Time for a new virtual journey and it's back to Africa, landing at
17.85° S, 19.19° E. Welcome to the Bushveld!
Physical geography:
Bushveld more commonly refers to a region of South Africa, but it also applies to this section of the
Okavango river basin, though I've also seen it referred to as the Kalahari Sandveld. Our point is in a patch of wooded savanna, a little valley formed by the intermittent Mpuku river, just a few hundred feet to the west, which flows (sometimes) 2.5 miles north into the Okavango. The ground here is sandy, the forest dominated by
teak trees which do just fine in the sand. Climatically this is a transition area, with drier savanna and eventually the Kalahari desert to the south, more humid savanna and denser forests to the north. The climate right here is relatively pleasant, with temperatures in the 60's and 70's (°F), sometimes getting up to the lower 90's. It is very dry with essentially no rain at all May-Sept., but does rain some the other months averaging 5.8 inches a year (similar to the American Southwest).
It's pretty flat here, and on the edge of the Okavango flood plain, well above sea level at around 3,500 feet. You do get hills as you get further away from the river and to the southwest of our point you get a bizarre natural landscape of straight line ridges and valleys that are ancient sand dunes that have been stabilized by vegetation. Beyond that is about 170 miles away is the
Etosha pan, an enormous salt pan known for its charismatic African wildlife. Going the other way we can follow the Okavango which does not flow to the Ocean, but goes east into the interior of Africa and about 200 miles downstream opens up into a huge inland
delta which is also known for its high concentration of wildlife. Some of that wildlife can probably be found near our point as well, especially antelope, hyena, leopard, wildebeest, maybe even elephants and lions. Over in the river you can find hippos and crocodiles.
While out point is in the woods, we are not in deep wilderness here, the area is settled, with the nearest fields less than a mile away. This shot is about 100 miles east of our point, but the foreground is the same terrain and that main road passes within a mile of our point.
There are numerous natural hazards including flooding, drought, and wild fires that inflict the area. Human made problems include land degradation due to over farming or over grazing. Disease is also a problem with malaria being particularly rampant.
Human geography:
We are in the Musese constituency of the
Kavango West region of
Namibia. Our point is very close to the northern border of Namibia with the Okavango being the boundary with neighboring Angola. While Namibia as a whole is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the planet, this little strip of land along the Okavango, which gets more rain than the rest of the country, has a pattern that we've seen in a couple of our points now, not many urbans areas, but fairly densely populated agricultural use. The area surrounding our point is the village of Mayenzere, which I was not expecting to find any info on, it has no Wikipedia page, it's not even on Google maps, but I found this awesome video which is about the best introduction I could have imagined:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9P2WWY-Ai8 That school is about 2 miles from our point.
The area is extremely poor, most involved in farming, not for sale, but just for their own consumption. The fields are mostly pastures for cattle or goats. There is some cropland too with the main crop being mahangu, what we call pearl millet, as it can handle the sandy soil and dry climate. There is also some sorghum and maize grown as well. Most of the fields are communal and the forests as well. There is also fishing available in the Okavango. The forest our point is on is not protected but presumably used by the locals to harvest forest products. Numerous tracks can be seen crisscrossing it on the satellite imagery.
There is a dirt/sand road just 600 feet to the west, that runs north-south along the Mpuku river connecting the handful of farms and settlements further south to the main strip of settlement along the Okavango. The main road for that strip, the B10/C45, is paved and it's just a 1/2 mile north of our point. That road connects a string of small communities that line the Okavango valley. 40 miles to the west is the town of Nkurenkuru, only 618 people, but it's the capital and largest town of Kavango West. It has the distinction of being a Finnish missionary station since 1929, that mission created a small satellite mission called Rupara just 5 miles west of our point.
Going east along the main road and into the neighboring region of Kavango East you'll reach Rundu about 35 miles away (a 40 minute drive). Rundu is much larger at just over 60,000 people as of the last census (2011). That might not sound like a lot, but it's the 2nd largest city in Namibia and you'll find most of your modern conveniences here. That includes an airport with commercial service to Namibia's capital of Windhoek, railroad connections, a modern hospital, universities, and a shopping mall. Rundu is still extremely poor though, with significant sprawling shantytowns that surround the city center. It is growing quickly having doubled in population since 2000 and it may have over 90,000 people today.
This entire area is pretty isolated from the rest of the world, there is just a single road connecting Rundu to Windhoek and that's a 7 hour drive. It's 10 hours to get to the coast. There also are not many connections to neighboring Angola, there is a bridge at Rundu, but that part of Angola is also sparsely populated and it would be a 9 hour drive to the nearest major Angolan city.
The people living near our point are the
Kavango people who speak their
own language. There are around 200,000 Kavango living almost entirely in the Kavango East and West regions where they are the majority, though they're only 9% of the population of Namibia. They are related to the Owambo people who are the largest ethnic group in Namibia and live mostly in the north central portion of the country. They are mostly Lutheran, thanks to those Finnish missionaries. Rundu has become a multicultural city and Afrikaans is used as a lingua franca, though the government has also been pushing English, but it's unclear to me how widely that's been adopted in this area. You might also hear Portuguese as a lot of Rundu's recent influx has been refugees from Angola.
I couldn't find much on the early history of the area. The first people living here were probably the San (Bushman) who were gradually pushed into the desert areas by various Bantu peoples. The Owambo people moved in from the northeast in the 1500's and gradually moved further west and south. They were followed by the Kavango in the 1700's who settled along the Okavango river and founded a string of 6 kingdoms. The one our point would've been in is Mbunza. Today the Kavango people divide themselves into 6 tribes that correspond directly to those 6 kingdoms. Europeans didn't really reach this area until the 1880's.
Portuguese started in Angola much earlier motivated by wanting slaves for Brazil and steadily pushed further and further inland. The Germans didn't start getting interested in Namibia until the late-1800's, declaring a protectorate over the area in 1884 and Portugal and Germany established the border between their colonies in 1886. Portugal was harsh is dealing with the locals and the Owambo and Kavango peoples mostly fled to be on the German side of the border. The Germans in contrast were not especially interested in the northern region of their colony and left the traditional tribal structures intact. This was not true throughout Namibia, they were mostly interested in the central and southern regions where the diamonds are and their
genocide of the Herero people was particularly brutal and may have been inspiration for the Holocaust.
Germany lost its colonies when it lost WWI, what is now Namibia was occupied by South Africa during the war and kept it as a League of Nations and then UN mandate afterwards. South Africa did not have the same hands offs relationship that the Germans did, assassinating the last Owambo king in 1917. Rundu was founded in 1936 to be an administrative center for the northeast area of the colony. Some traditions survived South African rule, such as the communal land rights, but South Africa also began to implement it's apartheid policies in preparation for full annexation. The UN did not take kindly to these plans and began to have an increasing adversarial with South Africa. The locals didn't take kindly to it either, with protests beginning in the 50's and armed resistance in the 60's. South Africa doubled down on implementing apartheid, the Kavango area was named one of the "homelands", Kavangoland, in theory independent, but in practice not so much.
Meanwhile, across the border in Angola, there was also a fight for independence which began in the 50's and was won in 1975. The winning alliance immediately fell apart beginning the Angola civil war. The U.S. and Soviet Union took sides and it became one of the most infamous and deadly of the Cold War proxy wars including the deployment of Cuban forces to the region. The independence movement in Namibia (led by
SWAPO) sided with the Soviets while South Africa sided with the U.S. allowing South Africa to frame its repression of Namibia as fighting communists and included South African ground forces moving into Angola. Meanwhile in the Namibian conflict the other southern African nations all supported SWAPO as an anti-colonialism war. Our point being near the border would've been in the thick of it, the border was ignored by all sides - their being few roads in the region would mean the roads were often targets. The two wars became hopelessly entangled and mines would be deployed freely.
The Namibian conflict ended up taking 23 years. There never were any decisive military engagements, South African eventually bowed to diplomatic pressure. A U.S. brokered
agreement led to both Cuba and South Africa withdrawing forces in Angola and the independence of Namibia in 1990. Once agreed to, Namibia's actual transition to independence went relatively smoothly. Angola's civil war would continue until the military leader of the communist side was killed in 2002. In that period between peace being established in Namibia and the war continuing in Angola, many Angola refugees fled to the Numidian side of the border, mostly ending up in Rundu. Our area was a SWAPO hotbed, once independence was won SWAPO became the ruling party. It's leader, Sam Nujoma, an Owambo and president until 2007, pursued a policy of reconciliation to unite the country and has received numerous peace awards.
Today the Kavango people are still in recovery from the war. The economy is limited, as mentioned it's mostly subsistence agriculture, the isolation of the region means that markets are limited, and the recently population pressure probably isn't helping. Still it's not all bad, infrastructure is in place and continues to be built, there are schools and health facilities. Despite the poverty the literacy rate here is 95%. The Kavango have a reputation as one of the
friendliest people in Africa and have largely been welcoming of the refugees. There is tourism potential for the region, there are several National Parks featuring Africa's charismatic wildlife, the nearest, Mangetti National Park, being about 50 miles away and Rundu having the nearest tourist facilities. In between our point and Rundu is the
Mbunza Living Museum, a safari lodge, and a couple of river lodges.
The Kavango are also known for their wood carving abilities with carvings being sold to tourists. As you might have gathered from that video, singing and dancing are big.
A few more tidbits. Numerous non-government organizations also appear to be active in the region helping make up the lack of resources.
I'll leave you with a map of the Okavango Basin, our region is in the center-left of the map. Also if you want to dive further, I found this
Atlas of Namibia super useful.
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