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Himba tribe (NAMIBIA)
Celebrate your birthday with the friendly Himba tribe..
Did we miss our family or close friends when we celebrated our birthday in the midst of Kaolkoland in Namibia?... maybe a little, but not much because the Himba people are such a warm and friendly tribe that they compensated for it more than expected.
Kaokoland is home to some 6000 Himba. These friendly people are closely related to the Herero and speak the same language. The Himba are herdsmen, breeding mainly cattle and goats while leading a semi-nomadic life. They migrate with their herds to the different waterholes from season to season.
Now as a woman in the wilderness of Africa, we had let go of our appearance so much that when we arrived at the homeland of the Himbas, we felt very disappointed with ourselves when we saw the Himba women. We asked ourselves the question “ Does one need to go to the beauty parlors, or spas in metropols to look good?” Definitely not!
The proud Himba women spend many hours on beauty care and grooming every day. They cream their whole body with a mixture of rancid butterfat and ochre, scented with the aromatic resin of the Omuzumba shrub. The cream lends the body an intense reddish glow, which reflects the Himba ideal of beauty. Do they look beautiful? More than many of the plastic-beauties in big metropols. The Himba women also love to adorn themselves with jewellery such as pearl necklaces, bracelets crafted from copper and shells, which is an important part of their tradition and culture.
Well… at night we lit our candles, placed them on our cake (would prefer not to be asked about the new age) and blew…… How the Himbas loved the cake we had brought, it was their first western birthday and their first cake too. But they have the warmth to make you feel so much at home, and the adaptability to celebrate something so new to them as if they had done it for years.
But suddenly a feeling of regret struck us, we , as tourists hindered the Himba lifestyle and culture by introducing many alien concepts such as alcohol, sweets and maybe our cake too. Because for us the Himba lifestyle was spiritually one much more civilized than ours.