Sonntag, 27. Januar 2008

Katutura


Hello,
today I got the chance to join a free tour to the township. It was very interesting. The area is called Katutura which means "the place where we do not want to stay". This origins from former times when the black population was told where they were allowed to settle. There are "posh" areas within Katutura with small stone houses and water at each house and the poorer areas at the outskirts where people just own a hut made of tin and have to share a drop toilet with several neighbours and carry their water from a tap hundred meters away. The huts are really only for sleeping and keeping their few belongings; everyday life happens on the streets. There are stalls where people sell things such as dried beef or a kind of self-brewed light beer. There are open "restaurants", consisting of a fireplace and wooden benches in the sand where women cook and sell the food in the evenings. We also visited a market where people sell dresses with big patterns and bright colours, get their hair straightened, cut or artificial hair knotted in and where barchelors buy their food directly from the fire, cut off half animals. There are shoes on sale made out of antelope leather with the soles made of old tyres. Those people just use everything you would regard as rubbish - a very economic way of living.