At Namibia’s Edge, Himba
Caught Between a Dam and A Dry Place

By James Workman

EPUPA FALLS, Namibia –
Decades from now, when I am old and arthritic and fighting off
Alzheimer’s and someone asks me about Southern Africa at the
dawn of the century, I won’t recall AIDS, corruption, crime,
famine or official incompetence. I will try to describe a soccer
field on the outskirts of a village at dusk.

The field has no grass, not a single
green blade. There are no sharp-edged white chalk lines or referees
to delineate the confines, corners, rules or regulations of the game.
Shouting and arguing, yes, but no whistles. No halftime. No penalty
shots or tiebreakers. No anxious Prozac-popping, minivan-driving soccer moms to cheer, shuttle, and organize a
sanctioned youth league. No females at all, in fact, save those small
clusters of poised braless young women balancing water on their
heads, carrying it up from the river on a path that traverses the
field. At a private joke they laugh and look down, and pause before
negotiating a quick route through the game on their way home,
glancing sideways at the sweaty torsos of the boys and young men who
pretend not to notice them.

The young men enjoy the exalted
privileges of marital status, the boys not yet. Though on the field
all are equals in a life-stage that, not too long ago, would have
linked them as warrior-hunters. None spare the shins of their
opponent. A few wear shoes or sandals cut from used tires. Others run
barefoot over the rocks. They have been herding all day, or have
returned from school to water their fathers’ domesticated
beasts. All arrived at the field by some unspoken understanding
before any had a chance to enclose the livestock in kraals for the
night. So the goats and cattle mill about uncertainly on the
sidelines, unattended, sometimes wandering into the game, chased off
only when they drift between the ball and the netless goal, which is
constructed of three more-or-less straight logs from the nearby
river. Within sight, yet at a respectable distance, stand a few men
who are too old to play but too young to pass by without comment,
drinking warm beer and judging the players in silence.

I can’t say the action itself
is spectacular. But there are momentary flashes of grace, or talent,
and as the sun nears the horizon the players’ efforts
intensify, their speed ratchets up, they pass less to their teammates
and take more desperate shots from the outside. From a shack nearby a
mother hums a melody she absorbed from a religion she declined. By
now the cows are growing impatient and stir as a herd, hooves
churning up fine dirt clouds that filter and enhance the glow of
sunset. The game edges into the night, with wiry, lithe, agile forms
silhouetted dark against the opaque dust billows, shouting and
crossing dreamlike until they can no longer see the ball. Without
saying goodbye they begin to disperse and the noise subsides, leaving
only a murmur of the nearby river. Read More...