Angus Begg
Born – October 4 1918, died – April 4 1994, Gregg Simons was one of the Riemvasmakers trucked in 1970, against his will, from his home in the northern Cape to the red and rocky hills of Damaraland in the former South West Africa. As far as family graveyards go, his resting place is spare.
There is no vegetation or tranquillity here. A wire fence protects his and the neighbouring headstone from the wild creatures and the elements of this inhospitable semi-desert known as Torra. If he’d been alive in 1997, when the community was given permission to return to their homes in Riemvasmaak across the Orange River, I imagine he would have given it serious thought.
In the eyes of his grandson, however, who was aged three when this community was forced to make its infamous trek to Damaraland, there is no reason to return to a landscape not much fairer. Apart from having few or no memories of their forefathers’ home, Petros Simons and the rest of the Torra community legally own a chunk of land, the 5000km2 Torra Conservancy, proclaimed by the Namibian government in 1999.
Simons says the meagre stock farming in unsuitable conditions had never provided an income for the community, and in this conservancy they saw an opportunity to make a living from the increasing interest in wildlife. The time was ripe for a joint venture.
After consulting a number of consultants, the community opted to take the route of game lodges and hunting. Today part of the land is used for hunting and the rest for ecotourism – in this case, complete with luxury tented camp.
Wilderness Safaris, a South African tour/lodge operator, was the preferred bidder to handle the latter. The Damaraland Camp was born.
That was four years ago. Today Simons is senior guide, and although not the wildly knowledgeable type of ranger, he’s learning the ropes. Along with the others in the Torra community, he says he’s pleased with the way the venture is progressing.
Always smiling, Annemarie Waterboer waits on tables and works in the kitchen at the camp, far more than she reckons she’d be doing if she were back in Riemvasmaak, which she knows about only from word of mouth. “There’s even no work there, even the youngsters just stay at home, drinking, so it’s better for me to stay here in Namibia, to work here. I love Namibia.”
Mike Brinkate, general manager of Damaraland Camp, says that Wilderness Safaris saw in this part of Damaraland the potential site for a camp and an “opportunity for a source of income for the Riemvasmakers, and to save the wildlife”. The camp offers a better-than-average chance of seeing the desert elephants, an opportunity to track the endangered desert black rhino, and has since come to be, along with camps at Sossusvlei, Skeleton Coast and Etosha Pan, an integral part of the company’s Namibian safari route.
While it could so easily have turned out to be yet another tale of a game lodge merely allowing the sale of locally carved curios at the gate, this one is different. The community receives a substantial share of the profits, without having to contribute to the financial well-being of the lodge. The Torra community receives 10% of what each guest pays.
The real bonus for the community, however, is the fact that eventually they may take complete ownership of the lodge. Brinkate explains: “After 10 years they have the option to buy the lodge at its current value but if not, the contract is renewed for another five years, over which period the shares will be transferred to them.”
A far cry from the usual business of tending goats and chickens in these harsh and rocky hills, the camp provides an income that the locals never had before. Everyone working at the camp is from the Torra community – which to a city dweller flying over the arid region isn’t all that surprising, as this is inhospitable country with no visible settlements of any size for hundreds of kilometres.
“We have community game guards, who are trained and paid with this money we make,” says Simons. This is apart from the general staff, who handle the cooking, cleaning and maintenance of the camp.
Brinkate says Simons and his colleagues will have the skills to run the camp by that time. But for a tiny community living in a remote and arid part of the world, with no knowledge of international tourism exhibitions, marketing could pose a problem.
Having already come second in a recent BBC Silver Otter Ecotourism Award and being rated by the World Wide Fund for Nature as a model for ecotourism, Damaraland Camp has proved itself. But the real challenge for the Torra community and its project will be in drawing the tourists.
Given the location of their home, there has been much mixing of Riemvasmakers and Damaras over the years, with the result that many think of themselves as Namibians rather than Riemvasmakers. “I wasn’t born there and I’ve never even been there,” says Waterboer.