Aus

Aus exists because of the railway. The German colonial administration pushed a line inland from the harbour at Lüderitz in the first years of the twentieth century, during and after the wars of 1904 to 1908 against the Nama and Herero, and a siding and small settlement grew where the track climbed into the hills at a point with water. The name comes from the Khoekhoe for "big snake", the country having been Nama grazing land long before the track arrived.

The village's best-known chapter came with the First World War. South African forces occupied German South West Africa in 1915, and the German troops who surrendered were interned at Aus, in a camp on the slopes above the settlement whose numbers reached about 1,500. The inmates lived at first in tents, in extreme heat and winter frost, and later built themselves brick houses. The last of them left in May 1919 and the camp closed.

After the war the camp closed and Aus settled back into being a railway halt and a service point for the surrounding sheep farms. The horses left loose on the plains during and after the fighting are usually given as one origin of the feral herds that still live there. Trains from Keetmanshoop now end their journey at the village and the line on to Lüderitz is out of use, leaving a small place that lives on the road, the farms and the travellers who stop between Keetmanshoop and the coast.

Life in Aus is shaped by distance. Everything is a long drive away, so people plan around trips to Keetmanshoop or Lüderitz, and news, post, fuel and stock feed all arrive with someone coming back along the B4. Neighbours on farms 50 kilometres apart count as close, and hospitality to passers-by is a practical habit in a place where help can be hours off.

The village is Nama in language and family, like much of the south. Khoekhoegowab is spoken with Afrikaans, English belongs to the school and to officialdom, and German survives in place names, farm names and the buildings along the track. Church life provides the main regular gathering, and funerals and weddings bring relatives in from Lüderitz, Keetmanshoop and Windhoek.

Two things dominate local identity. One is the desert horses: they are a source of pride and of long argument about how they arrived, how they should be managed, and what to do when drought or predation cuts their numbers, and researchers have followed the herd for decades. The other is the weather. Aus is one of the coldest places in the country in winter, and snow on the hills, rare as it is, is remembered and retold as the village's particular distinction.

Aus is a small settlement, counted in the hundreds rather than the thousands; the last published count, in 1970, recorded 767 people. It has a hotel, a police station, a garage and a shop, and that is close to the whole of its infrastructure; anything more substantial means driving.

Work comes from three sources. The sheep and game farms of the district employ labour and take a few guests; tourism supplies the rest, with lodges and campsites in and around the village serving traffic between the canyon country and the coast; and the road and railway themselves need maintenance crews. Government jobs at the school and clinic make up much of the salaried employment. Unemployment is high and young people leave for Lüderitz, Windhoek or the coast.

The rhythm of the day follows the heat and the light: early starts, a slow middle of the day, and evenings outdoors once the sun drops behind the hills. Water and drought are the recurring worries, thinning flocks and pressing on the grazing that the wild horses share. Green hydrogen projects planned near Lüderitz are watched here as the region's main hope of new work, along with the steady trickle of visitors.

Food in Aus is southern farm cooking, and mostly cooked where people sleep. Lamb raised on the aromatic shrubs of the dry veld is the meat the district is proud of, grilled as chops over coals at a braai or left for hours in a three-legged potjie with vegetables and stock. Game from the same farms — gemsbok, springbok and kudu — is eaten as steaks and stews, and both meat and game become biltong, salted and air-dried in a climate ideally suited to it, and droëwors, the thin dried sausage that travels well in a car.

Around the meat sit the staples shared with Afrikaans and Nama kitchens across the south: mealie pap, a stiff maize porridge served with a tomato and onion sauce; vetkoek, fried dough split and filled with curried mince or jam; roosterkoek, bread rolls baked straight on the grill; and potbrood baked in a cast-iron pot under coals. Farm kitchens still bake their own bread because the nearest bakery is a long way off.

Two outside influences reach the village table. German settlement left rye bread, cured sausage and cake in the shops of the bigger towns, and the cold Atlantic at Lüderitz, an hour and a half west, supplies the fish that appears on menus at guest farms here. Rooibos tea, strong coffee and Namibian lagers such as Windhoek and Tafel are the usual drinks.