Xugana Island Lodge - Enlighten Guests With Herero Culture

Xugana Island Lodge
Okavango Delta, Botswana
August 2008

The other night Xugana’s bar took on a more festive air as two Herero women showed up to mix the cocktails.

Angera Vaparuisa, Xugana’s assistant manager, and her cousin, Hannah Tjitunga, on temporary assignment from her studies at Maun Technical College, are typically in their Desert and Delta Safaris uniforms on the job. But they decided to wear their traditional dresses to perform songs with Xugana’s choir and to tend bar on this evening in late August.

Angera, known around camp as Angie, says young people such as herself wear the dresses and hats for funerals, weddings and special occasions. Married Herero women wear the dresses every day, no matter how hot it is outside and no matter how bright the sun shines on the dusty roads of Maun.

“They’re used to it,” Angie says. Young people aren’t as comfortable in the heat.

The dresses are cotton, and women wear petticoats underneath, sometimes as many as six to allow the dresses to flair. The Herero people came from Namibia to Botswana and have maintained their culture and traditions while living among the other tribal peoples of the country. Herero women’s hats resemble the horns of cattle, signifying the great value that the Herero place on cows. In fact, Angie says, Herero people typically eat meat and drink a sour milk; they don’t cultivate vegetables or care too much for their taste.

And another fact about the Herero: they love to sing. At Xugana the other night two DDS women donned their costumes, kicked up their heels with the choir and showed what kind of singers Herero women are. Guests stuck to more mundane cocktails, however, foregoing a Herero specialty. Sour milk shots will have to come on another day.

--Maria Henson, volunteers
Desert and Delta Safaris