Living in Northern Namibia 101

11/1/2013

Last night, we went to the homestead of Brett’s girlfriend’s (Angelina) family outside of Oshekati.  Many families live on homesteads, which are basically farms.  Other families living in town have small plots to grow millet (muhangu) and beans, mangos or squash in their yard.  Everyone works very hard to make the farm function.  At Angelina’s homestead, they have a lot of land that they cultivate, harvest and shell using tractors, and then they pound the muhango into flour by hand with large wooden poles in holes in the ground inside a hut. Then they send the course flour to a machine to be finely pounded.  Smaller, less well off families do all of this by hand, from hoeing the land to the final pounding.  Within the homestead walls, there are many huts and buildings. Basically, each hut is a room in a house.  There is a kitchen hut, bedrooms, a shower hut, and living spaces, as well as storage huts.  All around the outside of these buildings, food plants grow to feed the family.  We saw hot peppers ripening, squash, sweet potato, corn and sorghum.  In the evenings, small boys drive the cattle into pens closer to the stead, after they have been grazing all over.  The land is communal, and over feeding is kept in check by the farmers, who have a very good, deep knowledge of their land.  Pigs live in a small clay structure just outside the homestead; chickens have a coop; dogs have a lean to for shade just outside the front door.  Angelina’s homestead and family are very wholesome and picturesque.  Everyone works hard to make the farm work effectively.

For dinner, we had Oshivambo chicken (slaughtered that morning), which was boiled with onions, tomatoes, spices and marula oil into a sort of stew. Hands were washed; grace was said. To eat the stew, we pinched off pieces of muhangu porridge patties, and dipped the porridge into the oil and vegetables.  We ripped the chicken and ate with our hands.  Kristin really enjoyed this, and she made a big mess!

Overall, it made me feel a little bit like the farming families I know in the States.  Chickens sound like chickens.  Cattle sound like cattle.  Corn grows.  Seasons pass. People are welcomed.  Family is loved. Work is done.  Work is begun again.