The Sunday Mail
FOR decades, the Ovahimba tribe in Namibia, cherished for their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle in search of pastures for their livestock – were rarely of fixed abode.
But things are changing, day after day the community embraces modern life, thanks to the advent of globalisation in their isolated population, writes Tirivangani Masawi.
Situated about 825 kilometres from the Namibian capital, Windhoek, Kunene region, near the Angolan border, the Himba, as the tribe is popularly known, have somewhat remained in the stone age.
The Ovahimba tribe also co-exists with the Ovatwa and Zemba tribes, which follow more or less the same lifestyle.
The aforementioned share a striking sameness of resilience to forces of change. The Himba community has made their area a booming tourist attraction frequented by many visitors from all over the globe.
They least care about modern clothes, let alone latest designer labels on the market. Members of this community can comfortably walk in the middle of the city clad in their traditional regalia, which for men resembles a skirt while women don traditional wear, which allows them to go bare breasted. As for the children, these can simply move around in their birthday suits.
Tooth gaps
This is a place where young women deliberately create tooth gaps as a way of enhancing their beauty. Young man who are not married style their hair in Mohawk to signify availability. A traditional village setup can sometimes see livestock and human beings sharing the same shelter.
They reason that sleeping in the cattle kraal is a way of defending their treasure against predators.
A recent week-long visit to the capital of the north-western region, Opuwo, by this writer proved to be an eye opener.
It was a surreal experience. The closest one can be to the “Ovahimba Tourist Attraction”, whose existence many only read about in books. The visit was an epiphany, too dramatic and out of this world; but this is Himbaland and every aspect of their lifestyle is bona fide.
Many tourists, less travelled Namibians and Africans at large could easily mistake this community as marginalised and poor but far from it, the Himba tribe “wants for nothing”. With a herd of roughly 500 cattle, 250 sheep and more than 10 000 goats; what could this tribe ask for, besides of course, land and water?
Land, though dry, they have in abundance, but water sees them on the move in search of the precious liquid. So, many a times building permanent structures for the Ovahimba tribe seems unnecessary. As a result, they live in the open air and to them, this is no sign of poverty at all.
But a partnership between the Government of Namibia and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), to fight drought induced by climate change in Kunene region, is slowly but surely introducing the Himba community to some sort of modernity.
The programme introduced production of vegetables, which despite their popularity everywhere else, is not fashionable among the Ovahimba, who believe that meat and milk is the only food fit for humans.
Even more ironic is the fact that as much as the Himba community is slowly adapting to gardening, which allows them to live longer in one place; they still think the type of food produced through gardening is best suited for their livestock.
In the Ovahimba community, meat determines an individual’s level of wealth.
Government intervention
Cattle in this dry land of Namibia have become browsers rather than grazers, because of the unavailability of grazing lands.
Although the Himba lifestyle is normal within their space, the Namibian government has a running mitigation programme under the Office of the President, which finds ways of improving their lifestyle through provision of portable water and sanitation facilities.
The programme, which is steered by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry in partnership with FAO, other development agencies and former Namibian Deputy Prime Minister, Libertina Amadhila, has seen the drilling of 19 boreholes in the area as well as installation of several water drilling pumps in surrounding aquifers.
It has also hastened the construction of schools being built in some of Namibia’s remotest parts and this has culminated in the Himba sending their children to school.
Ideally it would not be surprising to any new visitor to the area to meet a child aged eight manning a herd of as many as 100 goats in the middle of nowhere.
Narrating how she has adjusted her lifestyle and become part of the community, President’s Office Regional Head in the Kunene region Mrs Rebecca Namwandi, who is Oshiwambo speaking but is conversant in any language in the Namibian diction, said the Himba community are fast adapting to modernisation and do not move as regularly as they used to.
“In the past, the movement used to be very regular and these people, whose major source of wealth is cattle, now live longer at a particular place because their livestock can now access water and pastures easily. We have been engaging with them in the past few years to assist them with the most basic necessities including water and also we work in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture to make sure that the water supply material is well maintained so it does not fall apart,” Namwandi said.
Another long-serving civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, Eugenia Simwanza, who is responsible for the training and outreach of the community on the latest agriculture and horticulture farming methods, believes that the intervention to combat serious challenges associated with drought in the area have gone a long way in emancipating the largely marginalised community.
Breakdowns
“What is perhaps needed now is a constant engagement with the community to teach them how to maintain the water pumping equipment in case of breakdowns. Sometimes it might take long to have the ministry officials come here to fix it. So far the adaptation to this way of life has been rather fast and we see differences every time we visit, which means we are going in the right direction,” he said.
Preferring anonymity, an elder at one of the settlements in the area, speaking through an interpreter, told us that since the intervention of government and development partners, their lives have improved.
“We rely mostly on our wealth and we have herds of cattle that we take care of season to season. However, of late it has not been easy to deal with the water scarcity, so we now give our livestock water at the water tank constructed by the government. We have since settled here close to the watering point so our livestock can easily access water,” he said.
As this intervention continues, perhaps important facilities like hospitals can be set up, as some villages are as far as 160 kilometres from Opuwo, the nearest town, which makes it challenging for pregnant women to access medical facilities.
With the Himba culture of being a close-knit community, which relies pretty much on everyone’s contribution for survival – agriculture, schools and medical facilities could see them thriv
