FEATURE ARTICLES
June 2001 issue

The Himba and the Dam

A questionable act of progress may drown this African tribe's way of life. Similar dramas are playing out around the world

By Carol Ezzell

Not until we stand on a ridge overlooking the Kunene River-which forms part of the border between the southern African nations of Angola and Namibia-does tribal leader Jakatunga Tjiuma comprehend the immensity of the proposed dam. "Look there," I tell him with the help of an interpreter, pointing to a distant notch in the river gorge that a feasibility study says would be the most likely site of the wall of concrete. "That's where the dam would be." Turning, I point to hills in the east. "And the water would back up behind the dam to make a lake that would stretch to there." I can see the shock and incredulity in his eyes as he begins to understand how high the water would rise up the faraway hillsides, flooding more than 140 square miles of Himba settlements, grazing land and grave sites. He clutches a blanket around his shoulders and crouches on a rock, speechless.

Tjiuma is a counselor to one of the headmen for the Himba tribe, an essentially self-sufficient band of 16,000 people who eke out an existence from the barren, rocky terrain of northwest Namibia, living off the milk and meat of their cattle and goats, along with the occasional pumpkin or melon. The Himba are sometimes called the Red People because they traditionally cover their bodies, hair and the animal skins they wear with a mixture of butterfat and a powder ground from the iron ore ocher. They say they use the ocher-butter mixture because they like the way it looks, although it undoubtedly also protects their skin against the arid climate....continued at Scientific American Digital