Because water is such a
precious
commodity,
their clothing is not
washed in it - rather
they
drape
their
costumes over smoky
fires to cleanse them by
encouraging the smoke
to flow through the
garments.
We thought perhaps the purpose was insure that no insects or other parasites could live in
the materials. The method of cleaning certainly did not remove dirt from them.
The day we visited the village, the men were all away searching out the next site for a village
since they would soon be leaving this current place because all the grass was drying
up or being eaten completely by the village’s livestock. The women willingly
demonstrated how they created their red powders, how they made a fragrance to
apply to their bodies, how they made beads for decoration, how they cleaned their
clothes. They seemed totally incurious about us or where we might have come from or
even why we had come. It seemed their only contact with our world was their
eagerness to sell their bead creations and other jewelry to us.
Yet Pollan was a son of this tribe and laughed and talked with the ladies all the while
we visited. In just one generation he emerged from this primitive tribe to join the new
Namibia. He went to school in the settlement below the Elephant Camp and was
hired by Pieter the camp owner who further educated him in the skills it takes to run
a tourist operation. So now when Pieter goes to another of his camps, Pollan runs
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