I picked up some unusual travelling literature on a recent trip through Namibia, a book called ‘Faraway Sandy Trails’ written by Lily Marion Newton sixty years ago. It gave me the opportunity to compare routes and find amusing and interesting anecdotes about the country and the days of travel before tourism and tar roads.
Always keen to hear ghost stories, the chapter about Lake Otjikoto immediately got my attention. Lily writes that although the ‘bottomless lake’ later become her and her husband’s good friend as they went there so often, when they first visited it felt desolate and sinister. It held the superstition that a fearsome god or monster lived in the lake and that anyone entering its waters would be dragged to its depths and never seen again.
The earliest ghost tale that she narrates dates back to 1915 and World War One when the German Schutztruppe disposed of their ammunition, machine-guns and field cannons in the lake before surrendering, to prevent them falling into the hands of the Union troops. As the story goes, an unfortunate soldier’s foot got entangled in one of the ropes and he was dragged down into the depths with the weapons. Several people claimed that they had seen his restless spirit on the lake’s bank. They described him as standing with his arm outstretched pointing to the water.
Later on, in 1927, Johannes Stephanus Cook disappeared while swimming with his friends. He was supposedly unwell at the time and although his friends tried to dissuade him from going into the water, he decided to swim to the opposite bank. Halfway there he threw up his arms and shouted. By the time his friends reached the spot, there was no trace of him. His memorial plaque is still visible on a rock facing the lake.
When Lily first visited Lake Otjikoto, she recalls that there were no birds or frogs. The heavy black water emitted a soft ‘plopping’ noise which was the only sound they heard ‘apart from the woeful longdrawn lamentation each turn of the old, useless windmill sent across the darksome waters’.
She visited again when Americans, harnessing the water for mining activities at Tsumeb, had planted a garden and built houses and outbuildings. The place was transformed. She writes: ‘The doves were cooing, the go-away birds followed us, raucously bidding us depart, cows lowed plaintively as they grazed in the pastures, and Otjikoto, while retaining its stillness and something of its mystery, nevertheless had lost that sinister atmosphere . . . ‘.
I paid a visit to Otjikoto, now a national heritage site, and was charmed by the birdsong and the still blue water fringed by trees, aloes and bush. Bumping into a groundsman who has worked on the premises for twenty years, I enquired if he had ever sensed the presence of a ghost or ghosts. It took a bit of translation with the help of the woman at the entrance to explain what I meant. He was surprised at the question and shook his head vehemently; he had never felt anything otherworldly. That satisfied my inquisitive mind and I left Otjikoto to its peace and beauty, and laid the old ghosts to rest.
Interestingly, Otjikoto, 20km north-west of Tsumeb, is not actually a lake, but a circular sinkhole bordered by dolomite walls. It has a long and fascinating history.
Like most bodies of water in a dry country, it was known to the indigenous people since time immemorial. It is said to have been the site of a trading post for the copper ore that was carried from Malachite Hill at Tsumeb to the lake. The Ondonga would arrive from the north to exchange their goods - axes, hammers, spears, knives, arrowheads, pots, tobacco, salt and glass beads - for the ore.
The name ‘Otjikoto’ stems from the Otjiherero word for ‘deep hole’, so named by the later Herero inhabitants. The San, however, called it ‘Gaisis’ meaning ‘very ugly’ because they were afraid of it. Explorers Galton and Andersson were said to have unexpectedly arrived at the lake three months after setting off on their journey in 1851 to search for Lake Ngami. They went into the water for a swim and when they emerged surprised the Herero and Owambo members of their party who didn’t expect to see them alive again.
The field artillery Lily mentions, which the German troops threw into the depths of the lake, remained there until the early 80s when some of it was retrieved by divers and restored. It is now displayed in the Khorab Room at the Tsumeb Museum.
Times have changed, and at the time of Lily’s visit the lake provided the town of Tsumeb and its fruit and vegetable gardens with water.
But, the intriguing geological history of the sinkhole goes much further back in time than the last century. The 700-million-year-old dolomite rock walls were weathered over time in a process known as karstification, where water-soluble rock is slowly and naturally dissolved. Lake Otjikoto and its sibling, the nearby Lake Guines, are examples of a typical karst feature, occurring when karst cavities develop near the Earth’s surface. As these cavities grow, their roofs can no longer support the rock above them and cave in, forming funnel-shaped craters called dolines. If the floor of the dolines are deeper than the level of the groundwater, they fill with water, becoming ‘karst lakes’.
Lake Otjikoto is approximately 100m in diameter, covers a surface area of 7 075m² and varies in depth from 62m at the sides to 71m at the centre, although in some places the depth exceeds 100m. It continues to weather at the slow pace of eternity.