Ive got
to the “top” of Namibia and am now making a turn and heading East instead of
North… Id like to keep going North but the West-Coast route is just too
unstable at the moment so Im going to traverse the continent here at the top of
Namibia and then head North roughly up the East-Coast.
Right
now, Im riding East through an odd little “appendage” of Namibian territory
called the “Caprivi Strip”. It’s a peninsula of land that was specifically
added to Namibia in about 1890 or so… At that time, Namibia was a German colony
and they wanted to have a direct link with their colonies on the East side of
Africa (Tanzania), so they gave up their holdings of Zanzibar island to the
British in return for the strip of land (that would otherwise be Botswana) that
linked Namibia to the Zambezi river… unfortunately the river later proved to be
unnavigable to that point… It all became moot after the German loss in the
first world war tho.
So, I was
riding along contemplating the world and my place in it as usual and I was
seeing all these little straw villages along the road. The climate here in the
North of Namibia has made a distinct change from the supper arid areas further
south and there is now sufficient precipitation for people to grow crops with-out
(or with minimal at least) irrigation. The natural vegetation has become
something of a sparse woodland rather than the savannahs and outright desert
gibber plains of further South. And as I rid along a good paved highway there
are lots and lots of these small to tiny villages.
The first
sign of habitation is usually a small patch of cultivated crop… Usually corn or
millet. The cropped area may be just a 20m square or maybe several hundred
square meters. And located somewhere within this cropped area (often adjacent
to the road but often just randomly somewhere within the crop) will be the
owners dwellings.
They may
be a single hut all by its lonesome or they may be up to twenty or so huts
enclosed by a common boundary fence. And sometimes there are several bounded
sets of huts in close proximity and that’s when I call it a “village”. Whatever
the case, they are of the most rudimentary construction… Literally they are the
proverbial “straw huts”. They are usually round in plan with the walls made of
vertically oriented and bundled straw/reeds/thin sticks, to a height of about
1.5m and then they are roofed with a conical top made of the same straw type
material. The hut is usually located in a cleared area that is also usually
fenced by a perimeter wall made of the same or maybe slightly stronger material
and often to a height of about 2m. Within this compound the ground is usually
kept scrupulously clean (and is even swept by the occupants)… The only plants
in the “compound” are trees… There is usually at least one sizeable tree
contained within and that’s usually where you see the people. They are seated
around the base of the tree in the shade on low stools or logs or just on the
ground and it seems that the tree is more or less the centre of daily life in
the little villages. Im told that all the huts within a single compound are
occupied by people who have simply decided to live together... They could be relations, or friends or work colleagues etc... you just need an invite to "live in our village" and your in :). There are rarely any pets like cats or dogs running around the place... Imtold most compounds have a dog but there are no "street dogs" that Ive noticed, and likewise I
cant recall seeing any poultry either. There are often one or two smaller
walled structures without roofs within the compound and I take these to be the
ablution facilities. Also, attached to the outer “compound wall” is the stock
yard… The stock is usually long horned cattle or multi-coloured goats and their
fenced enclosure is only just big enough to accommodate the herd and is
constructed of fairly sturdily arranged chunks of wood (I would not call the
wood posts and rails since it is a far less formal arrangement than that, but
its definitely an effective fence.)
Some few of these villages appear to have
water tanks on site but every 20Km or so I see big water tanks on stands with
steel fences around them so I assume they were installed by the government and
are used by the people to get their daily water supplies from. And to that end,
I frequently see people (women, men and children) walking along the sides of
the road with 20l plastic bottles or buckets balanced on their heads.
And like
the water tanks, I also see spaced out along the highway at fairly regular
intervals, larger clearings with slightly more sturdy structures that are
clearly schools or medical centres and I see plenty of school aged children
walking for many Km along the roads to and from their schools… Im sure many of
them walk between 10 and 20Km each way to go to their school each day…and as
always, the school kids manage to be dressed in the most prim and proper school
uniforms … I still cannot fathom how they manage to keep get such neat and
clean uniforms when they live in such Spartan and eternally dusty conditions…
Its definitely a small miracle J
But, back
to the villages…As the little villages get closer to a significant town (ie
somewhere big enough to have a fuel station where I can fuel up the bike) then
there are usually some signs of more wealth or sturdiness to the dwellings… The
compound walls are complete and neat and square with trimmed level tops, the
grounds are swept clean and everything is organized. There will be mud-brick
walls on one or more of the buildings, there may be a sheet of corrugated iron
used as a hut door or even a whole roofs for some buildings… there are
occasional solar panels and satellite dishes and even out-houses made of
fibre-glass here and there. But at the other end of the scale, when Im at the
farthest point between two fuel stops, the little villages become quite disheveled
and unkempt often with no perimeter wall at all and only a single ramshackle
hut in a cleared area in the woodland.
And as
Ive said, these little habitations are everywhere I go. Im about in the
mid-point of the Southern section of Africa and there have not been many such
villages to the South because its too arid there but now that Im in the tropics
and moving North Im expecting to see a lot more of these villages in rural
areas and the life that goes along with them.
Note, its
quite hard to take pictures of these places because there are always people
about and it feels really rude to stop my bike, point a camera at these little
homes and then just ride off… Like taking pictures of the wild-life or
something! Anyway, I just cant bring
myself to do it so you will just have to be satisfied with my words instead.
