The prickly desert fruit, !nara, is manna from heaven – or chocolate – for the Topnaar, who live along the Kuiseb Delta on the outskirts of Walvis Bay. We made it in time for the annual harvest . . .
It was a cool, misty morning in Walvis Bay when we drove out to Rooibank to visit the !nara harvesters at their temporary camp in the Namib Desert. The seemingly lifeless desert surrounded us, but the Topnaar and the generous !nara plant would soon show us that there is both life and food to be found on the desert sands.
A few tents were set up under a scraggly tree and a pile of melon-like fruit lay on the sand. The Topnaar family took turns to stir a mixture in a large metal drum that was set on a small fire, steam rising into the cool air, and a contingent of donkeys waited hungrily on the sidelines.
“It’s Topnaar sjokolade”, Juliana and Eileen Engelbrecht told me, smiling and pointing to the bubbling !nara mixture that they would later lay out to dry into a nourishing fruit leather, rich in vitamins, minerals and trace elements.
I followed them to the nearby dune hummocks where the sprawling green !nara plants grow. Here, Get and Esou Kooitjie, after checking for snake spoor, were using a stick to loosen the ripe fruit from the plants and were throwing them down to the sand below to be packed onto the waiting donkey cart. When they hopped aboard to transport the fruit to the camp, I stayed with the ladies, who opened a ripe fruit sharing the juicy mixture and putting the seeds aside to roast in the coals later on.
A true Namib endemic, growing in the narrow fog belt from Port Nolloth in South Africa to Namibe in Angola, the !nara plant (Acanthosicyos horridus) is a rambling bush, surviving in the harsh climate by foregoing leaves for spiky thorns and by dropping its long tap root deep into the sand to drink from the underground water. It is part of the Cucurbitaceae family, which includes pumpkins and melons. Despite its intimidating prickly appearance, !nara plays a beneficial role in the desert, stabilising the sand dunes which provide shady homes for many small creatures which enjoy the detritus that collects underneath. The desert plant’s fruit provides sustenance for humans and for animals like gerbils, gemsbok and jackals. The fruit has been harvested by the Topnaar, the #Aonin, for hundreds of years and the !nara plant has woven its way into their cultural heritage over time. At the beginning of the year, between the months of January and April, family groups make their way to the !nara fields where they set up temporary camps and live for the duration of the !nara harvest.
The process was underway back at camp when we returned, the fruit cut open and the pulp scooped out into buckets and then into a metal drum to cook. When the seeds separated from the mixture they were removed and strained, the extraneous liquid poured onto the sand for the donkeys who brayed with excitement. The mixture would continue to cook for several more hours and once cooled would be laid out on plastic sheeting to dry into the much-loved ‘sjokolade’ or ‘!nara cakes’. This would be eaten in subsequent months as a snack or as a meal with maize porridge. In the meantime, the nutritious seeds, comprised of 57% oil and 31% protein and known as ‘botterpitte’ or ‘butter-nuts’, were laid out to dry. Once dry they would be packed into bags for sale, providing an income for many Topnaar families.
In more recent years, the seeds have been cold-pressed in Swakopmund, producing an oil rich in Omega-6 fatty acids, used as a nutty culinary oil and as a prized ingredient in natural cosmetic products.
We sat around, appreciating this tradition that has been passed from generation to generation and which plays such an important part in the Topnaar culture. “!Nara maak baie kinders groot” (!Nara makes many children big/strong), they told us. We noted that nothing is wasted in the process, with every part of the plant used, even the rinds that are given to the donkeys and goats. It’s a process which, as long as the !nara is sustainably harvested, leaving enough plants to regenerate and leaving the Kuiseb River undisturbed, can continue to provide life-giving sustenance in the Namib Desert.
While we had been discovering !nara sjokolade, the sun had may its way through the mist and the temperature had risen to a sticky heat. It was time to say our farewells to this friendly family group, give thanks for the many wonders of this marvellous desert ecosystem and wend our way over the endless desert back to town.
(References: !Nara | National Botanical Research Institute (nbri.org.na))