Mariental Culture - The Informal Settlements

I honestly don’t have too much to say about the actual culture of the blacks, since I didn’t really experience it firsthand. But I saw a lot. And I’ll just relate what I saw.

I spent a good amount of time in the informal settlements. It’s like nothing you’ll ever see in the US. In the US, the government won’t just let you up and build your own house wherever you want. There are many laws governing where you can build a house and just what you can build it out of, etc. Here, people take up a plot of land and build a house out of corrugated iron or whatever they can find (sometimes they use reeds). And these aren’t just random thrown together shacks as they may appear. The bigger ones have garden areas, sometimes a concrete patio area, and shade nets for sitting outside, and different rooms inside the shacks. They don’t have running water, but they have electricity. Imagine that happening in the US: a whole bunch of people decide to build houses somewhere near a city, and the city hooks them up to the electrical grid! Also, a lot of the people living here are not incredibly poor. Some of them own cars. I saw with my own eyes a really nice TV inside one the shacks, only a bit smaller than a TV I have at home. A lot of them dress nicely, especially the high-school age teenagers. Also, the life they live doesn’t seem to be too terrible. Yes, there’s a lot of unemployment. Yes, there’s a lot of alcoholism. It’s bad, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think it’s all bad. Lucky and Clarence said themselves, growing up in an informal settlement is fun, and I can see why. It’s a very tight-knit community. Without permanent walls, you can just walk up to people in their houses and say hello. I saw the kids having fun. And each house had its own character. Each house was unique because the person living there, or the person living there before them, had built it themselves.

The main groups that we found living in the informal settlements are the Namas, the Kavangos, and the Ovambos. I’m sure that others (Damara, Caprivian, etc) are also represented, but those are the three that we mostly talked to. As I mentioned before, the Namas are from the south and traditionally are cattle raisers. I also heard from several sources that the Nama fight a lot. A few Ovambo/Kavango people who we talked to about establishing a reeds project said that we shouldn’t involve the Nama for this reason. We also talked to one Nama family and asked them if they’d be willing to use reeds to build a fence or a house. They said that they wouldn’t because if you get into an argument with someone, they might burn your house down. That was one of the weirdest comments we got. There is also definitely a divide between the groups. In many cases when we asked the Nama about working with reeds, they responded that that was what the Kavangos or the Ovambos did. Which is true, the Kavangos and Ovambos come from the northern, more fertile part of the country and are most used to agricultural work. But there is definitely a separation. When the other half of my group went into the informal settlements to return something, a group of drunk people surrounded the car and started shouting and asking why they were only giving jobs to the Ovambos and Kavangos. But in general, when we asked if they thought that the different ethnic groups could work together, they said yes. So that’s one thing about the culture. I don’t really have any more general information, but I want to describe some things that I saw in the informal settlements.

Cats and dogs. I saw a group of kittens that were sleeping on a rock in the sun. They looked only a few months old. Then I saw a puppy come along and nudge one of the kittens and wake it up. Then the kittens moved to another rock. It was the cutest thing ever. I also saw the skinniest cat I’ve ever seen, and a good amount of scrawny dogs. They just forage for scraps because there’s no food.

The kids. A lot of them would wave at us when we drove by, and we’d wave back. We were hassled by several kids in the city begging for money, but not really in the informal settlements. When I was done with one interview, I noticed that a group of kids had gathered behind me. I turned around and had a conversation in English! Just the standard greetings: “Hello,” “How are you,” “What’s your name,” etc. And she understood me! It was cute.

I interviewed one guy that had a University of Maryland hat. I wonder where he got it.

One house we passed by had this amazing garden in their front yard.It was almost like a sculpture garden. There were all these bits of scrap metal crafted together and painted bright blue. I did get a picture. I'll have to show everyone.

That's all for now, really. I'll post most later!