Written by Manni Goldbeck & Ron Swilling, photos Lambert Heil & Ron Swilling
Travelling around Namibia, I always appreciate the opportunity of getting to know Namibia’s beautiful people. I have over the years met members of all the ethnic groups that make up our marvellous Namibian tapestry. This time I headed south.
On my journeys I have been dazzled by the vivid colours of the Herero women’s regal long dresses. I have appreciated the bright colours of the Owambo traditional dress and those of the shebeens that colour the roadside of the North in all the shades on the artist’s palette. On my most recent trip I joined up with friend-photographer Lambert Heil and wordsmith Ron Swilling and ventured to the opposite end of the country, to the South, to explore the colourful world of the Nama. The cheerful colours of their houses and their rainbow-coloured laslappie trousers, dresses and hats brightened up the dusty streets of Mariental, Gibeon, Maltahöhe and the surrounding settlements.
It was more than the colour that brightened the trip, it was also the wide smiles and friendliness, and the joy of meeting the young, beaming with optimism, and the old whose faces tell of the many stories they’ve been part of on the meandering pathways of life.
While we waited for a friend to return from her day at work in Mariental, we explored the neighbourhood, stopping at the Ebenezer church where young Marius Cloete and Isaack Mchenry were practising on their trumpets for the church choir.
We wandered further along the streets of Takarania where we met 74-year-old Ouma Katrina Köck, who donned her patchwork dress for photographs, chatting merrily to us while her bread rose in the Dover oven. We asked her the secret to her seemingly eternal youth and without hesitating, she replied “I don’t drink coffee, tea or alcohol”. We listened attentively and are considering giving it a try.
It was the sign ‘Ons doen alles’ (We do everything) on Mathias Fillemon aka Smit’s fence that caught our eye. And Mathias lives up to the words, selling wood and ice from his neat yard – which has areas partitioned for dogs, chickens and mechanical repairs – and offering any and every service you may require.
It was an artistic rendition of an entirely different nature which we noticed next: a mural of Martin Luther painted on the exterior wall of the house belonging to Magdalena Hanse, the daughter of the late Pastor Josef Hanse. The family posed in front of the mural and we learned that Booitjie !Gaoseb, a pianist in the Lutheran church, and a natural artist, had painted the mural before he passed on.
There were more striking people and items to catch our attention on that sunny afternoon: the first was Regina Kosmas’s sunflower-yellow dress as she stood at the Milky Lane road-sign and Justine Willemse’s ‘basterkappie’ that was bleached into pure cotton cleanliness by decades of use in the bright Namibian sunshine. She told us that her ouma used to wear it on the farm when she was tending sheep. ‘Now everyone wants it,” she said. “But I’m not giving it away, I’m going to keep it in the family.”
Finally, our friend Mina von Schach returned home from her day at work and we could kuier and catch up before heading back to Kalahari Anib Lodge as the sun set magnificently in the evening sky, creating silhouettes of the resident giraffes against the golden sky.