Otjiwarongo

The Herero moved cattle across this part of the highlands long before there was a town, and the name Otjiwarongo, in Otjiherero, is usually translated as the beautiful place of the fat cattle — a reference to the grazing and water that made it worth stopping at. The area was caught up in the German colonial wars of 1904, when fighting between German troops and the Herero ended at the Waterberg to the south-east and the survivors were driven into the Omaheke sandveld.

The modern town dates from the railway. The narrow-gauge Otavi line, built by a mining company to carry copper ore from Tsumeb to the coast at Swakopmund, reached this point in 1906, and a settlement of station buildings, stores and workshops grew beside the track; a locomotive from the line still stands at the station. Under German and then South African rule the surrounding land was surveyed into large cattle farms, and Otjiwarongo became their service centre, with an abattoir, agricultural suppliers and a stock market.

Cattle still underpin the town, but two other things have reshaped it since independence in 1990. It became the capital of the Otjozondjupa Region and grew with the government offices, schools and clinics that came with the role; and the farmland around it turned into the centre of Namibian carnivore conservation, after the Cheetah Conservation Fund was founded nearby in 1990 and the neighbouring farm at Okonjima became the base of the AfriCat Foundation.

Otjiwarongo sits in the Herero heartland, and Herero identity is the strongest cultural thread in the town: Otjiherero is widely spoken, cattle are a measure of standing as much as of wealth, and the long Victorian-style dresses and horn-shaped headdresses that Herero women adopted from nineteenth-century missionaries and made their own are worn in the streets, at church and at funerals. The Herero calendar of commemorations, above all the August gathering at Okahandja and the remembrance of the events at the Waterberg, matters here.

It is also a mixed working town. Damara, Nama, Ovambo and San families, Afrikaans speakers, and a small German-Namibian farming community share it, and church life is a central social institution across all of them — Lutheran above all, with Catholic and evangelical congregations too. Farming shapes the calendar: auctions, agricultural shows, the anxious watch for rain, and the long distances that make visits and funerals into weekend journeys.

The third culture is conservation. Two generations of Namibians have now trained or worked at the projects around the town, farmers have learnt to live alongside predators rather than shoot them, and the argument over how to balance livestock and wildlife is a normal topic of conversation. Manners are unhurried and courteous, greetings are exchanged at length, and the weekend braai is the fixed social event.

About 49,000 people live in Otjiwarongo, which makes it one of Namibia's larger towns and the biggest business centre in the Otjozondjupa Region. Most of them live in Orwetoveni on the northern side, where the town has grown fastest and where new plots of housing continue to push into the bush; the older grid near the railway and the streets of walled houses south of it hold a smaller share.

The economy rests on cattle. Farms across the region send animals to the abattoir and the stock sales, and the town supplies them with feed, fencing, machinery and fuel. Around that sit the government offices of the Otjozondjupa Region, schools and a hospital that serve a wide area, the shops and workshops on the B1 that catch passing traffic, and tourism — the lodges, reserves and conservation centres that employ guides, trackers, cooks and drivers.

The rhythm is early and practical: work starts soon after dawn, shops fill at lunchtime and after work, and the streets empty at dusk. Unemployment is high among the young, as it is across Namibia, and drought is the recurring crisis, thinning herds and pushing families off the land. Water, electricity and serviced housing plots for a growing town are the standing local political issues.

Otjiwarongo eats beef. The cattle in the surrounding farms are the town's reason for existing, and the plainest restaurant serves a good steak, usually with chips, rice or pap, the stiff maize porridge. Boerewors, a coarse coiled sausage grilled over coals, appears at every braai, and the braai itself is the standard way of cooking for family and guests. Biltong, salted and air-dried strips of beef or game, and the thinner droëwors sausage are sold by weight in butcheries and supermarkets.

The street version of the same ingredients is kapana: thin slices of beef grilled over open fires at the markets and roadsides of Orwetoveni, cut up with a knife, dipped in a dry chilli and spice mix and eaten from the hand with vetkoek, the fried dough balls also called fat cakes. Herero households value omaere, thick soured milk, eaten with porridge.

Game meat from the farms — oryx, kudu and springbok — turns up on guesthouse and lodge menus, often in a potjie, a stew cooked slowly in a three-legged iron pot over coals. The German-Namibian inheritance supplies bakeries with rolls and cakes, and butcheries with smoked sausage, while lager brewed in Windhoek is the standard drink. Melons, maize and vegetables from the farms and mopane caterpillars in season are sold at roadside stalls.