Mbunza Living Museum, Kavango, Namibia

By Roxanne Reid
There’s no better way to learn about another culture than from its people. When we stayed at Hakusembe River Lodge on the Kavango River in Namibia, about 15km from Rundu, the Mbunza Living Museum was within spitting distance, so we took a walk there to explore.

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Our guide Sebron Ruben explained, ‘We consulted the old people in the village about the old ways before the museum opened, because many of the old ways aren’t used anymore.’ The Mbunza Living Museum was set up with the assistance of the Living Culture Foundation of Namibia to preserve traditional culture, create intercultural exchange and also fight poverty by creating income for local people.

The Mbunza tribe get their name from fish, which is a major part of their diet. In their social structure you’re related by descent through your mother’s line rather than your father’s. They believe in a supreme being called Karunga and that the spirits of the ancestors gather in the wind around Karunga.

​The traditional village on the edge of Lake Samsitu is built entirely of natural materials like tree branches, reeds and grass. The people who work there dress in traditional clothes made from leather that’s been cured with mangetti nut oil. For me the highlights were the hands-on demonstrations of everyday activities like fishing, cooking, basket-weaving, pottery and black-smithing.

The sinewy Sebron began by showing us the ‘gathering fire’ where everyone gets together to sit, except old people who might have their own shelter at their hut. The fire is always kept going, allowed to go out only when a chief dies. It’s relit when a new chief is chosen. 

Sebron Ruben

​Traditional skills
The shade shelter at the gathering fire is where people do their work. One man was moulding sculptures of cows from clay. Because the Mbunza were primarily fishermen, they had no real cows, so these clay cows were used to pay lobola or fines. ‘One may take five to ten minutes to make depending on the man’s skill,’ he said.

​We watched a woman in an intricate wig of rust-red braids bashing Sanseveria (mother-in-law’s tongue) leaves to loosen the strands so she could make rope. Another woman was weaving a basket and a man was making a reed mat. ‘Reed mats are a man’s work,’ said Sebron. ‘A man must make one for his future in-laws before he can take a wife, to show he has the skill. He also makes a new one for him and his wife.’ A woman will need a new basket when she goes to her husband’s house – to prove her own skills. 

An old man showed us some traditional musical instruments, giving us a little riff on each – the sisandi, or thumb piano, a mouth bow that uses the mouth to amplify sound, and a straight piece of wood used like a violin bow.

​In the kitchen area, a woman was stamping mahangu (millet), her body rocking in rhythm, her arms deceptively strong. Then she separated out the flour by throwing it up in a basket and emptying the heavier bits into another basket while keeping the finer flour in the first. 

Another woman cracked mangetti nuts using a rather lethal-looking axe – no room for error as there might be with a Western nutcracker. The locals eat the outside fruit and crack open the shell to get at the nut, which they cook over the fire to extract the oil. Both men and women use the oil on their skin, and it also helps to make leather pliable.

​Sebron’s star turn was in an enclosure where he had about 20 plants laid out on a reed mat. He obviously knew a lot more than he could share in a short presentation, but he told us that guarri is used to heal bleeding gums, syringa bark for burns, sour plum for diarrhoea and camel thorn for tooth pain. ‘We mix aloe vera with the water to wash a newborn baby for the first four days to give it good skin,’ he said. He also showed us the plant equivalent of Viagra, but I’m no nganga (traditional healer) and I’ve already forgotten its name.

At the edge of the village, with a view of the lake, we watched blacksmiths rev up the fire with homemade bellows so they could make knives, arrow heads and other useful metal items. Women aren’t allowed to know where the fire is or any of the techniques in case they marry out of the tribe and take that knowledge with them – or so it was in old days anyway. We have to remember that this isn’t what Mbunza culture is today; it’s what it used to be in pre-colonial times, and the knowledge is being preserved here for future generations.

​In an exuberant demonstration of their fishing techniques, we saw how they bashed the water surface with sticks to herd fish into long reed traps, or catch them with conical baskets.

​Singing and dancing
Our tour ended with song and dance in the shade of a clearing next to the lake. I don’t know what they were singing about, but I do know that songs were used to pass stories down through the generations. Three drummers provided the primary rhythm, with the high voices of the women and deeper bass notes of the men as counterpoint. 

Even the reed skirts on both sexes made a rattling percussive music of their own. Clapping and sensuous hip action was the women’s forte, while the men went for fast footwork that kicked up the dust. I half expected one man in a white animal-skin hat to trip himself up with his intricate moves but he was too well practiced and didn’t miss a beat.

​As they danced, I watched a man on Lake Samsitu in the background. He had nothing to do with the museum but he was lazily fishing from a mokoro – proof that some of the old ways do still endure.

Need to know
A short interactive tour of 1.5 hours cost us N$150 per person in 2016.
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