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Skeleton Coast - 2001
Skeleton Coast - 2001
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-18 23:04:01
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is vast, one of the largest on the African continent, and with a little luck, they can get a snap of one of these animals. But within a few days, luck comes to mean something else: discovering a small dik-dik antelope in the undergrowth, or a mighty kudu hidden among the bushes; or being able to watch great herds of elephants, giraffes, zebras and gnus, often gathered in perfect harmony around a water hole.
The fascination of these African animals! The prehistoric artists who painted and scratched their lifelike images on rocks across the country valued them primarily as game animals. The quarry was magically "bound" in images which you can't help but admire because of their age alone. Drawings discovered in a cave in the Huns mountains in southern Namibia are 28,000 years old and are among the oldest in the world.
Pre-colonial Namibia remains something of a mystery. The colonial heritage, on the other hand, stands out clearly. Walking through the streets of Lüderitz, Swakopmund or Windhoek, it's sometimes hard to believe your eyes. There are streets named for Bismarck, Lessing or even Kaiser Wilhelm, an old pub advertising a traditional skittle alley, or a gym sponsored by the German men's gymnastics club. The city architecture is in a cosy German style, with post-1870s ornamentation and Art Nouveau decor. In the window of what used to be a bakery in Lüderitz, tucked away behind crochet curtains, there's a kitschy arrangement of garden gnomes that's as German as you can get, and at an inn a few streets away they serve the best red cabbage you've ever had.
Yet it's about 80 years since the end of German colonial rule. One explanation for the lingering German presence is stubborn self-assertion. It's the only thing that makes survival in this desert possible. What has been strenuously fought for is preserved -and loved - all the more tenaciously.
Use Schatz also professes unconditional
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See photographs from:
Namibia Gallery
