The defence at the seige of Otjimbingwe. Painting by Thomas Baines.
When Charles John Andersson first arrived in Otjimbingwe after weeks trekking on ox-wagon from Walvis Bay, he found it a strange, alien camp that offered scant succour begged from the few mission Europeans present there. On his return from arduous journeys into the eastern interiors he found the place transformed for him into a familiar haven.
German colonists chose Otjimbingwe as the central garrison and then their capitol in the late 19th century. First settled by Rhenish missionaries in 1849, it was the site of the Walwich Bay Mining companies copper mines and then became a thriving trading post largely due to the machinations of the Swedish zoologist, explorer and trader Charles John-Karl Johan Andersson in the early 1860s.
The church built and inaugurated in 1867 by Hugo Hahn, missionary, translator of the bible from German to Herero and once close associate of CJ Andersson, still stands on the banks of the Swakop as do the ruins of CJ Andersson’s trading post and house.
It is these remnants of the past that we came to look for.
Rhenish mission church in Otjimbingwe, consecrated in 1867.
Francinah, resident of Otjimbingwe
Francinah.
Francinah’s small pink house.
Shack on the outskirts of Otjimbingwe, Namibia.
Ambros Nguaiko, Otjimbingwe. Ambros is a community leader and guardian of heritage in the town and has hopes for future development of it’s historical sites. He believes that if these sites can be preserved in ways that will attract scholars and tourists to the place then the people living there may have more opportunities to prosper.
Adjacent to the site, a now derelict meeting hall built much later than the trading store itself
The original trading station was built up by Charles John Andersson and thrived in the early 1860s. It was an important junction and meeting point where explorers, traders and hunters gathered. Situated between Walvis Bay, the coast and the interior, it was the traditional and cultural home of the Herero people at that time.
The derelict trading station.
The interior of the old trading station
The old cattle kraal at the Trading station, Otjimbingwe
Trading station ruins
A view of the trading store from the Swakop river bed. In recent years the ephemeral Swakop river has been dammed up stream so no water has flown down this dry riverbed for years. The gardens that once flourished here were dependent on seasonal flooding that fed the ground water sourced in the riverine sands. Mokolo palms stand in the riverbed; their height testimony to the length of time the town has been without flowing, surface river water.
Riverine landscape looking across the dry Swakop river bed.
Otjimbingwe village store.
Ladies at the store.
They told me that their ochre face powder was a good sun block.
A new bakery in Otjimbingwe, selling fresh hot bread.
Otjimbingwe’s future, the children. When I asked them what they hoped to become when they grew up they answered: doctor, lawyer, teacher.
Ann with schoolgirls on their way home.
We travelled to Namibia in search of the town of Otjimbingwe. It was not an easy place to find, as there was no direct route to it from Windhoek. We drove North from Windhoek to Okahandja, turning west to Karibib en route to Swakopmund and Walvis Bay and on our return we left the tar road at Karibib and travelled south east on un-surfaced roads to Otjimbingwe in the Erong district of central Namibia.
The Otjimbingwe name sign had fallen over so we drove straight past the town, over the dry Swakop river bed and headed south before realising that we had just passed it by.
The remains of what we think was the Andersson house, standing opposite the Rhenish mission church on the banks of the Swakop river, the trading station ruins lie further along the bank towards the south
