If Imanuel seems to live well (he wears glasses, a very new tee-shirt… and has a nice English belly!), it is not the case for the remainder of the village and his family.
Without speaking about the precariousness of the infrastructures, people that we meet are rather dirty and we can see strains on their faces. His father works in the mines, his mother died little time ago. He studied in the big city of Swakop and is now earning tourist's money organising these tours in the rock natural reserve.
We will visit his cousin's home who had just delivered a little baby girl. Two weeks old we will take the baby in our arms. Sweet! Such a tiny piece of human body with already nice curly hair.
In the village, electricity has existed only for 4 years (solar panels bought by the government). Before, the people were doing the old fashiosned way.
Water is to be seeked kilometers away, with the means of cans and donkeys' backs. When there is meat to eat, it is buried underground so it stays cool. Refrigerators do not exist here!
As for his community, it is managed by a chief who makes all the political and financial decisions for his tribe.
Talking about tradition, his sister recently married and remained locked up in the dark during one week before finally saying yes. Why not voting this law in Europe, we could surely manage to divide the number of divorces by three!!
The following day, direction the`cheetas park', a big private farm populated with wild and semi wild cheetas. At the landlord's, we will approach and pat two semi wild cheetahs. Even if they funnily look and walk like our kitties, we feel their wildness and fear their unpredictable reactions. The evening, in a big truck, we drive away to watch the rangers feeding some wild cheetas with pieces of meat.
On the road towards the park of Etosha, we will halt in a village and trade with these women from the famous Himba tribe. They are very easily recognizable, they have naked breasts, are covered with a mixture of oil and ochre mud, and carry rather extravagant necklaces and bracelets. They are very tough and stubborn saleswomen, and we struggle to negotiate low prices. The tradition also requires that we pay them when taking a picture. Business business! Fortunately our frien Coen was hidden far awy and took some pictures for us!
Our last stage in Namibia is the famous park of Etosha, the 2nd larger natural park of Africa after Kruger than we visited in South Africa.
All the day in drive range is spent and one fills the tank with photographs - in particular animals which we discover for the first time (jackal, hyena, gnou has white beard, éland. )! The landscapes are splendid. Great extents of savanna, and especially a salt desert which covers more than one third of the park. The evening, one admires a splendid sunset with precedes of them 4 lions which trélassent themselves around a water point.
After 3 days spent in Swakop city, here we go back up in the truck through the Namibian desert.
We will set the tents in the wild, in a large open land strewn with huge natural rocks. The area is protected by a community belonging to the DAMARAS tribe, gathered in a small village nearby 2 kilometers away from our camp. Once the tents installed, we leave for a few hours accompanied by a local guide, Imanuel, who will make us discover these large rocks which took astonishing forms with time, and these paintings made on the rocks by the bushmen approximately 1000 years ago. During the walk we take interest into our guide and ask him many questions about his life and community. At the end of the walk Imanuel offers to accompany the two of us to his village. It seems that he is pleased to see people interested in hi life! He will even give us a present: a small curio made of nutshell and ropes made up by himself. Our first gift received from a local!