Bushmen Stories: Beginning

The Bushmen believe that in the beginning there was only a shadowy darkness all over the world. The sun, moon and stars did not even exist yet. Therefore it was night or what they call “Ga” all the time. This darkness they called “Gagen” and these two were present all over the world. Night (Ga) and his partner, Darkness (Gagen) existed as “ou volk” or actual human-like beings, from before the ancient times. Nobody, not even today, knows how old they are and where they came from. What we do know is that old “Night” and his wife “Darkness” still live in the same cave, as they always did, deep in the Ghost Mountains of the Kalahari Desert. They never had a son, only the three daughters. They lived their quiet, dark life deep in this stone cave, while the whole world outside was covered in the eternal night and darkness. It is said that before we were born and again after we die, we exist almost as if asleep, in this eternal shadowy dream-world and only the most vivid of our dreams are manifested into a brief flash of illumination that we call life.