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The fading culture of Damaraland2

Before leaving Etosha and starting on our long drive across northern Namibia to the Skeleton Coast we bought a fresh supply of bottled water for ourselves and filled our empties with well water from the camp.

Before leaving Etosha and starting on our long drive across northern Namibia to the Skeleton Coast we bought a fresh supply of bottled water for ourselves and filled our empties with well water from the camp.

Later that morning a group of young boys appeared. Trudging along the road in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by seemingly endless savannah, they were headed for some distant village. Odie pulled the van over and we held out the bottles of well water. In Canada a 12-year-old boy offered a bottle of water might well keep on walking but these kids were ecstatic. They smiled, laughed, and did a little dance as they held the prize over their heads. In the parched interior of northern Namibia clean water is a rare and precious gift.

Our route south from Etosha leads into northern Damaraland and skirts the northern wilderness of Kaokoland. It begins in sparsely populated rolling savannah where the annual rainfall is sufficient for subsistence farming and the grazing of a few hardy cattle and goats. Most of the land is parcelled out into huge private ranches, but except for the miles of fences and the occasional distant cluster of farm buildings the country is empty. Villages become fewer and smaller, and the circular thatched rondavels of the north give way to occasional shacks cobbled together from tin and scrap wood.

In pre-colonial time, before they were displaced by European settlers, Herero farmers and Himba herders occupied this region. And before the Herero and Himba laid claim to the land, Damaraland and Kaokoland were part of a vast wilderness that belonged to the animals and the Bushmen. For thousands of years these remarkable people, known also as San, roamed the area in small family groups of hunter-gatherers, surviving in a hostile land with virtually no surface water. Today most of these people, the Herero, the Himba, and the San, have been absorbed into the margins of Namibian society. A few still cling to their traditions but the vast majority belongs to a disadvantaged underclass struggling to make the transition from their semi-nomadic lifestyle to an urban economy.

At Otjo, a small ranching town about 100 km south of Etosha, we stopped to buy provisions from the well-stocked local market. It was midday and blisteringly hot but among the shoppers were several Herero women dressed in voluminous long-sleeved Victorian gowns stuffed with multiple ankle-length petticoats. Outside in the town square a group of Himba women, bare-breasted and wearing little more than goatskin mini-skirts and some metal and shell jewelry, had set up a craft stall. Looking at them now it's hard to believe that the Herero and Himba were once part of the same culture – both Bantu-speaking people who migrated out of east Africa and displaced the San a few centuries earlier.

About 150 years ago the Bantu population split, those now known as Herero settled down to a pastoral life in the grasslands of central Namibia while the Himba pursued their nomadic tradition as cattle herders. When Namibia was annexed by Germany in the late 19th century European settlers began occupying the land and their missionaries set out to convert, or at least cover up, the naked "savages". Ignoring the sensitivities of the "morality police" the Himba packed up and moved farther north into the remote semi-desert of Kaokoland where they continued to herd their cattle and dress to suit the climate. The Herero, alarmed at the loss of their traditional land, attempted to resist. In 1904 they rebelled against the German settlers and, during the Battle of Waterberg and the ensuing years of attempted genocide, more then half of the Herero population was wiped out. Those that survived were persuaded to adopt Christianity and dress accordingly.

Today many Herero women still bundle up in the Victorian garments introduced by the missionaries while their Himba sisters dress as they always have – covering their bodies with a blend of butter, ochre and herbs protects them from the desert sun and gives their skin a rich reddish glow. The same mixture is used to create their unique rope-like hairdos. Neck and arms are adorned with multiple metal rings and married women wear a conch shell between their breasts. An estimated 6,000 Himba still live as semi-nomadic herders in northern Kaokoland but increasingly they are abandoning their harsh desert life and migrating into the towns. Like the women we met in Otjo, they supplement their meager earnings by selling native crafts and posing for tourists.

Leaving Otjo we head west across a vast intermontane plateau toward the Grootberg Mountains and Brandberg Massif. Farms and a few trees are clustered into dry river courses where windmills suck water from beneath the parched surface. The flat gravel and sand plateau is dotted with clumps of poisonous Euphorbia bush and the distant flat-topped mountains are utterly barren. Except for a few ostriches we see no other signs of life, yet for thousands of years the San or Bushmen made this desolate land their home.

Ahead of us the granite mountains of the Brandberg Massif rise abruptly from the flat expanse of semi-desert to the 2,573-metre summit of Konigstein, Namibia's highest peak. No one is sure what role this place played in the lives and traditions of the Bushmen but the abundance of rock paintings and etchings suggests that its many shallow caves and sheltered rock ledges were of great spiritual significance.

We joined local guide, Seth, for a two-hour hike along the dry bed of Tsisab Ravine and up a steep trail to the site of the "white lady", where an overhanging wall of granite is adorned with figures of animals and humans. Most are in shades of reddish ochre, grey, or black, but one figure is white. Explorers who first studied the site compared the style to early Mediterranean rock art and speculated that the white figure was that of a European woman. Although most scholars are now convinced that it depicts a male, probably a boy smeared in white clay for some sort of ritual, the name "white Lady" persists. No one really knows except the artist and his subject, both of whom have been dead for at least a thousand years.

That evening we set up camp under a large camelthorn tree on the banks of the dry river bed and Seth explained how the San, who may once have camped in this very spot, were able to survive in a land with no surface water. Beneath the dusty dry riverbed the roots of trees and other plants have tapped a source of underground water. Some of them draw water into tubers and hollow stems and the San, who had an intimate knowledge of their environment and its flora, knew how to find them and collect their life-giving moisture. They also understood where to dig shallow sip-wells reached by long grass straws. And, during rare periods of rain, water was stored in the shells of ostrich eggs and buried for future use.

Many generations have passed since nomadic Bushmen, armed with bows and poison arrows, tracked game, searched for water, and built their temporary dwellings in the semi-desert of central Namibia. But the legacy of their remarkable hunter-gatherer society is preserved in some of the world's oldest rock art, and the paintings at Twyfelfontein are even more impressive than those at Brandberg.

Located about 50 kilometres from the "White Lady", Twyfelfontein (doubtful spring) is a broad barren valley flanked by flat-topped mountains of red sandstone. In the centre of the valley, near a perennial spring, the desert wind has sculpted the rock into fantastic shapes, creating a landscape of towering monoliths, caves, and ledges. And nearly every sheltered surface is covered with paintings and etchings of animals, hunting scenes, and geometric designs. No one knows what they mean or why they are here.

But, after spending most of a day wandering through the surreal, ghost-haunted landscape of Twyfelfontein, I came away with a sense of having visited the past – of seeing the Bushman's world before the animals stopped coming to "doubtful spring" and the people themselves were displaced by others.