N!ai, the Story of a !Kung woman

ram
1 min readAug 2, 2023

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Iconic documentary made by John Marshall on the life of N!ai of the Jul!hoan tribe in Botswana.

The documentary took 27 years to make on the life of N!ai a young girl who is married off at the age of 8 to another boy aged 13. She doesn't go to live with him for many years and even when she goes to live as a wife, she does not sleep with him for many years.

Tough life for the bushmen of that part of the world, and apparently they were happy with their lives until the white people came along with their guns and rules and regulations like not killing giraffe for meat and their bible.

The documentary has got some very rare footages of their life in the wilderness, a tough life subsisting on roots, fruits and sometime no water for days together. N!kai is a sort of a rebel girl/ woman who has a mind of her own.

In the later part of the documentary, we see the people wearing clothes, and children go to the school and elderly to the church. The men are sent for military training to fight the then rebel guerilla group SWAPO.

Interesting documentary to watch.

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