1.
Namibia
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Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south, although it does not border Zimbabwe, a part of less than 200 metres of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek, and it is a state of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union. The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by the San, Damara, since about the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived as part of the Bantu expansion. Since then the Bantu groups in total, known as the Ovambo people, have dominated the population of the country, in the late 19th century during European colonization, the German Empire established rule over most of the territory as a protectorate in 1884. It began to develop infrastructure and farming, and maintained this German colony until 1915, after the end of World War I, in 1920 the League of Nations mandated the country to the United Kingdom, under administration by South Africa. It imposed its laws, including racial classifications and rules, from 1948, with the National Party elected to power, South Africa applied apartheid also to what was known as South West Africa. In 1878 the Cape of Good Hope had annexed the port of Walvis Bay and the offshore Penguin Islands, following continued guerrilla warfare, South Africa installed an interim administration in Namibia in 1985. Namibia obtained full independence from South Africa in 1990, but Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands remained under South African control until 1994. Namibia has a population of 2.1 million people and a stable multi-party parliamentary democracy, Agriculture, herding, tourism and the mining industry – including mining for gem diamonds, uranium, gold, silver, and base metals – form the basis of its economy. The large, arid Namib Desert has resulted in Namibia being overall one of the least densely populated countries in the world, Namibia enjoys high political, economic and social stability. The name of the country is derived from the Namib Desert, before its independence in 1990, the area was known first as German South-West Africa, then as South-West Africa, reflecting the colonial occupation by the Germans and the South Africans. The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by San, Damara, from about the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived during the Bantu expansion from central Africa. From the late 18th century onwards, Oorlam people from Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and their encounters with the nomadic Nama tribes were largely peaceful. The missionaries accompanying the Oorlam were well received by them, the right to use waterholes, on their way further northwards, however, the Oorlam encountered clans of the Herero at Windhoek, Gobabis, and Okahandja, who resisted their encroachment. The Nama-Herero War broke out in 1880, with hostilities ebbing only after the German Empire deployed troops to the places and cemented the status quo among the Nama, Oorlam. The first Europeans to disembark and explore the region were the Portuguese navigators Diogo Cão in 1485 and Bartolomeu Dias in 1486, like most of interior Sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia was not extensively explored by Europeans until the 19th century
2.
Angola
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Angola /æŋˈɡoʊlə/, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country in Southern Africa. It is the seventh-largest country in Africa and is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to west. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo, the capital and largest city of Angola is Luanda. In the 19th century, European settlers slowly and hesitantly began to themselves in the interior. As a Portuguese colony, Angola did not encompass its present borders until the early 20th century, following resistance by groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama and the Mbunda. Independence was achieved in 1975 under a communist one-party state backed by the Soviet Union, however, the country soon descended into an even lengthier civil war that lasted until 2002. It has since become a relatively stable presidential republic. Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest growing in the world, Angolas economic growth is highly uneven, with the majority of the nations wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population. Angola is a state of the United Nations, OPEC, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union. A highly multiethnic country, Angolas 25.8 million people span various tribal groups, customs, Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese rule, namely in the predominance of the Portuguese language and the Catholic Church, combined with diverse indigenous influences. The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola, the toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola held by the kings of Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands, between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16th century, modern Angola was populated predominantly by nomadic Khoi and San prior to the first Bantu migrations. The Khoi and San peoples were neither pastoralists nor cultivators, following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and they were displaced by Bantu peoples arriving from the north, some of whom likely originated in northwestern Nigeria. Bantu speakers introduced the cultivation of bananas and taro, as well as large herds, to Angolas central highlands. During this time, the Bantu established a number of entities in most of what today comprises Angola. To its south lay the Kingdom of Ndongo, from which the area of the later Portuguese colony was known as Dongo. The region now known as Angola was reached by the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1484, the year before, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kongo, which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda exclave
3.
Botswana
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Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens refer to themselves as Batswana, formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has maintained a tradition of stable representative democracy. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert and it is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its border with Zambia to the north near Kazungula is poorly defined, a mid-sized country of just over 2 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world. Around 10 percent of the lives in the capital and largest city. The economy is dominated by mining, cattle, and tourism, Botswana boasts a GDP per capita of about $18,825 per year as of 2015, which is one of the highest in Africa. Its high gross national income gives the country a modest standard of living, Botswana is a member of the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations. The country has been among the hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the death rate due to AIDS or AIDS-related causes has fallen sharply from 2005 to 2013, and the number of new infections in children has also fallen. As of 2014, Botswana has the third-highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS, the history of Botswana starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen and Khoi peoples, both speak Khoisan languages and lived as hunter-gatherers. About a thousand years ago, large chiefdoms emerged that were later eclipsed by the Great Zimbabwe empire, around 1300 CE, peoples in present-day Transvaal began to coalesce into three main linguistic and political groups, including the Batswana. The Batswana, a term used also to all citizens of Botswana. Prior to European contact, the Batswana lived as herders and farmers under tribal rule, as groups broke off and moved to new land, new tribes were created. Some human development occurred before the colonial period, during the 1700s, the slave and ivory trades were expanding. To resist these pressures, Shaka, the king of the Zulu Empire, conquered tribes began to move northwest into Botswana, destroying everything in their path. In their efforts to re-establish themselves at the end of period, tribes began to exchange ivory and skins for guns with European traders. Christian missionaries sent from Europe also spread to the interior, often at the invitation of tribal chiefs who wanted guns, by 1880 every major village had a resident missionary, and their influence became permanent
4.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
5.
Zambia
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The capital city is Lusaka, in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the northwest, originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. After visits by European explorers in the century, Zambia became the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most of the period, Zambia was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company. On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom, Kaundas socialist United National Independence Party maintained power from 1964 until 1991. Kaunda played a key role in diplomacy, cooperating closely with the United States in search of solutions to conflicts in Rhodesia, Angola. From 1972 to 1991 Zambia was a one-party state with the UNIP as the legal political party under the motto One Zambia. Kaunda was succeeded by Frederick Chiluba of the social-democratic Movement for Multi-Party Democracy in 1991, beginning a period of social-economic growth, after Mwanawasas death, Rupiah Banda presided as Acting President before being elected President in 2008. Holding office for three years, Banda stepped down after his defeat in the 2011 elections by Patriotic Front party leader Michael Sata. Sata died on 28 October 2014, the second Zambian president to die in office, Guy Scott served briefly as interim president until new elections were held on 20 January 2015, in which Edgar Lungu was elected as the sixth President. In 2010, the World Bank named Zambia one of the worlds fastest economically reformed countries, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa is headquartered in Lusaka. The territory of what is now Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia from 1911 and it was renamed Zambia at independence in 1964. The new name of Zambia was derived from the Zambezi river, the area of modern Zambia is known to have been inhabited by the Khoisan until around AD300, when migrating Bantu began to settle around these areas. These early hunter-gatherer groups were either annihilated or absorbed by subsequent more organised Bantu groups. Archaeological excavation work on the Zambezi Valley and Kalambo Falls show a succession of human cultures, in particular, ancient camping site tools near the Kalambo Falls have been radiocarbon dated to more than 36,000 year ago. The fossil skull remains of Broken Hill Man, dated between 300,000 and 125,000 years BC, further shows that the area was inhabited by pre-historic man. The early history of tribes of modern-day Zambia can only be gleaned from knowledge passed down by successive generations through word of mouth, in the 12th century, major waves of Bantu-speaking immigrants arrived during the Bantu expansion. Among them, the Tonga people were the first to settle in Zambia and are believed to have come from the east near the big sea, by the late 12th century, more advanced kingdoms and empires had been established in most regions of modern-day Zambia
6.
Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara and it contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna and forest-savanna mosaic to the south. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna left Africa to penetrate the Middle East, African pluvial periods are associated with a wet Sahara phase during which larger lakes and more rivers existed. Geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each areas respective inhabitants, commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term bilâd as-sûdân for the vast Sudan region, or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan. Its equivalent in Southeast Africa was Zanj, which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region. The geographers drew an explicit distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, from the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea was Al-Habash or Abyssinia, which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered Megadiverse countries, the Sahel shoots across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara Desert proper in their territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate, South of the Sahel, there is a belt of savanna, widening to include most of South Sudan and Ethiopia in the east. The Serengeti ecosystem is located in northwestern Tanzania and extends to southwestern Kenya, the Kalahari Basin includes the Kalahari Desert surrounded by a belt of semi-desert. The Bushveld is a tropical ecoregion of Southern Africa. The Karoo is a semi-desert in western South Africa and this occurred 10 million to 5 million years ago. By 3 million years ago several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout southern, eastern and they were tool users rather than tool manufacturers. The tools were classed as Oldowan, roughly 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago, some of the earlier representatives of this species were small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain later grew in size, and H. erectus eventually developed a complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean
7.
Tsodilo
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The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its religious and spiritual significance to local peoples. UNESCO estimates that there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site, the site consists of a few main hills known as the Child Hill, the Female Hill, and the Male Hill. These hills are of cultural and spiritual significance to the San People of the Kalahari. The highest is 1,400 metres AMSL and this is one of the highest points in Botswana. The four hills are described as the Male, this is the highest, the Female, Child. There is a campsite between the two largest hills, with showers and toilets. The hills can be reached via a graded dirt road and are about 40 km from Shakawe. Also by the campsite is a small museum, People have used the Tsodilo Hills for painting and ritual for thousands of years. UNESCO estimates that the hills contain 500 individual sites representing thousands of years of human habitation, the hills rock art has been linked to the local hunter gatherers. It is believed that ancestors of the San created some of the paintings at Tsodilo, there is evidence that Bantu peoples were responsible for some of the artworks at the hills. Some of the paintings have been dated to be as early as 24,000 years before present, Rhino Cave is located at the North end of the Female Hill and has two main walls where paintings are located. The white rhino painting which the cave is named for is located on the north wall, excavations of the cave floor turned up many lithic materials from. While the cave lacks ostrich egg shell, bone artifacts, pottery or iron, charcoal found during excavations has been dated to the African Iron Age, the Later Stone Age, and the Middle Stone Age. Artifacts, mostly stone, from the LSA were made from materials such as quartz. MSA artifacts from the cave are mostly prepared projectile points, the points are typically found in various stages of production, some have been abandoned and some are finished. The paintings at Rhino Cave are mostly located on the North wall, around the rhino and the giraffe are various paintings, mostly in red, of geometrics. On the opposite wall, the cave is host to grooves and they may have been created using hammer stones or grindstones from the LSA period, which have been found at Tsodilo
8.
Hunter-gatherer
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A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, in contrast to agricultural societies, which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was humanitys first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history, following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change have been displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world. Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their activity with horticulture and/or keeping animals. In the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that humans were obtaining food via scavenging. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view and this hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis, both subsistence strategies could have been in use – sequentially, alternating or even simultaneously. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago and this specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as, fishing nets, hooks, and bone harpoons. The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread in different areas including the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica. Forest gardening was also being used as a production system in various parts of the world over this period. Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions, in the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved, whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior introduced species were selected and incorporated into the gardens, many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, as the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility. Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements, mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available
9.
Missionary
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A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to proselytize and/or perform ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development. The word mission originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning act of sending or mittere, meaning to send. The word was used in light of its usage, in the Latin translation of the Bible. The term is most commonly used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology, a Christian missionary can be defined as one who is to witness across cultures. The Lausanne Congress of 1974, defined the term, related to Christian mission as, Missionaries can be found in many countries around the world. Jesus instructed the apostles to make disciples of all nations and this verse is referred to by Christian missionaries as the Great Commission and inspires missionary work. The New Testament-era missionary outreach of the Christian church from the time of St Paul expanded throughout the Roman Empire and beyond to Persia, in 596, Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian Mission into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland and from Britain became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe, about the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans started moving into Asia and the Far East. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa and these are some of the most well-known missions in history. While some missions accompanied imperialism and oppression, others were relatively peaceful, contemporary Christian missionaries argue that working for justice forms a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel, and observe the principles of inculturation in their missionary work. Over time, the Vatican gradually established a church structure in the mission areas, often starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures. The two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius had extensive success in central Europe. The Byzantines expanded their work in Ukraine after a mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century, Orthodox missionaries also worked successfully among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church. The Russian St. Nicholas of Japan took Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church also sent missionaries to Alaska beginning in the 18th century, including Saint Herman of Alaska, to minister to the Native Americans. Quaker publishers of truth visited Boston and other mid-17th century colonies, the Danish government began the first organized Protestant mission work through its College of Missions, established in 1714. This funded and directed Lutheran missionaries such as Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, India and he also got to know a slave from the Danish colony in the West Indies. Within thirty years, Moravian missionaries had become active on every continent, and they are famous for their selfless work, living as slaves among the slaves and together with the Native Americans, the Delaware and Cherokee Indian tribes
10.
Western culture
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The term also applies beyond Europe, to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence. For example, Western Culture includes countries in the Americas and Australasia, whose language, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of Western culture, with the worlds first democratic system of government and major advances in philosophy, science, Greece was followed by Rome, which made key contributions in law, government, engineering and political organization. European culture developed with a range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism, and mysticism. Rational thinking developed through an age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment. More often an ideology is what will be used to categorize it as a Western society. There is some disagreement about what nations should or should not be included in the category, many parts of the Eastern Roman Empire are considered Western today but were Eastern in the past. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition what the West is and it is difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary. Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all cultures are, to some extent. Stereotyped views of the West have been labeled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of the East, as Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly considered the Orient became the Near East, as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East, the Greeks contrasted themselves to their Eastern neighbors, such as the Trojans in Iliad, setting an example for later contrasts between east and west. In the Middle Ages, the Near East provided a contrast to the West, concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the west were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom, Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all cultures, it has evolved and gradually changed over time. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of humanity. Nevertheless, the Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves as something between the wild barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Middle-Easterners. In the meantime, however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, the Celts also created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity
11.
Zambezi
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The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is 1,390,000 square kilometres, the Zambezis most noted feature is Victoria Falls. Other notable falls include the Chavuma Falls at the border between Zambia and Angola, and Ngonye Falls, near Sioma in Western Zambia, there is also a smaller power station at Victoria Falls. The area around the source is a monument, forest reserve. Eastward of the source, the watershed between the Congo and Zambezi basins is a belt of high ground, running nearly east-west. This distinctly cuts off the basin of the Lualaba from that of the Zambezi, in the neighborhood of the source the watershed is not as clearly defined, but the two river systems do not connect. The region drained by the Zambezi is a vast broken-edged plateau 900–1200 m high, composed in the interior of metamorphic beds. Coal is also found in the district just below Victoria Falls, gold-bearing rocks occur in several places. The river flows to the south-west into Angola for about 240 kilometres, then is joined by tributaries such as the Luena. It turns south and develops a floodplain, with extreme variation between the dry and rainy seasons. It enters dense evergreen Cryptosepalum dry forest, though on its western side, where it re-enters Zambia it is nearly 400 metres wide in the rainy season and flows rapidly, with rapids ending in the Chavuma Falls, where the river flows through a rocky fissure. The river drops about 400 metres in elevation from its source at 1,500 metres to the Chavuma Falls at 1,100 metres, in a distance of about 400 kilometres. From this point to the Victoria Falls, the level of the basin is very uniform, the first of its large tributaries to enter the Zambezi is the Kabompo River in the north-western province of Zambia. A major advantage of the Kabompo River was irrigation, civilization was built on farming, and the surplus of crops. The savanna through which the river has flowed gives way to a wide floodplain, a little farther south is the confluence with the Lungwebungu River. This is the beginning of the Barotse Floodplain, the most notable feature of the upper Zambezi, for more than 200 km downstream the annual flood cycle dominates the natural environment and human life, society and culture. Eighty kilometres further down, the Luanginga, which with its tributaries drains an area to the west. A few kilometres higher up on the east the main stream is joined in the season by overflow of the Luampa/Luena system
12.
Damara people
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The Damara, plural Damaran are an ethnic group who make up 8. 5% of Namibias population. They speak the Khoekhoe language and the majority live in the regions of Namibia. They have no cultural relationship with any of the other tribes anywhere else in Africa. Their name in their own language is the Daman, the name Damaqua stems from the addition of the Khoekhoe suffix -qua/khwa meaning people. Prior to 1870 the hunter-gatherer Damaran occupied most of central Namibia, they practiced pastoralism with sheep and cattle, the Damaran were also copper-smiths known for their ability to melt copper, and made ornaments, jewelry, knives and spear heads out of iron. The Damaran just like the Sān believed in communal ownership of land, not for one to own good grazing land and the other to scavenge for land but that everyone live in harmony. It was for this reason that many were displaced when the Nama, thereafter the Damara were dominated by the Namaqua and the Herero, most living as servants in their households. In 1960, the South African government forced the Damara into the bantustan of Damaraland, about half of their numbers still occupy Damaraland. The supreme deity of the Damaran is ǁGamab, also referred to as ǁGammāb, ǁGauna, ǁGaunab and he lives in a high heaven, even above the heaven of the stars. ǁGamab, from ǁGam, Khoekhoe, water, and mā, Khoekhoe, give is provider of the water and thus associated with the clouds, thunder, lightning. He ensured the annual renewal of nature being the cycle of the seasons and supplied game animals to the ǃgarob, one of his chief responsibilities is to warrant the growth of crops. ǁGamab is also the God of Death, directing the fate of mankind and he shoots arrows at humans from his place above the skies and those struck fall ill and die. After death, the souls of the dead make their way to village in the heaven above stars. Then he offers them a drink from a bowl of liquid fat to drink, ǁGamabs arch-enemy is the evil ǁGaunab. Oral tradition has it that the Damaran came to Namibia from ǁKhaus through ǃĀǂkhib centuries ago, the Damaran initially settled between Huriǂnaub and ǃGûǁōb, before entering what later-on centuries long after became known as ǀNaweǃhūb. Oral and written records have it that intruders, reportedly under the leadership of a certain Mukumbi invaded that area in 1600. The Damaran dispersed in splinter groups as a result of the aftermath of this battle wherein the then Damara Gaob, Gaob ǀNarimab succumbed due to injuries sustained in the battle. The Damara, besides the ǀGowanîn, splinter groups then settled all over the country in areas where there was an abundant water and shelter in the form of mountains
