SA author chats to book club
Book club members honoured to have Paul Myburgh as their guest speaker.
PAUL John Myburgh, South African author, anthropologist and multiple award-winning documentary filmmaker spent an afternoon with the ladies at a book club, speaking about his life and books.
His latest book, The Bushman Winter Has Come is the true story of Exodus, the inevitable journey of the last of the First People, as they leave the Great Sand Face and head for the modern world and cultural oblivion. “I spent seven years with the ‘People of the Great Sand Face’, a group of Gwikwe Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert.”
Paul was asked questions by some of the members and he told them about some of the years he was with the bushmen. “I didn’t learn anything from them, I did it for myself and I take full credit for being there. We lived together and when I was taking photographs of them I it had no effect on them at all. The bushmen called my camera, ‘the thing that cannot see is looking at us,’ it was quite funny,” said Paul.
“It took me quite a while to understand the bush men but after a while we became spiritually and physically as one. The quality of their souls was bared to me as mine was to them. It was a fascinating part of my life.”
One of the member’s said, “As soon as I’d finished the first chapter I wanted to carry on reading the book, it was very hard to put down.” Another member asked, “What do you hope people will take away from this book?” He answered, “A deeper understanding of who these people really are, and what they have brought into the context of our lives on Earth, and what they have contributed towards the spiritual evolution of humanity. I hope people will gain more truth with regard to our own nature, and how we stand in the world. I think it is an integral part of human evolution to carry, in knowledge, the truth of that which comes before us… the absence or presence of that knowledge reflects clearly in who we are now.”
Paul has spent the last sixteen years working on the story of the excavation of the Little Foot fossilised skeleton in the Cradle of Humankind.
The ladies thoroughly enjoyed spending time with and listening to Paul and they learnt a great deal more about him and his life.
