Inside the shelter of his house, Joao’s old and bony fingers move slowly around his painting. ‘This is me,’ he says quietly, ‘hunting with my bow and arrow. I dream of the eland at night. And in the morning I get my bow and arrow ready. I set off in the veld. This here is the eland that I’m hunting.

‘I hear the eland in the wind and see the spoor on the ground, covered with some leaves from the wind. I follow it carefully so that the eland won’t hear me.

‘When I find the eland I shoot it with a poisoned arrow. I wait, I wait until it lies still. Then I cover it with branches. I go home and sleep. Next day, my family and I fetch the meat and take it home. Here we cut it up and share a piece with each one who came to help me. The owner who shot the eland – me – gets the liver and the insides.

‘Here at Platfontein is no eland.
When I think of this eland inside me, I just take a sheet of paper and draw it.’

Joao was born during the late 1920s in Cuito, Angola. He received his traditional education from his family, who made a living from hunting and gathering.

When his parents were killed in the Angolan war in the late 1970s, Joao fled to Omega in Namibia.
He was employed both as a tracker and kitchen worker by the South African Defence Force until moving to Schmidtsdrift in 1990.