Journeys with Flies

the long version

"From 1973 to 1994, the anthropologist Edwin Wilmsen lived and worked among the Zhu, Mbanduru, and Tswana people of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa. Thousands of miles from his home, immersed in what first seemed a radically different place, and operating in languages he initially did not understand, he began a record of his impressions and reflections as a complement to his scientific fieldwork. Journeys with Flies weaves together the multilayered experiences of his life among these Kalahari people, capturing at once the intellectual challenges an anthropologist faces in the field and the myriad and strange ways that unfamiliar experiences come to resonate with deeply personal thoughts and recollections."--BOOK JACKET. "Wilmsen uses biography, poetry, and anthropology to portray the intense realities of life in the Kalahari, carrying the reader across space and time as events in the present trigger emotions and memories."--BOOK JACKET.