As tradition follows
for the BYU Namibia Field Study, all of the girls are invited over to a
homestead of some women and allowed to dress up in traditional garb. For the
Himba, this encompasses the red okre butter that they apply to their skin
called “otjize” as well as goat skin skirts and skin head dresses. Then there
are the woven belts, necklaces, and bracelets.
We purchased some of
the otjize rocks in Opuwo and brought them to start grinding. Marahoraguapi
helped me grind it into a fine red powder. This stuff stains EVERYTHING and we
wanted to get to be as close to a real native woman so we wore our bras and
shorts. I was the first to get covered in the red paste and those women put it
on thick—especially on my face. Not gonna lie, I looked really scary with my
bright green eyes and white teeth against a shocking deep red skin. Our
translators came along with us and Nicki in particular said that she couldn’t
even look at me for a while because I was so freaky looking! Eventually the
look wore on everyone. The other girls put the otjize on themselves so they
didn’t layer it on as thick, lucky them.
Wilka served as my
personal photographer so I have lot’s of photos to document the occasion! I
wore Sophia’s mother’s head dress (that made us look like little reindeer)
along with her skin skirt. Another woman
put a belt and necklace on me and Karekatjo came around and dispersed some
bracelets. I felt like a Himba! After a sufficient amount of pictures with our
modest coverings on, we all went “full” native. Remember these Himba people
don’t view breasts as something private or sexual so the women just go topless.
While I wouldn’t have done it anywhere else, I went topless too.
Okay, now pick up your
jaw from off the floor. When will be another time in life where running around
topless is not only considered socially acceptable but the women all looked at
us and called us beautiful! Plus we now have a great story to tell: I ran
around topless in an African village after native women dressed us up. Plus the
red body butter kind of felt like a covering and toned down the shock of our
white skin that has never seen the light of day!
The women laughed when
they saw how white my stomach was compared to my very tan arms and then they
were shocked to see that we all had belly buttons that went in as opposed to
theirs that all stick out. I mean, they seemed like “egh” about our belly
buttons but I was thinking a little “egh” about theirs. When a baby is born,
they push all of the blood out of the umbilical cord and then cut it with a
knife whereas we clip and snip them in America.
We danced their
traditional dance of clapping and stomping in a circle. We even sat with the
women and children while posing for a picture and played “spot the native”. I
mean, we were all kind of the same color now but on the white skin, we turned
out more red than the dark brown that they are.
Two hours later, we
were still scrubbing the heck out of our skin and as the sun started to drop
behind the horizon, it got super cold. I threw in the towel and accepted my
temporary state of redness. Unfortunately, everything that I touched for the
next 2 days got stained with red and we would continue to find otjize in some
weird places. I forgot to get it out of my armpits and it wouldn’t come out of
my nail beds! We looked a little bit like we had a skin disease for the next
couple of days and as Drew, our Professor’s teenage son, would say, we had some
permanent contouring going on on our faces.
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