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| Traditionalist: Ohgwemure Mararaika wants to continue the ancient lifestyle. Jeffrey barbee |
Urbanization threatens Namibia's traditional Himba culture
Where an ancient tribe and modern Africa meet, bare-breasted women in animal-skin skirts and men with spears join the urban flow of traffic, supermarkets, and pool halls.
from the February 5, 2008 edition
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But the 15,000 or so Himba are still one of the most successful and wealthy ethnic groups in the country, Ms. Jacobsohn and others point out. And Professr Crandall says he questions the reality of a wide-scale "threat" to Himba culture. "I think it's fundamentally wrong to think of a culture as static," says Crandall, who spent a year living in a Himba village near Opuwo. "The Himba today, or even the Himba of 20 years ago, do not live the same way as they did 100 years ago. There's always some adaptation to local circumstance."
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If Opuwo is one side of this adaptation, the village of Ohungumure is another. It's a half-hour drive from Opuwo – first along rolling dirt roads, then on an all but unmarked turnoff through a patch of short mopane trees. Soon, family compounds come into sight – fenced areas, each with a kraal for animals, a holy fire for ancestors, and a hut for each of the patriarch's wives.
In one compound, Kakuindjowe Muharukua introduces herself as the first born. She explains that her father has five wives and says that the dozen or so women working on beaded necklaces and ankle bracelets here are all related. There are no men around – they're out watching the cattle, the lifeblood of the Himba.
"Everything has a meaning," she says, when asked why one woman had her hair tied on top of her head with an animal skin, while a younger girl had thick, mud-coated locks falling in front of her face.
Hairstyles symbolize different life stages, she explains. Boys have ponytails, but when they marry, they pull all of their hair up in a cloth. Young girls have their hair plaited at the back of their head. When girls reach puberty they comb their hair over their faces; after they start menstruating they reveal their faces. Then, when a mother decides her daughter is ready to start having babies, she puts her hair up with a skin.
It is acceptable in Himba culture for women to start having babies before marriage – to get started early, she says. "You should have at least six children," she says. "If you don't have six children, people wonder what is wrong."
Soon, women from other homesteads, dotted about a quarter to half a mile apart, start milling into the Muharukua compound, interested in the visitors. Many bring beadwork to sell.
"We sell to the Herero, and to the [tourist] visitors who come and see us," says a woman named Ovingoringo.
Inside one hut, teenaged Maroroco Muharukua lies a few feet from a fire's embers. Calfskin bowls hanging on the wall above her keep butter cool. She once tried to go to a government satellite school in the mountains near her village, but it upset her mother, who said she should stay at home. Other women at the homestead also talk about school with wariness.
Until the 1980s, according to Jacobsohn, only a handful of Himba children went to school. Today, Crandall says, many Himba see reasons for boys to get some education and learn English, but some are still nervous.
A woman at the homestead who identifies herself by the one name, Tjanakambedje, says her son sneaked away to school and now is a teacher in a different town, only coming back to the villages for ceremonies. Marococo also knows young people who have left.
"I have got one friend, she went to the city and we don't know where she is now," she says.
As for Marococo, she says her goal these days is to remain in what she considers true Himba culture. "I might go to school, but only if they allow me to be in my tradition," she says. "I want to be in my village."
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