When he said this, |hɑŋǂkɑssʼo was emphasising to Lucy Lloyd that European and |xɑm people had very different ideas about the nature of rain. For Lloyd and the others, rain was ‘precipitation’ – the condensation of water vapour in the atmosphere and its descent to the earth in drops; for the |xɑm, ‘rain liquid’ was only one aspect of ǃkhwɑː, the word commonly translated as ‘water’ or ‘rain’.

The |xɑm narrators must have thought it essential for Bleek and Lloyd to know about ǃkhwɑː – they dictated hundreds of pages of anecdotes in which ǃkhwɑː plays a central role. Dorothea Bleek later selected many of these narratives for inclusion in Bantu Studies. A large number of these extracts are about the special relationship that ǃkhwɑː had with women and how ǃkhwɑː was involved in the bringing of rain.

There are three main aspects to ǃkhwɑː, although it is sometimes not easy to distinguish between them. One emphasises ǃkhwɑː as H2O, the chemical compound. This aspect is sometimes, but not always, qualified by the phrases ǃkhwɑː ‖ki (‘rain liquid’) or as ‘rain's rain’ (ǃkhwɑː-kɑ ǃkhwɑː). The second manifestation of ǃkhwɑː is as ‘rain-cattle’ (ǃkhwɑː-ka xɔrɔ), which were captured by rainmakers and led to the places where rain was needed (Hewitt 1986). A third aspect of ǃkhwɑː emerges clearly in the Part 5 narratives about women – here ǃkhwɑː appears as a conscious being, personifying rain or water and the natural forces associated with it, such as clouds, wind, thunder and lightning. This is a personification, ‘Rain’ himself. The two other aspects already mentioned – ǃkhwɑː as precipitation and ǃkhwɑː as rain-cattle – are under the control of this last manifestation of ǃkhwɑː.

ǃkhwɑː and the rain

In an arid, semi-desert environment with 200 mm (8 inches) or less of rain per year, water was a central concern in the lives of the |xɑm. Rain in |xɑm-kɑ ǃɑũ falls in scattered thundershowers, refreshing plants and attracting animals to the fresh growth in some places, and leaving other places dry. ‘Rain-cattle’ (ǃkhwɑː-kɑ xɔrɔ) were perhaps a conceptualisation of this weather pattern: where they walked, they shed their blood and milk that fell as rain. People always asked for a female rain (ǃkhwɑː |ɑiti) to walk over their place because it was gentle and deep-soaking. But when ǃkhwɑː was angry, a male rain (ǃkhwɑː gwɑi) brought strong winds, thunder and lightning, pouring down floods of water, killing people and destroying their homes.