By Sean O’Toole
Mail and Guardian - 31 Oct 2014
It is a 700km drive northwest of the Namibian capital of Windhoek
along a tarred road to Opuwo, a town of roughly 15?000 people. The
OvaHimba, pastoralists, who tend Nguni cattle in the drought-prone
Kunene region and sometimes pose for photographs taken by travellers,
speak of the settlement as a place of “iron oxen” and drunkenness.
A
German anthropologist, who for more than a decade studied the broader
economics and culture of boozing here, has characterised Opuwo as “a
frontier town drinking its way into modernity”. But a very different
version of Opuwo’s modernity caught the attention of 22-year-old Kyle
Weeks when he passed through the town by car early last year.
Driving north along Mumbijazo Muharukua Avenue, the Windhoek-born
photographer saw a group of fashionable young OvaHimba men wearing
traditional neck rings and shirts declaring allegiance to global fashion
brands and faraway football clubs. Their noticeable self-confidence
intrigued Weeks.
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