The San of the Kalahari and the Road of Ashes

In the Kalahari, in the south of Africa, the land is dry and wide and the nights are enormous.

The San people have lived there for longer than almost anybody has lived anywhere. When they speak, their words contain sounds made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth, small sharp clicks, like a stone tapped once against another stone. It is one of the oldest ways of speaking on earth.

They know the desert the way you know your own house. Which root holds water. Which footprint was made this morning and which was made yesterday. Where the rain went.

And they tell this story about the sky.

Long ago, when the world was new, there were no stars at all. The nights were completely black, and anybody walking after dark could not find their way, and had to sit down and wait for morning.

There was a girl sitting by a fire. She was waiting for the people who had gone hunting, and they were late, and it was very dark.

So she reached into the fire and took up handfuls of the glowing ashes, and she threw them high, high up into the black sky.

And they stuck there.

They spread across the whole sky in a long soft band of light, a road of ashes stretching from one edge of the world to the other. We call it the Milky Way.

The hunters looked up, and saw the road, and followed it, and came home.

And ever since, on every clear night, it is still up there. A girl's fire, thrown into the dark, so that nobody would be lost.

Look up tonight. Goodnight. Sleep well.