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In this vast land of Africa, there are many tribes, they are either mysterious or strange, many still maintain the most primitive way of life, and have the oldest chieftaincy system.
They are far from the hustle and bustle of modern civilization, where women do not bathe all year round, their upper bodies are always bare, and most of the men of the tribe die at the age of 15.
How do they live? What are some interesting local customs?
Strange tribes
In the 17th century, they were also a powerful nomadic people who thrived on their own, and even in the eighties of the last century, the population of the Himba tribe was as high as more than 200,000.
In the process of migration, I met another tribe in Africa, known as the most fierce people - the Maasai people, this people dare to face the "king of beasts" lion, it can be imagined that its combat ability is excellent.
This is a primitive social group that is about to disappear, the Himba, in fact, they did not live here in the first days, and later migrated from the Angolan highlands to the northwest of Namibia, living in the Kunene River Valley.
It was the battle with the Maasai that caused the Himba to lack combat ability and suffer serious losses, and it is precisely because of this that they chose the most comfortable oasis to set up camp.
As of the 21st century, the Himba tribe still maintains the same living conditions as they did 500 years ago, mainly herding, and they have their own unique indigenous way of chatting and not communicating with the outside world.
They still maintain the most primitive tribal structure in Africa, the chieftaincy is mainly responsible for the distribution of men's out-of-town grazing and labor, while the chief's wife decides on property, rewards and punishments, and the distribution of work among tribal women.
It can be said that the women of the Himba tribe supported all the work in the tribe, while the men only used herding and fighting against foreigners, so they were also a tribe where a patrilineal society and a matrilineal society coexisted.
I will definitely wonder what the Simba people live in, their houses are very small, about three or four square meters in size, and the roofs are supported by thick wood.
In addition to the rest of the house, the Himba people took the materials directly from the place, picked up some branches and mud mixed with cow dung, and built a house for them, and the family of several people, plus the family grazing animals, lived here.
Interesting customs
As a primitive tribe in Africa, the Himba people are totems without any faith, they believe in the divine fire, they respect their ancestors, and these ancestral fires are the spiritual core of the nation.
For them, a tribe is a family, and most of the families in a village have only one family, and they still adhere to the family system, and the family elders are in charge of everything.
It is very strange that the women of the tribe do not wear shirts all year round, so they show their tops and do not have shoes on their feet.
Compared to shoes, they are decorated with many metal rings below the ankle, and the Himba people call the left foot the mother's foot and the right foot the father's foot.
In their tribe, one thing that is very different from traditional Africans is that the women are very "red".
The Himba women are wrapped in red from top to bottom, even newborn female dolls, and the red on their bodies is red stone powder mixed with water and butter to smear their whole body and hair, so they are often called red clay figures.
The purpose of this is to help protect their skin from direct sunlight and to prevent mosquito bites.
And in the Simba tribe, there is a very interesting custom, that is, the women there do not bathe all year round, which is for those who live in the north and love to bathe and rub mud, if they go there, they should be driven crazy.
Do these Simba women really stand not bathing all year round? In fact, yes, the red mud on their bodies protects them very well, once they are smeared with this red mud, it is difficult to be washed away by water, and even can maintain the red color for nearly a week.
Tribal men who "don't live long".
The Himba people have no rules about the relationship between the sexes, even unmarried girls can have lovers and children, but these premarital children belong to their patrilineal family and are handed over to them to adulthood.
And here, monogamy is not required, as long as the man has enough cattle, that is as many as you want, and under normal circumstances, three cows can marry a wife.
For the cow as a wedding gift, the quality of the cow is very important, it must be tall and powerful, the tail of the ox is long to mop the ground, that is the best good cow, after all, it is the only tool for the whole family to make a living, is the confidence is also the card.
Each of the Simba man's wives and his children live in a fence house, so everyone is lucky enough to go there, and you can tell how many wives the man has married by the number of fence houses.
But in fact, due to the influence of genetics in the tribe, most of the boys here will die at the age of 15, and the result is a serious imbalance in the gender ratio between men and women.
When the Simba man died, the property he left behind and his wife were taken over by his younger brother, and his parents were supported by other brothers.
Such strange customs and ways of living to the outside world, but for the local Himba people, they have been doing these things for a long time.
Because they did not have much contact with the outside world, they maintained the most traditional and primitive life, but because of the severe imbalance in the ratio of men to women, the population continued to decline sharply, and after twenty years, their race would naturally disappear.
epilogue
For the Simba people, they are not aware of the development of modern civilization, and they cling to their own one-third of an acre of land, which seems to the outside world to be a frog at the bottom of the well, but at the beginning of the 21st century, many Himba people have gone out of the tribe and integrated into society.
They are also connecting with the world step by step, believing that they can find a way to get along with the times while maintaining their primitive way of life, and also hope that they can carry forward and expand their tribes and create their own power for human civilization.
Information sources:
1. The original article was published in the entry report of Baidu Encyclopedia of "Red Clay People, Simba Tribe, and Simba Tribe";
2. The original article was published on China News Network: 2019-02-11 on "Visiting Namibia's "Red Clay Tribe" Female Population Does Not Take a Bath for Life";
3. The original article was published on the report on "To Namibia, Fall in Love with Nature (2)" published on 2017-01-06 by China Quality News Network;