in her job? But she kept on doing the job
for weeks because she knew that only when the young have grown up, the
clan will relieve her. Next time it will be the job for another meerkat
female.
I think this is what "outfoldenmentality" is -- to become a meerkat for
the meerkatte.
I wanted to tell you a story about a lamb in the desert, but the meerkatte
caught my attention. See how slowly my travel through a desert is ;-) I
hope this topic will become a 800 km journey through the Kalahari with
many places to stop.
Please Andrew, paint for us a little picture of a "meerkat" showing the
metanoia of the story.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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