Katima Mulilo

The town takes its name from a Silozi phrase meaning "quench the fire", after the rapids in the Zambezi beside it, where boat crews had to put out the fire they carried before hauling their barges up the water. The eastern floodplains lay within the sphere of the Lozi kingdom based at Barotseland to the east, and Subia and Fwe communities farmed and fished along the river long before any European administration reached them. The 1890 Anglo-German agreement gave Germany a narrow corridor to the Zambezi, the Caprivi Strip, but German officials barely governed it; a small post at Schuckmannsburg downstream was surrendered without a fight in September 1914 to British forces from Rhodesia at the beginning of the First World War.

Under South African administration the corridor's administrative centre was moved from Schuckmannsburg to Katima Mulilo in January 1935, and from the 1960s it became a garrison town, with a large military presence and an airfield at Mpacha as the liberation war spread to the north-east. Fighting, movement restrictions and the presence of soldiers shaped the town for two decades, and its roads, water supply and airstrip were largely military works.

After independence in 1990 the town became a regional capital and a customs and trucking stop. A secessionist attack on government buildings in Katima Mulilo in August 1999 was quickly put down and followed by a treason trial that ran for years. In 2013 the Caprivi Region was renamed the Zambezi Region, part of a wider change of colonial-era names. The road bridge to Sesheke in Zambia, opened in 2004, turned the town into a link on the freight corridor from Walvis Bay to Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Katima Mulilo feels less like the rest of Namibia and more like the wider Zambezi world it belongs to. Silozi, the language of the Lozi kingdom, serves as the common tongue between Subia, Fwe, Yeyi and Mbukushu speakers, and many families have relatives across the river in Zambia or over the Ngoma bridge in Botswana. The Mafwe and Masubia traditional authorities, each with a recognised chief and council, still deal with land, custom and disputes alongside the regional government.

Music, church choirs and large family gatherings for weddings and funerals are the backbone of social life, and Sunday fills the town's churches. Crafts are a real trade here rather than a tourist novelty: baskets coiled from makalani palm leaf and dyed with bark, wooden bowls, drums and carved animals are made in the villages and sold through the town's craft outlet.

The river governs the calendar. Floods spread across the plains between March and May, fishing camps move, and cattle are driven to higher ground, a rhythm that shapes when people travel, plant and celebrate. Visitors are received politely and with formality: greetings come before business, elders are addressed first, and an unhurried manner counts for more than efficiency.

About 46,400 people were counted in Katima Mulilo at the 2023 census, making it the largest town in the Zambezi Region and the service centre for the whole of it. Most residents live in Ngweze and the surrounding settlements rather than the small formal centre, in a mix of brick houses, older township blocks and self-built homes. The population has grown quickly as people move in from the villages.

Work comes from government offices, schools and the hospital, from shops and transport, and from the traffic on the corridor: trucks bound for Zambia stop for fuel, food and customs clearance. Fishing, cattle and small mahangu and maize fields still support many households on the floodplains around the town, and conservancy and lodge jobs add cash income near the parks. Unemployment is high, especially among young people, and many families rely on remittances and pensions.

Days start early and the middle of the afternoon is quiet in the heat. Cross- border trade is constant, with Zambian traders bringing produce and Namibian shoppers valued on the other side of the river. Seasonal flooding regularly cuts roads and displaces households on the plains, while drought years hit cattle hard; both are ordinary features of life rather than emergencies.

The Zambezi is the town's larder. Bream — tilapia species from the river and its channels — is the everyday fish, grilled whole over coals, fried, or dried and smoked for sale and for the journey inland. Tigerfish, a fighting sport fish, is caught mostly by anglers. Fish is eaten with a stiff maize or mahangu porridge, called pap or oshifima in the shops and nshima by many Silozi speakers, taken by hand and dipped in a relish.

Relishes lean on what grows nearby: pumpkin leaves, wild spinach, beans, okra and groundnuts pounded into sauces, with chicken or goat for occasions. Beef from regional cattle is grilled at market stalls and braais, and the mopane caterpillars gathered in the bush appear dried and fried in season, sold by the cupful. Wild fruits such as marula are eaten fresh and fermented into a strong home-brewed drink.

The market sells maize meal, groundnuts, tomatoes, rape leaves and fish beside imported goods from Zambia, and the town's small restaurants and takeaways serve chicken and chips, stew and pap, and grilled river fish. Lodges along the bank cook bream and steaks for visitors, with Namibian lagers such as Windhoek and Tafel the standard drinks alongside sweet tea and home-made maize drinks.