Set in southern Namibia, Great Namaqualand, ‘Bittersweet Karas Home’ is the story of three families, the Hills, Walsers & Hartungs, whose lives merge and intertwine in a semi-arid land that presents both hardship and blessings. Over the next few months, we would like to share this bittersweet saga with you from the (as yet) unpublished book.
CHAPTER TWO
Social networks
The old settler families in the south – Hite (British), Mason (British), Bassingthwaighte (British) and Ukena (East Frisian) - assisted each other in times of need. When Samuel James Hite died in Warmbad in November 1902 and his wife Isabel followed soon after, Margaret Susan Walser took in their orphaned son for several months before Hite family members became the official guardians. She looked with pity on the infant: “Poor little fellow, he little knows his loss yet. He calls me Ma and pushes my children aside if they come near me.”
Family was the Walsers’ main network. The Hill sisters were very close, corresponding with letters, visiting one another and ensuring that the cousins spent time together. They always knew when a child was sick or recovering. When Margaret Susan and her sister, Lizzie Örtendahl, lived together on Kinderdam there was a strong but short-lived bond; Lizzie died in Cape Town in 1914.
The brothers-in-law, Carl Wilhelm Walser and Karl Arthur Örtendahl, had a good relationship while Emil Friedrich Hartung (Wilhelmina Charlotte Hill’s husband) and Carl Wilhelm’s relationship was strained. Having acquired the farm Arris from Carl Wilhelm and then fighting a losing battle with the German and British authorities over the land, Emil felt cheated.
As a trader, Carl Wilhelm Walser had many German clients – a fact that is revealed in his detailed debt book. And, regardless of their critical attitude towards Germans, the Walsers had German friends: the missionary Tobias Fenchel and his wife, Anna-Maria, and Warmbad District Chief Alfred Graf von Kageneck who assisted the Hills and Walsers in their court cases. One highlight in the Walser women’s life was a grand party held in a marquee on Ukamas in 1900. The Walser daughters and their mother dressed up in style wearing Victorian evening gowns that had been transported in a chest on their wagon. The German officers wore dress uniforms and an orchestra with violins, a piano and cello played for the occasion. This did not prevent the gradual estrangement between the Walsers and the Germans. Carl was an exception; he continued to correspond with Karas Germans repatriated to Germany after the Great War, who requested his help to apply for permits from the new government to return to Africa.
The Walsers knew the famous Nama leaders, Jakob Marengo and Abraham Morris. They had met Marengo in Heiragabis during his school days. He had also worked for the Walsers. At the beginning of the uprising he hid in the Great Karas Mountains, a few hours away. Marengo grazed the livestock he had raided among Walser livestock. When the Walsers were in Vryburg, the tacit agreement to continue this practice remained. They understood his difficult position and grieved for him when they later heard of his death near Eenzaamheid. They lamented the fact that his brilliant mind and energy would never
be used to build bridges across the cultural divide.
In March 1905, Abraham Morris wrote a letter to Carl Wilhelm from Narudas, explaining that the goods and four horses his men had taken from Ukamas would be given back as soon as possible. At the end of this letter he wrote: ‘You remain our old friend. This is why I write this letter as leader of the nation. With good trust I remain your friend. With greetings, A Morris Kommandant’.
On 11 March Morris and Marengo fought the battle at Narudas that left Marengo seriously wounded and presumably made it impossible for Morris to keep his promise. Hauptmann Erich von Schauroth, despite being an enemy, ‘paid a high tribute to the chivalry of the Bondelswarts during the long war in the sand and the mountains of the south’. The Bondelswarts and their leader, Marengo, never harmed non-combatants, women or children. After one conflict in which German transport wagons had been ambushed, Marengo sent a message to the German garrison commander at Ukamas requesting a doctor to attend to the German wounded. Marengo had a flesh wound and the doctor also attended to him. He wrote a letter of appreciation and gave the doctor safe conduct through his lines. Even in the throes of a bloody struggle, there often remained an astounding amount of humanity, respect and empathy from Marengo, but it failed to stem or reverse the drift towards destruction.
(Join us every Sunday to take a step back in time and follow the interesting, sometimes sweet, sometimes heart-wrenching tale.)