Where Fire Speaks

  I served our visitor first and after one bite, he started to sputter and cough. I had dumped too many dried chili peppers into the gravy. David assured him that I had not been trying to kill him and when we began eating, the man tried again, coughed a few times, and eventually got through his plate.

  We sat by the fire and while the men talked in Afrikaans, I thought about the dam and what it would mean beyond the flooding of graves, the loss of grazing, the influx of workers and commerce. Back in town we had run into a well-dressed man with a big-city air about him who told us he was from Windhoek and that he worked for Namibian television. I asked what he felt about the dam and he had said, “We must develop these people. We can’t do it without electricity. If we don’t, if we leave them, then maybe in twenty years they will revolt and say, why do you develop all the other areas and not us? We must develop them, educate them, give them electricity so they can live a normal life.”

  I stared into the darkness beyond the fire and thought about the way electricity had limited my experience of night. The stars, the moon, the darkness had all been made pale, and sometimes almost invisible, by my “normal” life. Technology buffers us from the world as it is given. When the Himba are on the power grid, night won’t be as dark, nor will the full moon shine as bright. When we finally put the fire out, the darkness that climbed into bed with us was more comfort than threat and I felt lucky to be there.

  I was up at five a.m. My body had begun to respond to the sun, stirring into wakefulness hours earlier than I had ever willingly risen. I started a fire, put on the kettle, and held my fingers to the flames as the sun rose and the temperature took its just-after-dawn dip. I had never known such calm pleasure in waking. This regular contact with fire and earth would be among the things I missed most when I returned to the world of alarm clocks and coffee shops. The man from the night before appeared and gave me a Rhumba Appertif bottle half full of milk, still warm from the goat.

  CHURCH

  On Sunday Cornelius had asked us to come to church with him. He met us at the front gate of the school wearing a tie and carrying a bible. We walked across a field to the little white church with several of his classmates. Folding chairs were set up in rows on the concrete floor. Cornelius introduced us to the born-again Christian minister, an African man dressed casually in a checkered shirt, and explained that David wanted to take some pictures during the service.

  The church was about half full, the women in dresses, the men in trousers. A few children in ragged clothes came in, one of them wearing a t-shirt that read “My Fate to Skate” with a picture of a skateboarder on it. The service was conducted in Herrero. The first hymn was about Jesus being a friend, and then the minister prayed for a long time from the whitewashed pulpit. A few Himba women came in and sat down, their red breasts contrasting with the Sunday dresses of the other women. Cornelius came forward and his face shone with conviction as he delivered the sermon he had prepared, and then the tiny choir, consisting of Cornelius and several schoolmates, sang a couple of songs.

  The chairs were uncomfortable, the morning outside was beautiful. Some of the children walked out and David and I followed them. We could hear voices raised in a rousing song coming from across the field where the door of another white-washed building was open. Inside, the room was packed with people dressed in Sunday best, swaying together on the plank benches. A woman waved for us to join them, but we backed away. As we circuited the town, we counted four church services underway.

  PARTY

  An old Ford truck with a dented hood and bald tires was parked near one of the town’s two stores. A group of men and boys were gathered around and one of them, who turned out to be the driver, recognized us from the funeral at Etanga. He spoke some Afrikaans and, as he flipped his car keys from one hand to the other, he told us that all these people were traveling with him, and were on their way to Opuwo to go shopping for ground corn. Some goats were tethered in the back of the truck and, when I asked, he said they were food for the trip. He said the truck belonged to his father and I thought about how full it must have been when he drove in here, loaded with four goats and, on a quick count, about sixteen people.

  A middle-aged woman was seated under a nearby tree with the older men and a bottle of cane spirits. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get going. David asked if he could take some photographs and spoke with the driver. The concept of candid photography wasn’t an easy thing to communicate, so the conversation went back and forth for almost half an hour before a price of twenty dollars was agreed upon. David handed the money to the driver who immediately called all the people over, and before David could object, had them all standing in a line in front of the truck, staring at him. David clicked his camera, then went back to talk with the driver again. Eventually, he found it easier to demonstrate what he meant; he crouched down on the edge of the circle of drinkers, talked to one of the older men in his smattering of Herrero, got a few laughs, and took some photographs. The woman was the center of the group, the bottle of cane spirits in her hand. She poured some of the clear liquid into the makeshift tin cup and handed it to David. He took a swig, passed it back, and said okuhepa. Everyone laughed.

  The young men stayed on the periphery of the drinking, playing with their walking sticks and staging mock fights. After an hour or two, the woman sent them to the store to get another bottle of alcohol. It was midday and the sun was hot. The boys bought some orange pop for themselves and retired to a shady spot on a rocky knoll littered with broken glass, probably from previous parties. The drinking continued and when the oldest man, who was perhaps seventy years of age, passed out and wet himself in the process, two of the young men took care of him. They put sand on his blanket to dry up the piss, then gently lifted the old man and carried him over to a quiet place in the shade, taking care to place a rock under his head for a pillow.

  ANOTHER EMERGENCY

  During the hottest part of the day, one of the young men pulled a goat out of the back of the truck, grabbed it by the horns, led it over to the shade, pressed his knee into its throat, and killed it. Then they hung it from a tree branch and two of the young men grabbed hold of the skin, and leaning into the task, pulled the skin off to expose the meat.

  The goat was still boiling on the fire when a small truck pulled up with three white people squished into the cab, the back full of Himba women and babies. The driver jumped out and asked for the doctor. One of the women in the back was very sick. She was young, her eyes were closed, a blanket was draped over her limp body, and she lay in the arms of another woman who was wailing mournfully. The driver said that he and his friends had been vacationing at Epupa Falls when the women asked them for help. They had come here, to the closest medical clinic, driving as fast as they could over the bumpy road, and still the trip had taken almost three hours.

  We had heard that the doctor was away. The police station was nearby and we suggested they go see if the police had better information about the doctor’s whereabouts. They were back in minutes to report that the police had no medical supplies, no idea where the doctor was, and no suggestion other than to go see the white people who were over by the store, namely us. We told them that two more hours of driving would take them to the well-staffed hospital at Opuwo. The other option was to wait at the clinic and hope the doctor returned soon. The woman in the back of the truck continued to wail, and a baby was crying. One of the policemen walked up to tell us that the police had a car but no gas. He seemed confused and kept asking us what we thought should be done. We gave the driver directions to the hospital, assured him that the road ahead was better than the one they had just traveled, and sent them off. The shadows were growing long in the late afternoon light and they would be lucky to make Opuwo before dark.

  Going To Town

  HOSPITAL

  The hospital was why people went to Opuwo. We returned to the town ourselves a few days after the sick woman was transported there, and met a young doctor from Scotland who told us the
re had been a survey done that found most trips to town were for medical treatment. The town had been an important South African military base during the war and the large hospital was part of what was left of it. The Scottish doctor took me on her rounds one morning and together we walked the halls of the rambling building where shiny modern medicine lived side-by-side with third world improvisation.

  It was strange to see the men in blue flannel boxers, their walking sticks resting against metal night tables. One man had a shoulder injury and several were being treated for tuberculosis. We saw a baby who had rolled into a fire and burned his stomach. He was lying on a stained foam mattress and his mother, who wore a green hospital smock over her ochre-stained body, was staying on the floor next to him on a couple of blankets. The baby screamed when the bandages on his tummy were taken off, revealing a burn that still seeped red in places, though much of it was pink and dry. It’s healing, the doctor said, satisfied.

  The doctor told me that many of the burns on adults were alcohol-related. They tended to be deep burns because, after falling into the flames, people would lie there, too drunk to respond quickly. The clinic in Etanga had been closed when we were camped there under the meeting trees and anyone with an injury had come to see us, knowing that white people always travel with medical supplies. One afternoon, a man had arrived with a seeping wound on his leg and one on his elbow. The school boys started to snicker and said the man had fallen into the fire when he was drunk. David asked the man if the accident had happened when he was drinking and the man had smiled and nodded.

  It was a Monday morning when I teamed up with the doctor. The lineup outside the hospital was long; people leaned against the concrete, leaving ochre stains. The hospital was only open for emergencies on the weekend, so on Monday people arrived early and spent the morning waiting to be seen.

  CLEAN

  Most of the foreigners in town lived in the ranch-style homes that had once housed South African army officers. Most of the front yards were dry grass and dust now, and many of the back yards held empty swimming pools with cracks in the concrete. The friendly Peace Corps volunteer from Colorado lived in a faded house in the middle of the block. His name was Gary and he had invited us to stop by his place anytime we needed a shower or a place to stay.

  Gary said he had been in Opuwo long enough to know that travelers were good entertainment; the foreign community was small and split between the missionaries who tended to keep to themselves, and a few dozen aid workers, teachers, doctors, nurses, and engineers who sometimes gathered for parties. Gary ran the youth center and was proud of what they had set up for the local kids, but was under no illusions about the significance of his efforts. He gave the kids a place to hang out, play games, watch the only TV most of them had access to, but said he wasn’t improving their chances of getting jobs in this marginal economy or reducing the likelihood that they would wind up drinking. He was distressed about the future of these kids, but in a resigned been-too-long-in-Africa kind of way.

  We were in Gary’s place to take up his offer of a shower. While David and Gary talked, I shifted in my seat and became conscious of the walls around me. After several weeks of living outdoors, I was now back in the enclosed world. The flies lived on the far side of the glass, and the trousers I’d been wearing for the past week belonged out there too. My fingernails were caked with dirt, my hair smelled like smoke. Among people who spend their lives outside, stains and odors are normal; there is a lot of space, the wind blows, and odors don’t get concentrated like they do when unwashed bodies are contained by walls. Opuwo was an outpost of the inside world. Gary was cleanly shaved, and wearing pressed clothes that didn’t stink from a week in the bush.

  The deep porcelain tub looked promising but it took half an hour to run five-inches of tepid grey water; the bath left me smelling like shampoo, and contemplating the effort required to maintain the norms of the center out here on the periphery.

  MARKET

  People coming to the hospital were usually accompanied by family members who hung out in Opuwo until the patient was ready to go home. Most people passed the day in the market where freshly killed goat and beef hung from hooks in open air stalls protected from the sun by palm frond roofs. Women knelt over small fires cooking bread and meat and offering it for sale. Buildings made of mud bricks lined one side of the market; they were dark little bars that seemed always to be open and usually to be full. The market was crowded and sometimes the bars spilled out and the whole lane would fill with exuberant drinkers.

  At such times, I tended to gravitate towards the women, crouching next to them, sharing peanuts and playing with their babies. Unlike the braided hair of Himba women, mine was forever blowing around in the wind. Often ochre-stained fingers would reach up to my face and one of them would pull strands of hair from my mouth with an indulgent fussing look.

  At other times the women were in the middle of the drinking. One afternoon, we spent an hour in the dim interior of a small bar. Some excellent pieces of Himba jewelry hung over a string on the back wall; things people had sold to the bar in exchange for beer. A group of women were passing a bottle and arguing loudly. One of them was breast-feeding her child; when she got drawn into the argument, she stopped breast feeding and her baby grabbed for the bottle.

  SUBURBS

  The center of town still resembled a military compound, but on the outer edges there was a burgeoning suburb of mud brick houses crowded together on crooked streets. Morning fires burned in outdoor kitchens. The lanes were narrow and full of people, goats, and the odd chicken.

  On a barren stretch of ground beyond one of the suburbs, we found two Himba huts. At our feet lay a discarded sneaker, bits of broken plastic, and pieces of paper. The huts fit in with the trash. They were traditional Himba dwellings but wrapped in pieces of plastic and cardboard. An old man with shockingly thin arms and legs was hunched over in front of one hut. The scene reminded me of what we’d heard about the drought of the mid-’80s when the death of their herds brought many Himba to town where they built shanty huts out of cast-off materials and survived on handouts from the government.

  Several women were sitting nearby on a piece of cardboard, and one of them was reclining while the other two braided her hair. Braiding is a time-consuming process that involves twisting pieces of hair with ash. The women’s actions were unhurried. Though we had been alarmed by the appearance of the old man, from what we could gather from the women, he was simply very old. This camp on the outer edge of town was primarily a place to stay while waiting for relatives who were receiving treatment at the hospital.

  AIDS

  Doctors at the hospital had just confirmed their first local HIV case. The man was not a Himba, but the doctors knew it was only a matter of time. The communality of the Himba extended to sex. While most adult Himba had spouses, they also had lovers. It was standard practice for a man, if he was not home by evening, to stay away for the night so as not to surprise his wives with their boyfriends. Gonorrhea was common and young men wore their first gonorrhea treatment like a badge, proud of the fact that it declared them sexually active.

  The taboo against having sex with anyone outside the Himba community was still strong, but alcohol and the tribally mixed environment of the market was helping to break it down. One doctor spoke about the mobility of the Himba and the potential for spreading the disease. “None of them stay in Opuwo,” he said. “They may come here for as long as six months, but they always go back to their villages.”

  At a dinner party of Peace Corps volunteers and NGO workers, the Scottish doctor related her efforts to educate her Himba friends about AIDS. “AIDS is a great tragedy that will affect all of you soon,” she had warned.

  “We have many horrors,” they had responded with customary fatalism. “The war, the drought, so AIDS is next. That is normal. There is always some terrible thing about to happen.”

  VIDEO

  The dinner party was at the home of a teacher from England
and the dozen foreigners were struggling to keep a conversation going until the subject of tourists came up. Everyone laughed at how inaccurately the tour brochures depicted things. The Scottish doctor told about the in-flight travel video she had seen while flying back to Namibia after a recent visit to Scotland. The video had explained that the Himba belonged to a primitive tribe, that many of them had never seen white people before, their language had never been written down, and that in order to speak to them, the film crew needed two translators. The video footage had panned across a village and then moved in on the headman who, according to the translation, said, “We are so happy to have you here and are glad you want to see how we live.”

  The doctor laughed as she told us this. In her year at the hospital she had learned the Herrero language and come to know many of the people who lived close to town. The video footage was from a village on the main road, one she had visited many times. The headman shown on the film came to see her at the hospital almost every week. In the video, his words had been translated from Herrero to Afrikaans and then into English, but the doctor listened to the Herrero and did her own translation. What she heard the headman say was, “I don’t understand why you are here. You used to live like this once too. And who is getting the money for this anyway, because I haven’t been given any.”