The north-western plains of Southern Africa are flệt.  Vurry flệt, as the Noord-Kapenaars say.  In fact, they are so flệt that the over-arching sky takes over completely – especially at night – and makes you feel like one of those characters in films who stands silhouetted up on a hillside while the huge starry sky wheels about you.  In the Kalahari and associated areas, like Namibia and Botswana, you just can’t get away from that limitless expanse.

It’s no wonder then that the Khoi and San, who have lived there time out of mind, have had a lot to say about the stars in the night sky.  Just as the ancient Greeks peopled their skies with petulant gods and mythical creatures, so the African tribes looked up and saw animals and fires and celestial beings.  The drama begins every evening when the sun ‘whose rays are all ablaze with ever-living glory’ – according to Gilbert and Sullivan – disappears with a flourish, leaving an unimaginably huge bowl of sky livid with colours of flame and rose and lemon and mint.  This pyrotechnic display seems to go on forever, and has been the mainstay of many a photographic business.  Then the dark purple creeps in, and the stars begin to wink out, one by one, until the night is so lit up with carpets of little white and blue pinpoints, with an occasional red and green flash, that it actually casts a shadow. The romantic novels call the African night ‘a velvety darkness’ which is only really true some of the time.  In winter the nights can get darn chilly and that ‘velvety darkness’ feels more like a pair of pliers twisting your nose and ears, and in summer the skies can be obscured by cloud.  But anyone who has experienced a warm, still clear Kalahari night will never forget it. African star-lore shows a strong preference for young girls with magical powers.  The Milky Way, according to the Khoi-San, was created when a strong-willed girl became so angry with her mother for not giving her a piece of delicious roasted root that she grabbed the roasting roots from the fire and threw the ashes into the sky.  The red and white roots now glow as stars, while the ashes formed a path in the sky.   “And there the road is to this day.  Some people call it the Milky Way, some call it the Star’s Road, but no matter what you call it, it is the pathway made by a young girl many years ago, who threw the bright sparks of fire high up into the sky to make a road in the darkness.”  Leslau, Charlotte and Wolf:  African Folk Tales (1963).  To the Xhosas the Milky Way was the raised bristles on the back of an angry dog, while the Sotho and Tswana saw it as Moldatladi, ‘the place where the lightning rests’.  Others called it ‘the Spine of the Night’ which kept the sky from collapsing. The Pleiades – that group of seven stars near the head of Orion – also hold great significance for African people, as the appearance of these stars in the night sky signal the beginning of the planting season.  They’re called the ‘digging stars’.  When they appear, it is time to dust off the plough and hoe and set off to the fields to prepare for the crop.  Young Xhosa men count their time of initiation from the day that the Pleiades appear in the sky in July. The Khoi called them the rainstars as they heralded the beginning of preparation for the rains, and believed that young girls who were caught in a storm and got struck by lightning were changed into stars. The Namaquas believed that the Pleiades are the daughters of the sun god (funny that – it is so close to the ancient Greek legend of the Seven Sisters), and they are considered friendly women who help the harvest.  These Seven Sisters were all married to the star we call Aldeberan.  One day Aldeberan went out hunting and shot his arrow (Orion’s sword) at three zebras (Orion’s belt).  It fell short.  But he dared not return home without meat and he dared not retrieve his arrow because of the fierce lion (Betelgeuese) that sat watching the zebras.  And so there he still sits, shivering in the cold night and waiting for lion to go away so that he can pick up his arrow and try again. Continued in Part 2.