12 September

After visiting Katima to upload the blog and buy some supplies we drove to the Zambian border post in the hopes of looking across and seeing the Zambezi river. Unfortunately the Namibian border post was a few hundred meters from the Zambian one so we couldn’t really see. We ended up catching a small glimpse of the Zambezi and the opposite bank through a fence in Katima.

We then drove to Salambala, which is a community-run campsite in the Salambala conservancy. It is set deep in the forest (we literally drove for kilometers) and I like it. The guy who met us here was a local named Kevin and he showed us to our site. We asked him if we could go on a short walk with him later on and he said yes.

At 4:10 (we agreed 4:00 tut tut…) he showed up and we started walking. We didn’t see anything exciting or particularly beautiful but it was very nice walking through such a pretty area after spending a lot of time in a 4x4. The most interesting thing was however, just talking to him.

We talked for a long time about the conservancy and the local languages. Then my dad had to return to the car in order to turn off our fridge and I continued with him; we chatted about the local government, the village organization and generally about the differences in our cultures.

Some of the things I learnt:

·         They don’t have a written language, but one has developed in order to communicate via text.

·         They conjugate verbs by pronouncing them slightly differently.

·         To change the tense they simply change the pre-word such as ‘today’ or ‘yesterday’

·         The conservancy has really helped them.

·         They can sell a hunting permit (up to 7 a year) for N$110000 (11000EU), which goes to local schools and other services.

·         Within their conservancy there are 18 areas.

·         Each area elects (universal suffrage above 18) two Ndunas or local heads.

·         One Nduna goes to the Chief’s village

·         The Chief is the hereditary ‘king’ of the 18 villages (in this example)

·         The other Nduna remains in the village

·         A village is comprised entirely of related people

·         The chief’s word is law and must be followed to a reasonable level

·         An argument or crime that cannot be resolved is brought to the Chief and all his Ndunas who listen to the statements and decide upon a payment in cattle.

·         The Nduna’s who stay local cant order the payment of cattle as it is too valuable, only money

·         They don’t seem to use selective breeding in their cattle

·         The conservancy originally had a lot of help from NGO’s, most importantly the WWF which arranged a donor nation to finance it.

·         Neighbouring villages often fight over land. He says weapons are used, but he also says no one is harmed.

·         In the Caprivi, there are many many different languages spoken. But everyone speaks Lozi to communicate with other tribes.

·         He can tell whether someone comes from Zimbabwe, Angola or Botswana (and other countries) just by looking at them.

There’s a whole bunch of other stuff. I recorded some of the language conversations on video.

Salambala was awesome as we had a real feeling of complete isolation. We never saw another person and the trees grew tall. Hyenas called at night.