A TALE OF TWO CITIES
With a morning at leisure, Sue and I headed into downtown Swakopmund with its incredibly wide streets. The streets would have to vary between four and six lanes wide with only one or two vehicles on them at any one time – the whole place was pretty deserted for a weekend. Our mission was to find a few extra pieces of clothing – long sleeved tops and shorts – and for me another pair of sunglasses to replace my damaged pair. We had a look in several shops but I came away empty-handed for a new pair of sunglasses for A$4.30. To give you an idea of other prices in a department store called Mr. Price, women’s jeans cost A$10.50.
Swakomund has some beautiful craft stores, along with an open air market but as I had to hunt out an internet café, I ran out of time to explore. I even wished that I hadn’t booked on the afternoon town tour, a decision I’m glad I didn’t make.
At 1pm Heini picked eight of our group up for the town tour, but this wasn’t to downtown Swakopmund but rather to Mondesa where the majority of the town’s native population live – a taste of the ‘real’ Africa. Mondesa is made up of small cinderblock houses and as people can build more homes in their backyards and rent them out, most have lean-tos attached made from building scraps.
We stopped at the local market and tasted some of the food, meat being barbequed, bread similar to a savoury donut, and a local beverage. To earn a living the women sell their produce from 5am to 9pm each day – a hard life in less than pleasant conditions!
Al through the neighbourhood we saw lots of bars doing a great business plus lots of hairdressing ‘salons’.
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| Shoemaker at the market |
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| Local hairdresser |
One of the best features of this tour was visiting the homes of two local women to learn something about their tribes and their lives. The first visit was to a woman from the Herero tribe. This group still practice polygamy and were the victims of the first genocide of the twentieth century during German rule in the early 1900’s. Cattle are kings so wealth is still judged by the amount of cattle you own and the interesting thing was that the women use symbols of cattle in their clothing. Their headdress is made to resemble horns and they wear long Victorian style dresses with metres of material to make them look fatter and when they walk they try to emulate the rolling gait of cows. And I always thought calling a woman a cow was an insult! This woman couldn’t speak English but her eyes said it all. I couldn’t make up my mind if she was shy or really a Voodoo queen.
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| Herero woman |
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| Local kids |
Our next stop was to the home of a Damar woman – a grandmother who’s grandchildren stopped by to see the visitors. She was quite a character and this was a fun visit, with her trying to teach us a local song and all ending up having a good laugh at our attempts. Again, her dress was long but her headdress was different. Apparently the early German missionaries’ wives weren’t happy with the attention that the tribes like the Himba, whose women wear very little, were getting from their menfolk so insisted on European clothing and the Victorian style of dress has stuck and they now take great pride in it.
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| 'Omar' - our Damar hostess |
Our last stop was back to Heini’s home for a traditional dinner of a meal porridge which we dipped into a white bean sauce, chicken and vegetables, all eaten with our fingers. Again, all the neighbourhood kids came in to join us. To finish a great tour off, a group of five young men came in and gave us a concert, accompanied only by a drum. They had fantastic harmonising voices, had such personality - and dance moves – that we were all captivated and all bought their CD. It’s just a shame they didn’t have a DVD or could get themselves out there on Youtube!
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| Two of our entertainers - not the best photo |
Fascinating tour; sorry to hear about your tour companion ... what a bummer for her.
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