The Himba (singular: OmuHimba , plural: OvaHimba ) is an indigenous population with an approximate population of about 50,000 people living in northern Namibia, in Kunene Region (formerly Kaokoland) and on the other side of Kunene River in Angola. There are also some remaining groups of OvaTwa , which are also OvaHimba, but are hunter-gatherers. The OvaHimba are semi-nomadic, pastoralist, culturally distinguishable people from Herero people in northern Namibia and southern Angola, and speak OtjiHimba, Herero variety, which belongs to the Bantu family in Niger-Congo.
The OvaHimba is considered to be the last nomadic (semi-) Namibian.
Video Himba people
Budaya
Ekonomi subsisten
The OvaHimba is the majority of breeders who breed sheep and goats tail-fat, but calculate their wealth in the number of their cattle. They also plant and plant rain-fed crops such as corn and millet. Livestock is the main source of milk and meat for OvaHimba. Their diet also comes with corn flour, chicken eggs, wild herbs and honey. Only occasionally, and opportunistic, are cattle sold with cash. Non-farm businesses, wages and salaries, pensions, and other cash transfers are a very small part of the livelihoods of OvaHimba, derived primarily from their work in conservatives, old age pensions, and drought relief aid from the Namibian government.
Daily life
Women and girls tend to do more labor-intensive jobs than men and boys, such as bringing water to the village, piercing mopane wooden ground with a mixture of traditional red clay soil and cow dung binder agents, collecting firewood, attending crops creeping calabash is used to produce and ensure the supply of safe milk, cooking and serving food, as well as craftsmen making handicrafts, clothing and jewelry. The responsibility for milking cows and goats also lies in women and girls. Women and girls care for children, and a woman or girl will take care of other girls. The main task of men is busy taking care of cattle farming, herding where men are often away from family homes for long periods of time, animal slaughter, construction, and holding councils with village chiefs.
Single family members usually live in a guest house ( onganda ), a small family village, consisting of a hamlet circle hut and a workplace that surrounds the Okuruwo (holy ancestral fire) and a kraal for holy cattle. Both fire and cattle are closely related to their worship of the dead, a sacred fire symbolizing the protection of ancestors and holy cattle that allow "the right relationship between man and the ancestors".
Dress Style and Hair
Both Himba men and women are accustomed to wearing traditional clothing that suits their environment in Kaokoland and the semi-arid climate of heat in their area, in most of these incidents consisting only of clothing such as skirts made of calves or progressively from more modern textiles, and sometimes sandals for footwear, with foot soles often found made of used car tires. Especially the Himba women, also the Himba men, are very famous for covering themselves with pasta otjize, a mixture of butter and ocher pigment cosmetics, to cleanse the skin for long periods of time due to water scarcity and protect themselves. from the very hot and dry climate of Kaokoland as well as fighting against mosquito insects. A cosmetic blend, often fragrant with aromatic resin from omuzumba bush, gives their skin and hair with distinctive orange or red characteristics, as well as texture and style. Otjize is considered especially a highly desirable aesthetic beauty cosmetics, symbolizing the rich red color of the earth and the blood of the essence of life, and consistent with the ideal beauty of OvaHimba.
Hairstyles and jewelry play an important role between OvaHimba, it shows the age and social status in their community. A baby or child will generally have their heads continuously shaved hair or small pieces of hair on their crowns head, these are soon carved into one of the braided long braided hairs to the back of the head for the young boys and the young girls have two braided hairs webbing extends towards the face often parallel to their eyes, the form of wear is determined by the membership of the oruzo (group of patrilineal descendants), the style remains during the pre-adolescent period until it reaches puberty. Some young girls, with the exception, may also have one woven hair braided extended to the front, which means they are one of a pair of twins.
From puberty, boys continue to have one woven braided hair, girls will have many textured hair ties, some arranged to cover the girl's face, in daily practice, woven hair is often tied together and held back separately from the face. A woman who has been married for about a year, or has had a child, wearing a decorative headpiece called Erembe , a sheepskin sculpture, with many hair streams braided, colored and stained with otjize paste.. Unmarried young men continue to wear a woven braid to the back of the head while married men wear hats or headbands and hair that are not braided beneath. The widowed men will take off their caps or wrap their heads and expose the unbuffled hairs. The OvaHimba is also accustomed to using wood ash to clean hair due to water scarcity.
Custom practices
The OvaHimba is polygamy, with the average Himba man being husband to two wives at the same time. They also practice early marriage. The young girls of Himba are married to the male pair chosen by their father. This occurs from the onset of puberty which may mean that girls aged 10 or under are married. This practice is illegal in Namibia, and even some OvaHimba contests but it is widespread. Among the Himba people, it is customary as a ritual to circumcise boys before puberty. After marriage, a boy of Himba is considered a man, unlike a Himba girl who is not considered a fully fledged woman until she gives birth to a child.
Community participation
Despite the fact, the majority of OvaHimba have different cultural lifestyles in their rural and remote villages, yet they are socially dynamic, and not all are isolated from local urban cultural trends. The OvaHimba co-exist and interact with members of other ethnic groups in their country and the social trends of urban dwellers. Especially those close to Kunene's capital, Opuwo, often travel to shops in local city supermarkets for the convenience of commercial consumer products, market food products and to obtain health care.
Maps Himba people
Tribal structure
Due to the harsh desert climate in the region where they live and their exile from outside influences, OvaHimba has managed to preserve and preserve many of their traditional lifestyles. Members live under tribal structures based on bilateral descent that help them live in one of the most extreme environments on earth.
Under the bilateral family, each member of the clan belonged to two clans: one through father (patriclan, called oruzo ) and the other through the mother (matriclan, called eanda ). The Himba clan is led by the eldest man in the clan. The children live with their father's clan, and when the girls get married, they stay with their husband's clan. However, wealth inheritance does not follow patriclan but is determined by matriclan, that is, a child does not inherit his father's but mother's uncle instead.
Bilateral descent is found among only a few groups in West Africa, India, Australia, Melanesia and Polynesia, and anthropologists consider the system to be beneficial to groups living in extreme environments as it allows individuals to depend on two family groups spread over a large area..
History
History OvaHimba is full of disasters, including severe droughts and guerrilla warfare, especially during the Namibian independence war and as a result of civil war in neighboring Angola. Between 1904-1908, they suffered from the same genocide attempt during the Herero War that was carried out by the German imperial colony government in West Africa of Germany under Lothar von Trotha which destroyed the Herero people and Name people during Herero and Namaqua Genocide.
In the 1980s it seems that the OvaHimba way of life is almost over due to climax in adverse climatic conditions and political conflicts. Severe drought kills 90% of their livestock, and many give up their livestock and become refugees in the slum-resident city of Opuwo on international humanitarian aid or join Koevoet's paramilitary unit to deal with widespread cattle and famine losses. OvaHimba who lives on the border in Angola, is sometimes a victim of a kidnapping during the South African Border wars, either taken hostage or kidnapped to join Angolan branch of the Namibia People's Liberation Army (PLAN, SWAPO troops).
Religion
The OvaHimba are monotheistic people who worship Lord Mukuru, as well as the ancestors of their clan (honor ancestors). Mukuru only blesses, while ancestors can bless and condemn. Each family has their own sacred fire of fire, kept by the guards. The firefighters approached the sacred ancestral fire every seven to eight days to communicate with Mukuru and ancestors on behalf of his family. Often, as Mukuru is busy in distant lands, ancestors act as Mukuru's representatives.
The OvaHimba traditionally believes in omiti , which some translate means witchcraft but others call it "black magic" or "bad remedy". Some OvaHimba believe that death is caused by omiti , or rather, by someone who uses omiti for malicious purposes. In addition, some believe that wicked people who use omiti have the power to put bad thoughts into the minds of others or cause extraordinary events to occur (such as when a common illness becomes life-threatening). But omiti users do not always attack their victims directly; sometimes they target a relative or a loved one. Some OvaHimba will consult with traditional African healers to reveal the reasons behind the extraordinary events, or sources of omiti .
Since Namibia's independence
OvaHimba has successfully maintained their traditional culture and way of life.
Thus, OvaHimba has worked with international activists to block proposed hydroelectric dams along the Kunene River that will flood their ancestral land, 2011, Namibia announced its new plan to build a dam in Orokawe, in the Baynes Mountains. The OvaHimba filed in February 2012 they protest the Declaration against hydroelectric dams to the UN, the African Union and to the Government of Namibia.
The Norwegian and Iceland governments fund a mobile school for the Himba children, but since Namibia took over them in 2010, they have turned to permanent schools and are no longer moving. The leaders of Himba complained in their declaration of a school system that was not culturally appropriate, which they said would threaten their culture, identity, and way of life as people.
Human rights
The remaining hunter and gatherer groups, Ovatwa, were held in safe camps in the northern Kunene region of Namibia, despite complaints from traditional Himba leaders that Ovatwa was held there without their consent and against their will.
In February 2012, the traditional head of Himba issued two separate Declarations to the African Union and to the United Nations OHCHR.
The first, entitled "The Ovahimba, Ovatwa, Ovatjimba and Ovazemba Declarations that are most affected by the Orokawe Dam in the Baynes Mountains" outlines the objections of the leaders and communities of the regional Himba who live near the Kunene River.
The second, entitled "Declaration by traditional Kaoshi and Namibian leaders" lists civil, cultural, economic, environmental, social and political rights committed by the Namibian government (GoN).
September 2012, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples visits OvaHimba and hears their concerns that they do not recognize traditional authority and that they are placed under the dominant tribal jurisdiction around him, making decisions on behalf of minority communities. In his view, the lack of traditional head recognition, in accordance with Namibian law, relates to a lack of recognition of minority ethnic communal lands.
November 23, 2012, hundreds of OvaHimba and Zemba from Omuhonga and Epupa territories protested at Okanguati against Namibia's plan to build a dam on the Kunene River in the Baynes Mountains, against an increase in mining operations in their traditional lands and human rights violations against them.
March 25, 2013, more than 1,000 Himba marched in protest again, this time at Opuwo, against the ongoing human rights violations that they have taken on in Namibia. They expressed their disappointment over the lack of recognition of their traditional heads as a "Traditional Authority" by the government; Namibia's plan to build the Orokawe Dam in the Baynes Mountains on the Kunene River without consulting OvaHimba, which disagrees with the development plan; culturally inappropriate education; wild fences from their traditional land section; and their lack of ownership over the area they have lived for centuries. They also protested the application of the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002.
On October 14, 2013, the head of Himba Kaipka, on behalf of its territory Epupa and the community featured on the RTL reality TV show German Wild Girls condemned the abuse of the Himba people, individuals and villagers in the show, and demanded the cessation of broadcasting further episodes because they will mock the culture and the way of being the Himba people.
March 29, 2014, OvaHimba from both countries, Angola and Namibia, marched again in protest against the dam building plan and opposed the government's attempt to bribe their Himba district head. In a signed letter from the Himba community of Epupa, the area that will be directly affected by the dam, the traditional leaders explained that every consent form signed by the former head as a result of a bribe does not apply because they are still against the dam.
Anthropological investigation
Color perception
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments