"The pride of the San is fierce"

Only the tourists in Lone Tree, south-eastern Botswana, laugh. The residents of this hamlet are featureless, a people to be perhaps explored and expended once curiosity has been satisfied. Women and children will dance, and even sing, giving visitors a brief glimpse into the fables that cement their fragile culture and tentatively bond them to the land.

Men may be tempted to part with a treasured bow and quiver of arrows (alcohol in exchange most welcome) or delight you with tales of when they were hunters: long ago. Xai! Ha'gam, 86, is an arrow maker. 'The San have always been an enigma' "I know a good arrow when I see one. I am a hunter and a hunter needs a good arrow," he says, twirling on his knee a slender reed arrow with its delicate bone point patiently carved.

Forced to abandon their traditional lifestyle and compete in a cash economy, Botswana's San are trading their culture and souls for cash. Ha'gam is bitter, angered at seeing his culture sold to foreign tourists. "Only when white people come here" he says, "do the women and children dance and laugh, not for joy or tradition, but for kgali (alcohol), which makes them sad."

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