My Visit to Etosha National Park (continued)

Yesterday I mentioned that I visited Etosha National Park in northern Namibia during my camping trip and was fortunate enough to see lions, leopards and cheetahs.  Since I took several great pictures while I was in Etosha I wanted to follow up on my visit a little more.

Anyone who has done a safari has almost certainly seen a giraffe.  I have TONS of shots of giraffes.  BUT, I have never gotten a picture of a giraffe drinking.  And as you can see here, it is a bit of a process as the giraffe must bend its back legs while straddling on his front legs.  This is actually a very dangerous position for the giraffe to be in as he has no peripheral vision, so this stance leaves him vulnerable to predators:

We also saw two impala fighting:

And then there was an elephant taking a bath in some rainwater which was sitting in the middle of the road:

One of the best spots of the day was a black rhino.  We only saw two rhinoceros in the park because they are THAT rare.  There are only about 4,000 rhinos in Africa, but that is a figure from 2008.  Most countries won’t publish their actual rhino numbers because that encourages poachers.  Most people think that elephant poaching in Africa is the problem, but in reality, rhino poaching is much worse.  Poachers hunt the rhino because of their horns.  The typical rhino horn goes for about $50,000 for 1 kilo, with most horns averaging about 8 kilos in total.  Some countries have begun de-horning their rhinos in order to make them less attractive to poachers.  But the horns grow back at a rate of about 8 centimeters a year, and the de-horning process is quite expensive.  Namibia has no plans to de-horn its rhinos for now, but that may change in the future.  Here was the rhino I spotted:

 

The Ferrari of the Kalahari

Here in Namibia, as in most countries in Africa, there are a variety of tribal peoples who make up the demographic profile of its citizens.  Namibia is a little unique though compared to its neighbors.  Namibia was one of the few German colonies in Africa, called German South-West Africa.  While everyone knows about the struggles associated with apartheid in South Africa, few know about the checkered past of Namibia.  Similar to other colonized countries in Africa, when the Germans entered Namibia they seized a lot of the land from the local subsistence farmers and gave it to white colonists who arrived from Europe.  The locals didn’t appreciate this and in 1903 the Nama tribes, followed later by the Herero people, rebelled.  The Germans defeated the Nama and Herero and attempted to get rid of them by driving them into the desert.  Some of them made it successfully across the border to Botswana, but most of them died of thirst in an attempt to flee.

For those Nama and Herero who did not attempt to emigrate, the Germans captured them, imprisoning them in concentration camps and forcing them to work as slave labor, primarily constructing railways.  There were several concentration camps in German South-West Africa, but the most famous was Shark Island, off the coast of Luderitz.  Shark Island was actually referred to as a death camp by the facility commander with the main objective being to eliminate the prisoners there.  Ultimately, the Germans were quite successful in their goal; between 1904 and 1907 when the camps were operational mortality rates reached 74%, killing nearly 100,000 Herero and 10,000 Nama.  Unfortunately the closure of the camps in Namibia did not put an end to the concept of concentration camps.  Several camp commanders from German South-West Africa went on to have illustrious careers managing concentration camps for the Nazis thirty years later.  I read an excellent book called The Kaiser’s Holocaust by Olusoga & Erichsen if anyone is interested in learning more about the Herero and Nama genocide.

When the camps were finally closed in 1907 only 15,000 Herero survived, down from 80,000 in 1903.  But the Herero population has recovered over the last 100 years and now nearly 250,000 are alive in Southern Africa.   During my time in Namibia I’ve seen quite a few Herero.  At one point during my trip as we were driving along a long stretch of road through the desert we saw a Herero couple driving what is referred to here as a “Ferrari of the Kalahari.”  It is definitely not my idea of a smooth ride, but I guess it works if you don’t have to get to your destination in a rush.  As you can see it even has shock absorbers: