Village Happenings

Many changes had occurred by the time I returned to the village, both at home and in the community. The first thing was the progress being made on the road. As I mentioned in a previous post, the road from Oshikuku to Okalongo is being paved. This represents quite a big step forward in development and is a quite a buzz for everyone. In the past months work was being done to raise the road up about a meter. An enormous hole was made as vast quantities of the earth were moved to complete this task. The soil in Owamboland is mostly sandy clay with layers of sandstone beneath. None of which makes for a good road. Recently trucks have been bringing in gravel from Angola to make a layer on top of the sandstone. I got a lift from one of the project engineers last month. He said that every time they start a new layer of construction they have to send crews out to clear off all the cattle, donkey, and goat droppings that have accumulated. Organic matter just doesn't make for a strong road. Anyways, tar is being laid down on certain sections and progress is coming along nicely. The date for completion lies somewhere in October. I hope to travel on the road before I leave in December, but I have my doubts.

Besides the road there were also changes on my homestead. Harvesting the mahangu had begun before I left and things were still in full swing when I returned. All the mahangu and sorghum were brought to a large fenced-in clay area in front of the homestead called oshipale. This is a place where the millet can be removed from the stalk by a long process of thrashing, pounding, and sifting. Once that has been done, it's placed in large woven baskets called oshimbale, or iimbale in plural. The iimbale are culturally very important, cattle and mahangu are signs of wealth and power. The oshimbale is the vault that contains the family savings. I helped out a few times by carrying the large woven plates, called oshiyaha, full of mahangu on my head from the oshipale to the iimbale inside the homestead.

One afternoon, I was holding Shalongo close to our iimbale. My sister, Nandjila, told me not to let Shalongo see inside. It's culturally taboo for children to see the level of mahangu inside the iimbale. My sister explained that Shalongo would tell other children and then the whole village would know how much mahangu we had. Speaking of taboos, if someone asks you what you ate for dinner last night you must respond by saying it was just oshithima, porridge, and maybe ekaka, dried spinach. Telling people the truth is impolite because they may have not eaten anything.

Here's a photo of my brother, Shikwaya, making one oshimbale. He later sold this to a villager. The frame is made of long sticks from the mopane tree. Mopane bark is woven around sage plants and then through the frame to tie it together. Clay from termite mounds is then placed inside to seal out moisture and pests, sage is also a natural insect repellent.


Here's Aune in the oshini, a room where we pound mahangu. Sunk into the floor are trunks of mopane trees that are used as the mortar while the core of a mopane trunk is used as the pestle to pound the millet into a fine powder.

It's surprisingly cold here in the mornings, here's a photo of the kids huddled around the kitchen fire.

Why not jump?