The
best part of all these trips is that we usually won’t have any concrete plans
for every day. So today also we really didn’t have any plan as to which route
to go in the morning. Our idea for today was to go to the Mowani mountain camp in the southern Kunene region
at Khorixas. We first drove towards Uis via Omaruru. On the way we stopped at
the Franke tower to take some snaps. The tower was built to commemorate a
battle between the Herero and German colonisers in 1908. It’s a really small
tower with an old artillery at the front of the tower.
Bru
suggested that we go to the San living museum afterwards and we took a detour
from the main road (~ 30 km). The San living museum is situated in the Erongo
conservation area, surrounded by the Erongo mountains. It is an arid, empty
landscape full of small small mountains. We reached the San museum at noon. The
idea behind the museum is that the San people, whose ancestors are living in
those regions for more than 5000 years, will show us about the way they lived,
hunted and survived. We booked a 2 hr trip with them. The San family who took
us around came from Kalahari, where they live now. They usually work for 2
months in Erongo and then go back to Kalahari. Then the next family will come
and conduct the tour and the cycle is repeated. In that way, everyone in their
village will be benefiting from tourism.
For us the tour was
done by a 26 year boy who surprisingly spoke good English. He learned English
from his school in Kalahari. Along with him was his 63 year old grandfather who
showed us and explained about the tree from which they used the fruits for
eating, and the leaves that they used as an antiseptic for injuries. He also
showed as another tree from which they extracted the poison for the arrows they
used for hunting. How they made the poison was interesting. The beetles eat on
the leaves of the tree and lay eggs in the tree. The worms coming out
transforms into cocoon and the cocoon after some time falls down and burry
themselves in the sand. The San people dig out these cocoon and make paste out
of the cocoon which is the poison they use for their arrows. Once these arrows
hit the animal and injure it, the animal will not die immediately. The poison will
enter the bloodstream and the big animals take a day to die. The San go back to
the village and come back in the morning next day to track the injured animal.
They also showed us how to make fire using wood sticks and how they made small
traps or snares to get small animals like bats, Guinea fowls etc. We also saw some
rock paintings that were more than 5000 years old on the way.
In the road back from
the San museum we took a break in a river bed to have our lunch. We then
proceeded towards Uis and did shopping in the supermarket there. We then drove
to the base camp of the Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), which is kind of
home away from home for both of us. I
met Bru in a desert elephant volunteer program conducted by EHRA. It is a
Namibian registered not-for-gain organisation which runs an elephant
conservation and volunteer project in Namibia. It conducts workshops for the
local community to find long-term sustainable solutions to the human-animal
conflict and facilitate the peaceful co-habitation between the subsistence
farmers, community members and the desert-adapted elephants. The volunteer
groups take part in the construction of the wells destroyed by the desert
elephants in their search or water in the desert. The money collected from the
volunteers goes for the material costs and the volunteer themselves act as the
manpower for the construction. It is the best volunteer project that I ever
took part in, and also the one in which you will immediately see the impact of
your work on the local community. The added bonus is to come face to face with
the desert roaming ellies. It’s a unique experience.
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