During our travels in Damaraland we were able to visit an authentic Himba Tribal settlement. To get there meant negotiating the rocky bed of a dried river and a lot of bouncing!!
The Himba are partially-nomadic herders and are the most traditional ethnic group in Namibia, shunning nearly all modern influences. As the other guide, Perez (Herero tribe) was known to the Himba, we were permitted into the camp to observe and learn about their customs – a rare privilege indeed. We were greeted by one and all as ‘friends-of-a-friend’ and were able to spend a lot of time learning about these interesting, nomadic pastoralists. As there has been virtually no modern influence on this community, it made for a fascinating cultural exchange. The visit ended with the members of the tribe performing dances for us. In return, we off-loaded grain, flour and other necessities for them from our Landcruisers.
you sa sir wa um it’s to say look at the hairy one go yeah and um there is there is a lot of resemblance between the HBA people and the Messiah people and if you sort of backtrack um of where the HBA people came from again it’s in those same areas central Africa but because they are nomades they move around with their cattle um they always out there looking for um areas where they can you know where the animals can have enough grazing so and then there is something which is also very very contradicting as well um the there are two tribes in Namibia um which is the HBA and then also the herero now if you read in a lot of the books they will tell you that the herero speaking people were one of the first people in today’s Namibia which is in the early 1400s okay when they all sort of moved in in today’s Namibia which is basically the this whole purple line that you see is literally our border uh uh borders with all the count so they literally came all the way from the central uh central Africa and then they crossed this Kun River and then they came to this town and they settled they settled around there in this whole entire sort of Northwestern corner of um of Namibia I mean they are probably one of the last group of people to live the way they lived about 100 100 years ago um they don’t wear clothes like we do they don’t wear shoes like we do um what they do is that they wear their skins because of hering cows goats most of all the the the the dressing is is made out of skin you’ll see the ladies um they wear sort of skirts that is made out of goat skin um they most of the jewelry that they wear um um is all made out of of th strips of skin um and then you’ll see also that um um the the woman um put on this o now for a HBA woman from the day that she’s born till the day that she probably dies she would never go into physical water and go and take a bath okay so for them reapplying this ochre which is literally a rock which is pounded and this and then what they do is that they um the same procedure that you would make um or that you would use to make butter they Milk The Cow shake the milk until the the fat starts clotting they take that out they cook that and then they wait it to cool down they put it in a container and this rock that they pound they mix it with that ochre and they reapply it on their body so when they are re applying that is literally taking a bath especially for the lady the men don’t put on OCH so if you see men with ochre you literally know what he’s been up to see so um one of the first times I met you you were covered in okre yeah I was my other wife is here the one thing that I have really picked up is that jealousy and cheating amongst the HBA people does not exist really really does not exist what they say is that you don’t do something deliberately when it comes to relationships for um now because they and they will be walking around and they walk around at night um your most of your your snake bite scopion bites are usually around the ankle area and that is to protect that from any snake bites or any scorpion things and so on to some other extent that would also represent how many children so if she has more than one children it’s going to be two they used to use things like um cowtails and this also has a purpose is the the baby is protected by this puffed hair and they don’t get sunburn so um what you see it’s her own hair from the root from the root of her head all the way to maybe about there is her own head which they would use this o the mud to make it round and to sort of make it nice the way when you walk in the in the field you want to make as much noise as possible so you don’t surprise something something she hear you coming from a distance these are this so when she walks you would hear them you would hear them and that’s so just so that you know whatever you whatever he you before you get there gosh I love the jewelry oh fantastic wow do they make it all so they make them all themselves so um what they then do is that they do a lot of trading with the um the Damar speaking people with because like with things like the wire um you know this kind of stuff for example this iron stuff they will trade it with the speaking people so that they come and make their own jewelry out and they will break a branch like this and then what they do and then what they do is that they will chew they will break it and then you’ll see them sometimes they chew the the the the sort of the top part make it soft and then you’ll see them walking around like they use this as a toothbrush constantly all the time spe for spee fore spee all you want to say happy now happy got a scrub kids young men think I’m a right yes they like the videois just sad and what was thank you than you come on I want help this is the ochre this is the stone that she’s going to to grind up you see she has her pots there her um recepticles there that she’ll one of them will have the cow fat inside that she’ll mix with the powder one of them may well have charcoal so she will also mix some charcoal and they put the charcoal around the neck and then quite often they’ll burn a mixture of uh of local bark and and leads from the local trees and that smoke is caught by the um by the charcoal and the fat that’s their perfume so basically what she’s now doing this is now Chanel number five for them that’s their perfume so when the husband is coming they would um they would um smoke themselves like that um so this again is done when all the ladies are together because then they can help each other and this also helps with sweating so I mean you’ve been walking around them did you pick up any order yes no yeah it’s because they smoke themselves with this and they use a lot of things mup leave SE the mup seed pods um roots of different animals I different plants um and they would do this if they’re at home they would do it like once a day but and then if they go to a um either funeral or a wedding they would reapply the Oka about three times a day and they would do this maybe once or twice doing it every day since she was guess she’s learning how to do it good at it she’s ask she’s asking if where you folks come from all of you oh right Eng England did you miss it stand around here for another hour I W need any getting and ready foree fore spee fore speech spee in in the village where I was they sang the whole night and dance the whole night oh really girl Happ good I didn’t see the baby he