Fields and Villages

The mission where I am staying is in between the town – Outapi – and a variety of small villages in the surrounding farmland. It feels like a bit in the netherworld, neither or the town nor of the bush. But it gives me a chance to explore both.

Over the weekend, I went walking into the fields surrounding the mission. First, let me explain what a ‘field’ consists of here. There are farms, and on each farm there is a small, fenced-in area where mahangu, a type of grain that which has adapted to this environment, grows. But the vast majority of land here is sandy, open grazing land. Animals roam freely across the land, and locals tell me that the animals usually find their own way back home.

In any case, I went walking through wide-open fields in which random goats, cows, and donkeys grazed. After a walk of about 45 minutes, I happened on a beautiful watering hole and some animals grazing under a huge palm tree. Next to the palm tree is a large termite mound. The land is greener than I expected, even though it may not appear that way on the pictures. On the way back I met a young boy (probably about 13 or 14, but looking about 10) and the first five or six minutes of our conversation was all in Oshiwambo!

Later in the day I went for another walk with Gotaard, one of the guys who works at the hostel taking care of the kids. He took me to his village, Hamaupti. We walked for about 30 minutes, and he pointed the well where villagers went to get their water. Then we stopped in the middle of a field and asked if we had villages like this back home. I looked around. There might have been one small homestead that I could see, but that was it. “What village?” I asked. Gotaard pointed to the area all around him, indicating that the village consisted of a large assembly of homesteads. So that’s a village here in Namibia.

We walked a little further and came upon another watering hole, this one with a half dozen young boys hanging around it. They put on a short swimming exhibition for me, and I longed to dive in too but refrained because of warnings about diseases that can be picked up in freshwater areas of Africa. The boys had fun, but it seems that the girls are not allowed to go to the swimming hole, though Gotaard did not explain why.

Finally, as we walked back towards the mission, we came upon a collection of six or seven cement-block buildings that are the commercial center of Hamaupti. One or two are residences, and the rest are bars or “cuca shops” which sell beer, soft drinks, and a variety of snacks. They don’t look like much, but they all have electricity and in this environment, a cool drink is sometimes all the entertainment I need!