Sand and dust
Northern Namibia
I AM INTERACTING with a group of Himba women at their village in northern Namibia. These girls are known for their elaborate hairstyles, long plaits like tidy dreadlocks wound with ribbons, thread, pieces of hide, red as the clay used to protect their skin from the relentless Namib desert sun. They wear cute flouncy skirts. They are all topless.
My guide Stanley translates for me. He is Himba himself, now leading tourists from a swanky lodge to this rustic village, his life living in a hut in the sand long behind him. I pick up a Himba baby and kiss her sweet little head, endearing myself to the group of women. I play pattycake with the toddlers, look in cooking pots, ask what’s for breakfast (porridge). Suddenly we are friends and they are eager to talk to me. One woman tells me to cut off my hair and give it to her for extensions. I laugh, tell her I would if only my hair was longer! She lets me gently touch her long plaits. I let her finger my hair.
A woman comes over to tell me about a horrible incident that happened to her years ago. While she was at the river, a crocodile leapt up and bit her breast. Her withered breasts are leathery, burnished by the sun. She shows me her scar, her left breast marked from that long ago bite, the indent smoothed over somewhat with the passage of time. Crocodile is her name. Everyone calls her that. She offers to pose for a photo after taking a small clay pipe out of her mouth. She stands up straight, broad-shouldered, smiling slightly. She is unabashed, unembarrassed, matter-of-fact, proud that she was rescued from a crocodile’s grip, transported to a modern hospital where a team of doctors saved her life.
I look at her breasts. What if Crocodile had been born in a different place, at a different time, her breasts cosseted, uplifted, swathed in spandex, lace, underwire? And if she didn’t like her breasts she could change them with the swoop of a scalpel, the insertion of an implant? What if she lived in a place where no crocodiles swam in nearby rivers, and water ran from taps inside her house?
Crocodile could have been me, and I her.
