Images of tribal culture and wildlife in Namibia

“Africa has a genius for extremes, for the beginning and the end. It seems simultaneously connected to some memory of Eden and to some foretaste of apocalypse. ”

— Lance Morrow

The Silent Dune of Namibia, Sossuvlei.

Deadvlei.

The sand dunes of Sossusvlei.

The winds blow across the land from east and west, forcing the sand upward like ocean waves, and mysterious shadows form.

The San People of Namibia playing ball.

The San people.

The San are said to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest peoples in the world, passing their rich history down from generation to generation.

Elephants at Etosha National Park.

Elephant at Etosha National Park.

Himba girls.

A Himba father and son.

A Himba woman by firelight.

The Herero's cow horn headdress is made from rolled-up newspaper.

Herero women still dress in the traditional floor length gowns of German missionaries’.

One of the Seven Wonders of the World, Victoria Falls.

Namibia: the vast nothingness.

Here are darkest nights with spectacular celestial displays,

The San people whose ancestry stretches back 150,000 years to the original Homo sapiens,

The Himba women who coat their bodies and hair in a mixture of animal fat and ochre;

Literally covering bodies in the landscape.

Here are the oldest trees that exist on earth.

Rainfall is scarce,

The sun is unrelenting,

Here are the oldest and highest sand dunes,

The winds blow across the land from east and west,

and when they clash, they force the sand upward like ocean waves and mysterious and magical shapes and shadows form.

We rise at dawn to watch the sunrise set the dunes on fire.

Here the elephants still majestically walk through the landscape in Etosha National Park.

The people who live in the area sometimes suffer greatly from the damage inflicted by these elephants.

The struggle to find ways for humans and wildlife to coexist in their environment is one of the challenges here.

Yet the people of Namibia possess a reverence for the landscape, the wildlife, and all of the people who live here.

In Namibia, you are enveloped in sand and tinted red.

Once you stop resisting, you, too, become part of the landscape.

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