15. ‘Walking through places'

Abstract

This chapter engages with differing conceptions of the land that has become Namibia’s ‘flagship park’ and premier tourist attraction. By tourists, Etosha might be perceived either as an untamed wilderness or a large zoo; for scientists, it might represent an excellent research opportunity to test zoological hypotheses; and for farmers on the border farms, it might be a source of nuisance, its wildlife causing trouble and––at times––economic loss. For Haiǁom, Etosha represents part of their former lifeworld; an ecology of which they were an integral part. Their ancestors lived across the region alongside other Khoekhoegowab- and San-speaking peoples before the major immigrations of Bantu speakers during the last 500 years of the second millennium. In the first half of the 20th century, they were mainly living from hunting and gathering, with some families keeping a few goats or cattle, combined with occasional seasonal work and temporary employment. Drawing on a cultural mapping project, combined with oral history and archival research, this chapter explores the lifeworld of Haiǁom in Etosha and their relations to the land, to other humans and to beyond-human inhabitants, prior to their eviction in the 1950s. Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s concept of “meshwork” is drawn on as a suitable concept for capturing Haiǁom’s being-in-Etosha as being-in-relations. The picture emerging from the research is that of a dense relational web of land, kinship, humans, animals, plants and spirit beings, an integrated ecology and an almost forgotten past which should, in line with this publication’s aim, be acknowledged by and integrated into future nature conservation policies and practices.