Opuwo

The dry mountains of Kaokoland were settled by Herero-speaking herders, among them the Himba, who moved with cattle between seasonal grazing, and by Ovatjimba and Zemba communities. Colonial administrations reached the area late and lightly: the Germans scarcely entered it, and under South African rule the region was treated as a closed area, with movement in and out controlled and outsiders kept away, which left both its herding economy and its isolation largely intact.

Opuwo itself grew from the colonial administrative office for Kaokoland, which moved here from Swartbooisdrift on the Kunene at the end of the 1930s and gave the town its offices, clinic and school. Kaokoland was established as a self-governing homeland in 1980, with Opuwo as its administrative centre, though no homeland government was ever formed and it was abolished in 1989. During the liberation war the north-west was caught up in the fighting along the Angolan border, and the same period saw the first roads pushed through to the Kunene.

Severe droughts in the early 1980s, combined with the war, killed a large share of the region's cattle and drove families towards the town for relief food and work, which is why Opuwo grew quickly and unevenly. After independence in 1990 it became the capital of the new Kunene Region. Community conservancies established from the 1990s brought wildlife recovery and some income from tourism and hunting, and the town has since filled with government offices, shops and the traffic of travellers heading for the Kunene river.

Opuwo is where several ways of living meet in one street. Himba families arrive from the hills, the women wearing leather skirts and coated in otjize, a paste of red ochre and butterfat that protects the skin and marks identity; Herero women come in the long Victorian-style dresses and horn-shaped headdresses adopted from missionaries; and officials, teachers and shopkeepers in Windhoek clothes work in the offices in between. The mixture is the town's defining sight and the reason it draws visitors.

Cattle are the centre of Himba and Herero life, measures of wealth, subjects of song and the material of ceremony, and the sacred fire at a homestead links the living family with its ancestors. Hairstyles and jewellery signal age, marriage and status precisely, which is why photographs taken without asking are read as theft rather than admiration.

Tourism here is unusually delicate. Some villages welcome visitors on community-run terms, with agreed fees and guides who interpret and set the rules; casual visits by tour vehicles are widely resented, and posed photography for money has strained relationships in places near the main road. Plans for a hydroelectric dam on the Kunene river, which would flood ancestral land and graves, have been opposed by Himba leaders for years and remain a live political issue.

About 12,000 people live in Opuwo, which makes it a small town by most measures and a metropolis by Kaokoland's. It is the seat of the regional government and holds the district hospital, secondary schools, the police and the offices that administer an enormous and thinly populated area. Housing runs from government blocks and brick bungalows to large informal areas of pole-and-mud and corrugated iron on the outskirts.

Most income comes from government salaries, small businesses and trade, from conservancy and lodge work, and from herding: goats and cattle are still the basis of household wealth in the villages, sold in town when cash is needed. Drought is the great threat, and the herding economy has been repeatedly weakened by years of poor rain, which pushes more families towards town. Unemployment is high, and alcohol is a visible social problem.

The day begins early, before the heat, with pick-ups bringing people in to shop, collect pensions and visit the hospital, and empties again in the afternoon. Water supply, schooling for children from far-flung homesteads and the long distances to clinics shape everyday life more than anything a visitor sees. Mobile phone coverage, solar panels and second-hand vehicles have changed the region quickly in one generation.

Everyday food in Kaokoland is simple and built on maize and milk. The staple is a stiff maize porridge, oshifima or pap, eaten with the hands and dipped in a relish of meat, beans or wild greens. Soured milk, omaere, from cattle and goats, is a daily food in herding households and is drunk thick or eaten with porridge; butterfat from the same milk is mixed with ochre for otjize rather than used in cooking.

Meat is goat and beef, usually slaughtered for an occasion and grilled over coals or boiled, with nothing wasted — offal, head and marrow bones all have their place. The market butchers under the trees supply the town, and the smell of grilling meat runs along the street through the afternoon. Wild foods matter in season: berries, the fruit of the mopane and marula, and roots and greens gathered on the hills.

In town the food is Namibian and practical. Supermarkets sell maize meal, bread, tinned goods and cold drinks; takeaways do chicken and chips, fat cakes (vetkoek) and meat pies; and lodges serve grilled meat, stews and vegetables with Namibian lager or South African wine. Tea with plenty of sugar is the common drink, and traditional sorghum and honey beers are brewed in villages for gatherings.