Where Fire Speaks

  The anthropologists returned after five days. Their truck was fixed; they were going back to their village and invited us to follow them. One of the first things they did upon arriving back at their village was make a fire and put the kettle on for coffee. A short while later, everyone in the village was there: wives, children, the headman, his teenage son, and several men in T-shirts who turned out to be visitors. I noticed that the headman was staring at me. He spoke and the anthropologists translated: He thinks you should go to bed with him, they said. I blushed. He was an older man, his face suggested he was easily sixty, though his bare chest and arms looked stronger and sexier than those of my thirty-year-old husband.

  Please tell him I’m married, I said.

  His reply was, That doesn’t matter, so am I. He continued to look at me and everyone in the circle laughed.

  The anthropologists fed us pasta and tomato sauce for supper. We sat by the fire late into the night. The stars were spread above us and when we weren’t looking into the flames, we were staring at the sky. I told them about the time that we had been talking with Karamata about traditions, comparing their marriage and funeral rituals with ours. We had had trouble explaining the complexities and permutations of our societal behaviour with its breakdown of family and religious norms.

  “You have no culture,” Karamata had said, and I had been caught by his words because sometimes it really felt like that. Everything he and his family did was their “culture”; ours seemed pale in comparison. The anthropologists agreed that our traditions did seem thin when compared to the ones being lived around us. They had also found that our marriage rituals sounded insubstantial when explained to people who changed their village, their hairstyle, and some of their clothing when they got married. The value of gold and the worth of a diamond were hard to explain. The culture of the Himba seemed more meaningful, almost more real than our own.

  The anthropologists were studying adornment practices and talked about the way in which jewelry, butterfat on the body, and the arrangement of space within the village, were all integral parts of the Himba world view. This was another area where I felt our practices were lacking in meaning, or at least any articulated meaning. I put on trousers because they were comfortable and not because of the message they relayed to those around me. I didn’t know where they came from or who made them. Maria knew that her headdress meant she was a married woman. She had known the goat her skirt was made from while it was still alive. The butterfat she rubbed on her body came from the herd and the ochre she added to it made her skin gleam the color of her family’s prized cattle.

  The moon came up and some of the stars disappeared. The anthropologists warned us about romanticizing the Himba. They talked about how the people were good at herding, but were not very industrious, and joked about a small cattle dam that was supposed to be built, saying that if the Himba did it by themselves, it would take a hundred years. On a more serious note, they said they knew there were women who got beaten by their husbands. They didn’t think it was a general condition, but more a matter of certain individuals who were mean. They had seen some bad treatment of animals and, in one village, had watched a man beat a donkey, then leave it to die by degree on the edge of the village for several days.

  In the morning, the men stopped by for a cup of coffee and the usual four or five spoons of sugar. One of the women came over for a bag of salt, one of the young men asked for a pouch of tobacco, and each time the anthropologists went into the tent and came out with the requested item. They told us they kept a supply of things like sugar, salt, coffee, and tobacco for giving away and said that sharing was an essential part of social norms here. For example, travelers were always fed. You could leave your village in the morning carrying almost nothing and know that once you reached another village, you would get to share whatever the people were eating. The custom seemed to be under a bit of strain. The anthropologists had overheard the children complaining about how hungry they were because the young men who were visiting had drunk all the milk. I got the impression these young men were hanging around, taking the village for what they could get, and that they weren’t going to be missed when they left.

  We went for a walk to visit a nearby village where the doors of the huts were boarded up and the ash from the fires was old. It was a drought year and after the well went dry, those villagers had moved to a reservoir in the mountains that still had plenty of water. The family the anthropologists were staying with had been able to remain in the village only because the anthropologists’ truck made it possible to get water from a distant well. The sun was bright and the intermittent breeze picked up bits of fine dust and whirled them around. They told us that the Himba believe their ancestors live not just in the fire, but also in the rocks, the trees, and the wind. Spirit and wind, they said, are the same word. We only walked for an hour, but returned hot and thirsty, glad that it was still winter.

  We stayed another day and on the morning of our departure, joined the usual coffee circle. The headman reached out, touched the narrow copper bracelet around David’s wrist, and said something in a challenging voice. He wanted to know why David was wearing a bracelet that belonged to the Himba. David explained that he had bought it from a Himba man in the market. Then David reached out and touched the thick corduroy shirt the headman was wearing and asked why the headman was wearing something that belonged to the white men. The anthropologists only translated the part about the bracelet. The question about the shirt, they said, might be offensive.

  Before leaving, David presented the headman with a large butcher knife from our kitchen supplies. The headman smiled and his thanks were effusive. He turned the knife over in his hands, said we were welcome in his village anytime, then blessed us, our children, and our children’s children. Just before we got in the truck, he came in search of us again, wanting to know if we had a scabbard for it.

  HEADMAN

  We were disheartened when we left the anthropologists’ camp. We had enjoyed the conversation, but it had reminded us of how little we knew about these people and this place. The anthropologists had an intimacy with the family that came from living together through the space of several seasons. Our insights seemed small and insignificant in comparison. The longer we stayed, the more our story seemed to unravel, and we wondered if we would have anything to say once we got home. One way of dealing with this was to get some words directly from the people themselves, and we decided to visit the headman who was leading local opposition to the dam. His name was Kapika and he had been quoted in the news as saying, “They will have to shoot all the Himbas before they build the dam.”

  On the way to his village, we stopped at a town where there was a large school to pick up a young Himba man who we had heard was an excellent translator. His name was Cornelius, he was seventeen and in Grade 6, and he looked more like a teacher than a student in his silk shirt and pleated trousers.

  I asked Cornelius what he knew about the dam and he told of a meeting that had taken place between Kapika and Namibian president Sam Nujoma. Cornelius said that Kapika played the big chief, and Sam Nujoma had told Kapika to remember that a president has more power than a chief and that if a president decides to build a dam, then the dam will be built. At that point, Kapika and all the Himba got up and walked out.

  We arrived at Kapika’s large and prosperous-looking village in the early afternoon and were met by two young men with big biceps. They told us to wait under a tree. Eventually, Kapika appeared and one of the young men hurried to place a lawn chair in the shade. Kapika shot a hostile look in our direction, then sat in his chair and turned his body away from us. David talked to the headman’s profile, telling him we had traveled from Canada to find out what the Himba had to say about the dam the government wants to build at Epupa.

  “Why should I talk to you?” Kapika said, his words more a statement than a question. He said that many people had visited him, slept in his guest hut, asked the same questions as us, and then gone away. “
Nobody has come back to tell us what their government decided,” he said. “It has gone quiet.” His face was disdainful. “It is a problem for me to speak with you,” he said and stopped talking.

  David and I both spoke at once, tripping on the words as we tried to get Cornelius to explain to the headman that we belonged to a tribe that was so big, we didn’t know the people who had visited him already. Those people had come from other countries but our country knew nothing of the Himba and their problems. We wanted Kapika to understand that if he spoke with us, maybe we could tell the people of Canada about the dam and the problems it would cause for the Himba.

  Kapika cut off our flow of words with a question. “Who is your president?” he asked. When we told him it was Jean Chretien, he shook his head. We had told him we were from North America, so I said, “Bill Clinton,” and Kapika brightened. “Yes,” he said, “that one, he came to see me last month and brought me a big knife.”

  This was getting weird. Bill Clinton had not been in Africa lately, let alone sitting under Kapika’s tree. I speculated that Kapika’s visitor had been the president of an NGO or maybe some traveler playing games. I asked if we could see the gift from the president and Kapika sent one of the young men to fetch a Leatherman-type tool that unfolded into a knife. David turned the tool over in his hand, opened it up, murmured appreciatively and, for a moment, the mood of the meeting was almost congenial. Then Kapika asked us where his pump was, saying that our president had promised to send a new electric pump for the borehole where the village drew water, but that it was now over a month later and there was still no pump. I assured him that if Bill Clinton had promised him a pump, he would get a pump, and this seemed to mollify him.

  Again, I asked what he thought of the dam at Epupa, and this time he said, “I am Kapika the chief. Epupa belongs to me, to the home of Kapika.” Then he recited an extended genealogy of the Himba families in the region, both in Namibia and across the border in Angola, who had claims to Epupa Falls. He said, “Epupa belongs to me, to the home of Kapika. It belongs to Bendura home. It belongs to Tjimburu home. It belongs to Tginge home.” After each name, he paused so Cornelius could translate his words, and I could write them down. Before continuing, Kapika would ask Cornelius, “Did she get it?” Then he continued with the list of names. Once the genealogy was done, he said, “We are finished. This is the last word. Epupa will not be built as a dam.”

  I started to ask a question, wanting to hear about the ancestral graves that would be buried by the dam, wanting to know whether Kapika grazed his herds along the river, and curious to hear what he thought of President Sam Nujoma, but Kapika waved my words away. I fell silent, dismissed. David asked if he could take a photograph and Kapika agreed, remaining in his lawn chair, looking haughty. After a few frames, he waved his hand again, got up, and walked off.

  We were headed for the truck when Kapika called after us. Cornelius said he wanted us to take a look at his finger. There was a sliver wedged in the top near the nail, and the skin was red, slightly infected. David used our tweezers to take the sliver out, then applied disinfectant with a cotton ball, put on medicated ointment, and wrapped a Band Aid around it. Kapika held up his finger and smiled for the first time. “Give me that,” he said, pointing at the Band Aids; we gave him the tube of ointment as well and left the village with his blessing.

  As we drove away, Cornelius explained that his father was Kapika’s uncle, which meant that Cornelius and the headman were cousins. I was surprised given the age difference between the two, but Cornelius said he was the youngest of his father’s children. “Kapika is like my father,” Cornelius said, “they are both naughty men.” Kapika was being “naughty” with us when he said it was a problem to speak to us: he was playing games to see what we would do. Cornelius also said that Kapika is a rich man who has many cows and has already owned many trucks. “He will tell you he is poor and ask you to give him things, but it is not true.”

  DAM

  Cornelius had grown up in a traditional Himba household, and his father was angry with him for going to school. “I escaped from my father to go to school because I wanted to be able to read and write,” Cornelius said. “If I go to school, then I can get a job and make money and buy what I want.”

  He had already bought a camera. He explained that he worked as a photographer, taking photos of people in the area. David asked about film and processing and Cornelius said he had to mail the film to the capital, to get it developed and pictures printed. The money he made helped pay for his schooling. Cornelius and David talked about photography as our truck bumped along, slowing down repeatedly in order to pass cattle, and finally stopping to say hello to the young men herding the beasts. During the conversation, each of the herders reached out at some point and touched the digital watch that Cornelius wore on his wrist.

  We were taking Cornelius back to his school. He was a wonderful translator and we felt it was unfortunate our conversation with Kapika had been so limited. Before we reached the town, we saw an older man standing along the road. Cornelius suggested we stop and talk to him, as this man was also a headman and would have something to say about the dam.

  He was a man of about sixty, and was happy to speak with us, but refused to say anything until I had my notebook out and was ready to write down his words. He started his commentary on the dam by drawing a diagram of Epupa Falls in the sand.

  “Now this is the river,” he said through Cornelius, “and at the division of the river there are islands. Inside the islands, there are trees that we can use for the goats, cattle, and donkeys to eat during the autumn time. If you put a dam in Epupa, all this area will be covered with water. There will no more be a place for our cattle to graze. In the middle of the island, sometimes Himba die and we bury them in the island. We come back to commemorate them. This is important. We eat fruit from the islands also. Now the government of Namibia, they don’t know about the Himba. If the dam comes and they cover this area, where are we going to graze? This is the main reason why we refuse the dam. This area will be under water and there will be nothing alive under there.”

  He said that all the chiefs of the area had refused the dam, and named several others besides himself who opposed the project. He said his people were poor and couldn’t go to America to talk to the government there. He complained about how poor the government of Namibia was, and spoke about the time when Namibia was ruled by South Africa, that in those days the chiefs received 100-pound bags of ground corn each month, and the people were given blankets when they went to hospital. Now they must get their own blankets, their own mealie meal, and when the government has a meeting in Windhoek, the chiefs must get their own ride, their own place to stay in the city, their own food, and then get themselves back home again. He himself was just returning from a meeting in the town of Opuwo and he was waiting here hoping a ride would come along.

  At this point, the man stood up and drew his finger across his throat in a slow menacing gesture. Cornelius translated his words. “It is serious that we will die because we do not farm with money. We drink the milk from the goats, we eat the plants. Even our wives, when they hear about Epupa, they want to kill themselves because they know our people will die.”

  We assured him that we would do what we could to make the people of Canada aware of the problems the dam would cause for the Himba. David asked if he could take a photograph and the man stripped off his t-shirt and windbreaker before standing straight and looking into the camera. When I asked why he took them off for the picture, he said, “We wear these shoes and shirts only for the cold.” We gave him a sack of ground corn, for which he thanked us profusely, and bid him farewell.

  We had driven on for only a few more minutes when we saw two more men sitting by the road. Cornelius was happy to keep translating, so we pulled over. We told the men we were talking to people about the dam and they repeated much of what the previous man had said.

  One of them had been to the capital and when I got Corneliu
s to ask him what he thought of the city, he said, “It is good to see with the eyes, but not to live. We are farming with our cattle. Where would they stay in Windhoek? We eat from the cattle, we must not stay in the towns, we are not for life in the towns.”

  DARKNESS

  We dropped Cornelius off at dusk and set up camp as the sun went down. I made a fire and started to cook while the last light drained from the sky. One of the things this region had introduced me to was true darkness. For weeks now, the phase of the moon had determined the amount of light by which I cooked supper. I had given up my temperamental flashlight and learned how to organize myself on dark nights so that I could cook by fire light, remembering where I placed things when I put them down, keeping my tools to a minimum.

  I had taken an astronomy course at university, but it meant little compared to the education in lunar cycles that two months of living beyond the power grid was giving me. The word moon took on a whole new range and depth of meaning when I experienced it without interference from the technologies I had grown up with. Until now, my understanding of night had been mediated by electric lights.

  The moon had been full when we arrived in Kaokoland and its brilliance astounded me. I could actually read by it. The rocks and hills appeared in soft greys and browns, and I felt like we had entered a universe parallel to the one lit by the sun. Moonlight was great for traveling and when we were camped near trails we would hear people walking past, using the nocturnal sun to advantage.

  On this night, I knew the moon wouldn’t be up for hours yet. The inky blackness folded itself around everything and made the fire into the center of our existence. I was cooking ground corn in one pot and making gravy in another, balancing them on a couple of rocks, when the dog growled and a man walked into the circle of light. He was old enough to have been around during the war and spoke a little Afrikaans. He said he was a Zemba, one of the smaller tribes in the area, and lived nearby with his family. He settled down by our fire and he and David talked while I finished cooking.