Saturday, February 10, 2007
Namibia
Gobabis
The Trans-Kalahari Highway goes through the Omaheke region of Namibia. The capital for the area is Gobabis, a nice enough place. I've hiked from Windhoek through to Botswana before but never really stopped here for very long.
On the urging of a Canadian anthropologist, Renee Sylvain, from University of Guelph I wanted to take a closer look at the area. I knew there was a small craft shop a bit back from the road and checked there the frist night but it was a bit late and it looked a bit dead.
The next morning I returned. I found a bit more action. The coordinator of the Omaheke San Trust is Mary, a Kenyan lady. The number two was a Nama lady named Jacobsen and one San man called Nicky who runs a guest house at the back of office. Nicky expressed concern that he would not be long at OST as his contract was expiring this year.
Renee had given me three names to look for in Gobabis and one to avoid who shall not be mentioned.
Willem Abuse (a-boo-say, not a-buse) was contacted by phone and came to the office. He was wearing a green labourers outfit as labourers for the muicipality do. We sat and introduced ourselves and I gave him the update. Mr. Abuse was very fluent in English and very clever. I enjoy knowing him. His cell phone seemed reliable as he'd already been called on it so I took the number.
The second name on Renee's list was Rashida Tuaire. I found her at the Epako location just outside of town. Rashida is living with her two children in a hut made of corrugated iron with a couple flowers painted on the outside. There was one small tree in the yard for shade and a small garden.
Rashida is a craft expert, having worked for the OST craft centre for some years and being an ostrich eggshell artist herself we chatted about a trip to Canada among other things. I made a short video of Rashida introducing herself and talking about a decorated eggshell that she had a the house. She spoke first in Ju/'hoansi and then in English, both well.
Rashida expressed confidence about her ability to travel abroad and was interested to know if she could wear skins while she was working which seemed fine to me. I asked how confident she was in her ability to talk about culture, very. How much interest she had in going overseas, much. Also, who would look after the kids, sister.
Things seemed in order so I left her to go to the bush.
Corridor
From the guest house at the OST Maco (Ma-koo) was a tagalong for the free trip back home. About 240 kms away from Gobabis was Corridor Post Thirteen. Thirteen was in the middle between 1 and 22, all the posts. The numbers seemed to moved in sequence the way houses on a street normally do, odds on one side and evens on the other.
Thirteen was the one with the filling station, the shops and the disco so it was nice it was in the middle. Different tribes seemed to stay at different posts and San people were at Thirteen, Fifteen, Seventeen and Eighteen at least and probably more.
From Thirteen to Fifteen we picked up Maco's friend, Deacon. The girls were pretty good at jibber-jabber and entertained themselves by talking a lot and dancing if a hint of music appeared or not.
Maco liked to dance a certain way by swinging her arms and gyrating a bit.She only danced that way but since she was good at doing so it was fine.
Deacon preferred clapping her hands and making noises like "zooph". Sometimes she would go down to the ground with her arms out in front for balance.
The girls figured we'd like to make it to stay at the Saa Tago Campsite since it was built for people like us. Danny the hiker was happy to see the toilet and solar heated water for the showers. But with cloudy weather the solar wasn't heating. For me the problem was heat more than cold so I gladly stuck my head under the stream.
At Fifteen we'd found no crafts people but Seventeen and Eighteen there were many. Mainly there were some cool bow and arrow sets that I enjoy shooting, ostrich eggshell beadwork, some springbok horn containers and some really neat decorated steenbok skulls.
Omaheke is different than Tsumkwe the area I've done most of my work in Namibia in that the San here are not hunting an gathering. The land at Omaheke was at some point way back all belonging to the San. At a later point land was ceded to farmers and the San were finding the lands fenced.
Today, the San are labourers and craftspeople. Some are having cattles. Maco's family has 23. In general though the San are very poor. The San are recognized as the most marginalized community in the country owing mainly to the fact that they are landless.
As I went from place to place I noticed that the boys had been hunting small birds and ground squirrels for meat to fill the pot. I didn't get a chance to taste.
I'd been asked to do a bit of running around to do pickups from Thirteen, a drop off at Fifteen and more.
As I set off, the pickups were dropped off from a hike and fifteen.
The rain came a bit heavy that night so I overnighted in a hut at Eighteen and Danni in the Saa Tago campsite office.
The morning was spent listening to the community and talking about the future since it was my first time coming. I really liked the way the people were making the bracelets.
The community had a few complaints about the way that things were going and I vowed to come back to them with more of a plan even if it takes a little while.
The way to be in contact was to phone a certain number associated with a phone at Seventeen. Even though it wasn't working assurances has been given by Namtel that a technician would be coming in the next week to fix the phone. If I phoned that number, whoever picked up would be able to run and find someone who is speaking English. We'll see how that works.
Gobabis
The Trans-Kalahari Highway goes through the Omaheke region of Namibia. The capital for the area is Gobabis, a nice enough place. I've hiked from Windhoek through to Botswana before but never really stopped here for very long.
On the urging of a Canadian anthropologist, Renee Sylvain, from University of Guelph I wanted to take a closer look at the area. I knew there was a small craft shop a bit back from the road and checked there the frist night but it was a bit late and it looked a bit dead.
The next morning I returned. I found a bit more action. The coordinator of the Omaheke San Trust is Mary, a Kenyan lady. The number two was a Nama lady named Jacobsen and one San man called Nicky who runs a guest house at the back of office. Nicky expressed concern that he would not be long at OST as his contract was expiring this year.
Renee had given me three names to look for in Gobabis and one to avoid who shall not be mentioned.
Willem Abuse (a-boo-say, not a-buse) was contacted by phone and came to the office. He was wearing a green labourers outfit as labourers for the muicipality do. We sat and introduced ourselves and I gave him the update. Mr. Abuse was very fluent in English and very clever. I enjoy knowing him. His cell phone seemed reliable as he'd already been called on it so I took the number.
The second name on Renee's list was Rashida Tuaire. I found her at the Epako location just outside of town. Rashida is living with her two children in a hut made of corrugated iron with a couple flowers painted on the outside. There was one small tree in the yard for shade and a small garden.
Rashida is a craft expert, having worked for the OST craft centre for some years and being an ostrich eggshell artist herself we chatted about a trip to Canada among other things. I made a short video of Rashida introducing herself and talking about a decorated eggshell that she had a the house. She spoke first in Ju/'hoansi and then in English, both well.
Rashida expressed confidence about her ability to travel abroad and was interested to know if she could wear skins while she was working which seemed fine to me. I asked how confident she was in her ability to talk about culture, very. How much interest she had in going overseas, much. Also, who would look after the kids, sister.
Things seemed in order so I left her to go to the bush.
Corridor
From the guest house at the OST Maco (Ma-koo) was a tagalong for the free trip back home. About 240 kms away from Gobabis was Corridor Post Thirteen. Thirteen was in the middle between 1 and 22, all the posts. The numbers seemed to moved in sequence the way houses on a street normally do, odds on one side and evens on the other.
Thirteen was the one with the filling station, the shops and the disco so it was nice it was in the middle. Different tribes seemed to stay at different posts and San people were at Thirteen, Fifteen, Seventeen and Eighteen at least and probably more.
From Thirteen to Fifteen we picked up Maco's friend, Deacon. The girls were pretty good at jibber-jabber and entertained themselves by talking a lot and dancing if a hint of music appeared or not.
Maco liked to dance a certain way by swinging her arms and gyrating a bit.She only danced that way but since she was good at doing so it was fine.
Deacon preferred clapping her hands and making noises like "zooph". Sometimes she would go down to the ground with her arms out in front for balance.
The girls figured we'd like to make it to stay at the Saa Tago Campsite since it was built for people like us. Danny the hiker was happy to see the toilet and solar heated water for the showers. But with cloudy weather the solar wasn't heating. For me the problem was heat more than cold so I gladly stuck my head under the stream.
At Fifteen we'd found no crafts people but Seventeen and Eighteen there were many. Mainly there were some cool bow and arrow sets that I enjoy shooting, ostrich eggshell beadwork, some springbok horn containers and some really neat decorated steenbok skulls.
Omaheke is different than Tsumkwe the area I've done most of my work in Namibia in that the San here are not hunting an gathering. The land at Omaheke was at some point way back all belonging to the San. At a later point land was ceded to farmers and the San were finding the lands fenced.
Today, the San are labourers and craftspeople. Some are having cattles. Maco's family has 23. In general though the San are very poor. The San are recognized as the most marginalized community in the country owing mainly to the fact that they are landless.
As I went from place to place I noticed that the boys had been hunting small birds and ground squirrels for meat to fill the pot. I didn't get a chance to taste.
I'd been asked to do a bit of running around to do pickups from Thirteen, a drop off at Fifteen and more.
As I set off, the pickups were dropped off from a hike and fifteen.
The rain came a bit heavy that night so I overnighted in a hut at Eighteen and Danni in the Saa Tago campsite office.
The morning was spent listening to the community and talking about the future since it was my first time coming. I really liked the way the people were making the bracelets.
The community had a few complaints about the way that things were going and I vowed to come back to them with more of a plan even if it takes a little while.
The way to be in contact was to phone a certain number associated with a phone at Seventeen. Even though it wasn't working assurances has been given by Namtel that a technician would be coming in the next week to fix the phone. If I phoned that number, whoever picked up would be able to run and find someone who is speaking English. We'll see how that works.
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