October 25: Himba Village

We were back on the road for a 3+ hour drive to Opuwo where we ate lunch and met our guide Jimmy.  Next, Jimmy led us on another hour's drive to a small village where we interacted with Himba tribe members from an extended family as they went about their business of preparing dinner, gathering firewood, and retrieving fresh water.  The four generations enjoy a content and fulfilling life with few luxuries, at least in terms of Western culture.  They are a self-sustaining community who eat a relatively simple diet of porridge, vegetables from their farm and meat (mostly goat) on occasion. We learned that the women cover themselves in otjize paste, which is a combination of butterfat and ochre pigment.  The women also apply a homemade fragrance daily in place of bathing.  After dinner, we chatted, laughed, and danced with the children of the village.

According to Wikipedia, “The Himba are an indigenous people with an estimated population of 50,000  people living in northern Namibia, in the Kunene Region and on the other side of the Kunene River in southern Angola. They are predominately livestock farmers who breed sheep and goat, but count their wealth in the number of their cattle.”