Olmsted Foundation provides Cultural Immersion

C1C Rem Barnes, C1C Erin Coakley, C1C Travis Cope
C1C Matt Walker, Dr. Martiqua Post

This past summer four cadets and an aeronautics professor left Denver International on a 30-hour transatlantic flight nervous and excited about the next three weeks. We visited local villages, feasted on native foods, enjoyed the solace of the African sun and stars, but most of all learned a great deal about culture different from that of the West. 

We had the unique privilege of visiting a native Himba village in Namibia. The village looked much like a scene out of National Geographic.  During the day, the Himba men tend to the village's cattle and hunt for food, while the women shake gourds of goat's milk to make butterfat and perform various tasks around the village, as the children play. They build the frames of their homes from tree limbs and construct the roofs from mud and animal dung, arranging the homes in a circular pattern around a central goat corral, where the Himba children often played with the animals, and a sacred ancestral fire pit. Walking through the pit uninvited provokes a three-hour cleansing ritual in which the Himba recast the ceremonial fire. Inside the village huts hang the daily used tools of typical Himba life: perfume containers, spears, bows, snuff tubes made from cow bone, cow horns and ceremonial clothing.

We found one of the most interesting facts about the Himba was their use of water. The Namibian natives only use the scarce resource for drinking and cooking, not for cleaning. Instead, they cleanse themselves using a combination of local plants and herbs to smoke their bodies and clothing, followed by rubbing their skin with herbs that serve as both a bug repellent and a perfume. The reddish hue of the Himba people's skin is the result of a butterfat-based red ochre paste, the Himba version of a daily moisturizer. Other common practices within Himba villages include inhaling smoldering elephant dung to cure colds, a very odd sight at first glance.
The Himba, especially the children, happily posed for pictures. After we had taken pictures of them, the women and children wanted to see how they looked on our digital cameras because the culture does not use mirrors. At the end of the tour, the Himba had set up a market for us, displaying beautiful handcrafted jewelry, which they sell to send their children to school.

We slept in beds only two nights of our three-week immersion, the rest we camped under an unfamiliar Southern Hemisphere sky, void of light pollution, clouds, and aircraft. We cooked most of our meals over an open fire, including cooking with a Dutch oven topped with burning coals. One of our favorite foods was a traditional South African meal, called bobotie, a sweet curry made from steamed rice, minced meat, vegetables and egg, brought to South Africa by Malaysian immigrants. We topped this meal with chutney, a sweet relish made from fruits, spices, and herbs, somewhat resembling jam. The combination of hot bobotie, chutney, and red wine, made for unforgettable meals under the Southern Cross.

After visiting the desert dunes of Sossusvlei and Namib-Naukluft Park, we spent two bedded nights in Swakopmund, Namibia, a popular German vacation destination. One of the standout experiences of the former German colony was at a restaurant called "The Lighthouse" where we sampled a wide variety of exotic, native African meats. The male cadets ordered two entrees each, refusing to pass by the opportunity to feast upon unfamiliar meats. The dishes included oryx, gazelle, scallops and snails. We were surprised to discover that Southern Africa nations do not consume ketchup; instead, the sweeter and more viscous Tomato Sauce is everywhere.

One of the most peaceful experiences in we spent in Africa was in Botswana's Okavango Delta. We traveled the world's largest inland delta in traditional canoes called mokoros. The natives originally carved these shallow draft canoes from trees; however, they soon realized they were cutting the trees faster than the trees were growing, causing them to switch to fiberglass. We traveled two passengers per canoe with a guide standing in the stern, pushing us through the water with a long pole. The water depth in the delta varied from mere inches to over a dozen feet deep, but rarely did the poles fall short of reaching the bottom. The mokoros gave us a very up-close and personal look at the wildlife the delta contained, including wild boar, elephants, and a plethora of waterfowl.  The highlight of the trip was the crystal clear freshwater, which allowed us to see to the delta bottom, sometimes several meters deep. Our guide informed us this water was the purest water we could find in the region due to a lack of industry and agriculture along the Okavango River. We filled up our Nalgene bottles with the freshwater and were quick to affirm his claim. Our experience through the undisturbed peace of the Okavango more than outweighed the pain from our sunburns.

Our border crossing between Botswana and Zambia presented an experience unlike anything we had seen in the United States. On the Zambezi riverfront, young men quickly approached our vehicle offering their help, in exchange for a fee, to get us through the crossing more quickly. While this was a common practice to these men, it came as quite a shock, as none of us had ever witnessed blatant corruption. However, it is necessary for many people in these countries to earn money just to eat. We paid one of the young men the equivalent of $60 US dollars and waited about two hours to get through the crossing. Our guide told us our money saved us nearly a half day of waiting between the two countries.   

Our three-week immersion in the southern reaches of Africa proved to be an enlightening experience that we will never forget. We left Johannesburg, South Africa, headed back to the United States, with an invaluable knowledge of life in some of the world's most troubled, yet underappreciated countries. We would like to thank the Olmsted Foundation for this once in a lifetime opportunity and all the people we met along the way that made our trip truly unforgettable, especially our guide, Christian Fourie.