Tsumeb

The hill of oxidised copper ore at Tsumeb was known and worked long before any European reached it: local people dug the coloured rock for smelting and for pigment, and traders carried copper from here across the region. Explorers and prospectors arrived in the 1850s and after, and by the end of the century the size of the deposit was understood. It proved to be one of the most remarkable ore bodies ever found — a narrow pipe of rock carrying copper, lead, zinc, silver and germanium, and a range of minerals so wide that specimens labelled Tsumeb are in collections worldwide.

Large-scale mining began in the first years of the twentieth century under a German company, which built a narrow-gauge railway to the coast at Swakopmund to carry the ore out — the line that also created Otjiwarongo and the other towns along it. A company town grew beside the shafts, with a hospital, a Catholic church, schools and wide planted streets, and the mine drew workers from the Owambo areas to the north under the contract labour system that shaped northern Namibia for decades.

Ownership passed to South African and then international hands; the mine worked through most of the twentieth century, and the lower workings closed in 1996, after which a smelter beside the town continued to process concentrates. Tsumeb was the capital of the Oshikoto Region until 2008, when Omuthiya was proclaimed a town and took the role, and its economy has broadened into government, services, farming and the traffic bound for Etosha.

Tsumeb was built as a company town, and something of that survives in its plan: wide streets, planted avenues of jacaranda and flamboyant, sports fields, a swimming pool and a club culture, with housing that was once allocated by grade and by race. Apartheid-era divisions put mineworkers in Nomtsoub, away from the centre, and the town still carries the shape of that arrangement even though the rules went with independence in 1990.

Its people come from everywhere in the country, because mines recruit widely. Oshiwambo is the most common home language, with Otjiherero, Khoekhoegowab, Afrikaans, German and Rukwangali all heard, and English used between them. Lutheran and Catholic congregations are the main social institutions alongside sports clubs, and church on Sunday, football on Saturday and a weekend braai are the fixed points of the week.

Minerals are a local identity of their own. Tsumeb specimens — dioptase, duftite, tsumebite and many others first described here — are famous among collectors, the museum keeps a collection of them, and the town has long had people who know rock. The other cultural current comes from the traffic: guides, lodge staff and drivers working the Etosha route, and the steady flow of travellers who stop for a night, give a small town a wider outlook than its size suggests.

About 35,000 people live in Tsumeb, in a town that remains compact and green by Namibian standards. Nomtsoub and the newer housing areas north of the centre hold most of the population, and informal housing has spread at the edges as people have come looking for work; the old centre and the former company suburbs are quieter and shaded.

The economy has moved on from underground mining without leaving it behind: processing and smelting work continues beside the town, and mining companies in the wider district still recruit here. Around that sit government offices, a hospital and schools serving a wide rural area, farming — cattle, maize and other crops on the better-watered land around the town — and tourism, since almost everyone driving to Etosha's eastern gate passes through and many stay the night.

Life runs early and slows in the heat of the afternoon. Wages from mining and government support a large number of dependants, unemployment among the young is high, and water supply, housing plots and the environmental record of the processing works are the standing local concerns. In December many families travel north to the Owambo regions for the holidays.

Tsumeb eats northern Namibian food alongside the beef-and-braai cooking of the central farms. The staple from the north is oshifima, a stiff porridge of pounded mahangu, the pearl millet grown across the Owambo regions, eaten with the fingers with a relish of meat, beans or ombidi, a wild spinach. Oshikundu, a lightly fermented millet drink, is made at home and sold at markets, and dried fish carried down from the north is a common flavouring.

The street food is kapana: strips of beef grilled over open fires at the markets, cut up and dipped in a dry chilli and spice mix, eaten standing with vetkoek, the fried dough balls also called fat cakes. Grilled chicken, boerewors sausage and pap are the everyday alternatives. Restaurants in the centre serve steaks from the surrounding cattle farms and game such as oryx and kudu, often with potjie-style stews cooked slowly in three-legged iron pots.

Seasonal foods matter here. After good rains, omajowa — the large mushrooms that grow from termite mounds — are sold at the roadside, and omagungu, mopane caterpillars, are dried and fried as a protein. Marula fruit from the north makes omaongo, a fermented drink brewed for celebrations. Lager brewed in Windhoek is the standard drink, and German-style bread and cakes are sold in the bakeries.