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Most Ovaherero identified the fire, a setting considered unique to life in “villages” or “farms,” as the key site for learning about the past and about Herero culture. Although the fire is also a mundane space for cooking, it stood out most prominently in people’s minds as

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a profoundly meaningful place for experiencing family relationships and memories, as well as for elders to communicate cultural knowledge.

Before continuing, I want to distinguish the two sorts of fires common to village life: “the fire” is where many Ovaherero learn about their family and the past, while the “Holy Fire,” or Okuruo, is a spiritual site and cultural symbol. The Okuruo is the context in which Herero men can communicate with their ancestors to maintain ties with male patrilineal ancestors as well as to ask advice and to garner their blessings for decisions or material possessions.10 It is passed through generations via the male family head, who is responsible for its daily maintenance (although it is usually his wife who tends the fire). Especially during the German period, missionaries and Ovaherero made Okuruo a counter-symbol to Christianity.11 As I discuss further below, because of both Christianization and physical displacement between 1904 and 1907, many Ovaherero no longer maintain their family’s Holy Fire. Thus, while it remains an important symbol of Herero culture to many,

experiences at the Holy Fire are wholly different than those of the homestead hearth which many people describe as a central space of cultural, village and family life.

As one acquaintance told me, the communal lands, where villages are located is “where you live the cultural life.” When Ovaherero speak of “the village,” they mean a collection of homesteads (within short walking distance of one another) known by a particular name. Some villages bear the name of a family with a long association with that area. Virtually any Omuherero12 I spoke with identified a particular village as the place that she or he “comes from,” no matter how far away an individual currently resided or how long she or he resided at the village.13

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Today, “the village” (or in exceptional circumstances a purchased farm) is the place to which most pensioners return. 14 It is also the place many children spend their first few years before they attend school and the place to where they usually return for school holidays. 15 During the December holidays when many Namibians have a month off from their jobs, adults residing elsewhere will also return to their villages.

Even if one can afford to send cattle to better grazing areas, some cattle and goats will be cared for at the village for the dairy needs of those residing there, to supply milk for family members living away from the village, and to provide a meat supply for the family’s special occasions. Families who keep holy cows also maintain these particular cows at the village.

“The village” then is not only a place to which one belongs but is also imbued with nostalgia and sentiments associated with family and culture. Many adults who talked about what they had learned at the fire voiced concern that young Ovaherero were not learning Herero culture and history because they are spending little, if any, time at the village. The younger generations were more interested in modern, urban life which involved television watching, sometimes emigration to other countries, and above all, a perceived lack of time.

For Herero adults, the idea of the village as the place from which one comes has different valences for men and women. A married woman feels affinity towards two different villages. Once a woman marries she is not supposed to return to her village of birth unless someone is sick or when there is a funeral or wedding there. How strictly a woman adheres to this rule has much to do with her husband.16 The husband of one of my friends, for example, doesn’t mind if she goes to her village to visit her mothers as long as she doesn’t stay the night and doesn’t visit too often.17 The village a woman usually frequents after her marriage

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is that of her husband’s family.18 Although a woman may have visited this village before her marriage, she is supposed to spend the first week after her wedding (which occurs at her village) with her husband at his village.19 So that she doesn’t need to ask her husband’s family for much, gifts she receives for her wedding include a mattress, a bucket for milking cows and goats, a pail with a lid for carrying water, and a basin for washing herself. A married woman hopes that her husband’s family will be nice to her (and to her children, should she have any prior to the marriage) and offer her sufficient food (meat, in particular). As soon as it can be constructed after the wedding, a woman and her husband maintain their own house in his village. Over time, a woman may feel nearly as comfortable at and fond of her new homestead and village as she did her village of birth. A man, however, maintains some form of residence in the same village for his lifetime, although he may choose to maintain his livestock at a different location. For a man, having his own place in his village illustrates his improved status as a married man with a wife and children. Bringing his children to stay in the village before they begin school or during school holidays is important to integrating his children within the family as well as to teaching them family and cultural traditions.

For my Herero family, the main hearth was located in the yard of their homestead at Okarokape village. It was located a few meters in front of the house of the one of the mothers20 and the building used as a kitchen in the winter. The hearth consisted of a raised cement slab, close to an acacia tree that held a small radio on its branching trunk. At any time, a fire burned here or embers from the last mealtime smoldered. Two cast iron, three- legged cooking pots were always nearby, one pot for boiling water and another for cooking. A few chairs (or things functioning as such) were usually situated nearby. The fire’s embers

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were stoked several times a day to heat water for tea, cooking, bathing, and dish washing.21 Family members who were not busy with the cattle, goats or other work gathered and sat near the fire at tea and meal times. Adults also gathered there throughout the day to talk and listen to the radio, taking advantage of the shade of the acacia. The fire place of my Herero family’s home came alive in the evenings. The fire was lit before sundown. The worker or children who had spent the day out with the livestock returned home by sunset. Any other work to be done in a day was also finished by this time.22

Conversation around the fire in the evenings was very informal. Typically, a few adults convened while some of the grandchildren shared quieter conversations among themselves. Later in the evening, someone would occasionally suggest singing. A song would begin and everyone would quickly join in. My family usually selected Christian songs in Otjiherero. I had heard some of the same songs at a church and at a memorial service. Evenings at the fire were also when adults tell children the tales which are not only entertaining, but which also communicate life lessons.23

One evening early in my experiences at my family’s village, Otja, a daughter in my family, asked me to tell them a story. I have never been a gifted story-teller so after much consideration, I finally settled on the story of “The Three Little Pigs” simply because I remembered it best. The children offered great encouragement and accolades, but I felt entirely inept. It felt like such a lost opportunity to participate in my Herero family. I felt I should have conveyed some life wisdom as Herero adults seemed to do easily. Although there may be some Protestant lesson to be learned from this story about the pay off of hard- work, a story at the fire seemed to demand something more meaningful.

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Although the fireside conversations felt fairly informal, there are rules that structure the conversations or story-tellings performed there. Apparently, such rules also apply to other conversations or speech events. For example, after an interview with Chief Mureti at his place, Okamapingo, both his daughter, Elsie, who did most of the translating, and my friend, Magord,24 who had arranged the interview commented that they had learned a lot from what he said. I was surprised since they are both middle-aged women and I would have thought they would have had many opportunities to hear about the German colonial era. When Magord remarked to me again later that day when we were alone that she’d learned a lot about history I asked her why she thought she hadn’t learned these things previously. She explained that it’s difficult to “get the history” because one is not supposed to ask questions of elders. From speaking with other friends and acquaintances thereafter, I learned that this rule is common for more traditional families, which some people suggested had something to do with where a family was from. For example, some friends in Okakarara suggested that families from the Omaruru area are not as “traditional” as those in the Okakarara area.

One friend described her family as fairly open to talking about different topics. She did, however, explain that any questions posed of family elders needed to be based on

whatever was currently being discussed. Then one must ask questions politely. When I asked her how one asks questions politely, she referred to broader cultural understandings about showing respect for elders. She explained that you “put in your mind that you’re talking to an elder; you don’t talk to them like you would a friend.” One also should use the elder’s title in speaking to him or her, rather than using names or the pronoun “you.” Even when asked politely, she explained, an elder may not answer your question. One could have touched on a topic not suitable for discussion with young people, for instance. An elder, therefore, selects

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stories based on his/her audience. If the asker is older than others, the elder may wait until these others are gone before answering questions or telling a particular story.

In addition to rules guiding conversation between elders and young people, there are also rules about one’s right to speak that correlate with birth order and one’s relationship to the place where the conversation occurs. Earlier in this same interview, I heard something about this from Magord. As we prepared for the interview with Chief Mureti, Magord commented that the Chief’s daughter, Elsie, would do the interpreting and Magord would help out as needed. The following day, Magord told me that that was due to rules of respect about who can speak in a given context. Because Elsie was from that place, Magord said she had the right to speak, but since they are family (Magord’s husband’s elder brother married Elsie’s younger sister) and Magord’s mother is senior, Magord also had a right to speak. Such rules were also alluded to at the Ohamakari commemoration: the individual leading the program noted that she really shouldn’t be speaking before her older brother.

However, some people explained that rules about speaking rights vary by family and how strictly they adhere to “traditional life” overall. For example, several Okakarara-area residents suggested that families from the Omaruru area were less “traditional” and thus the young might speak more freely with elders. It was not clear whether these rules have become less rigidly applied over time, whether these rules are historically linked with particular places or families, or how these rules emerged and came to be known as “traditional.”

Given the importance of oral communication in learning about the past, such rules strongly influence the transmission of stories about the past within Herero families and, in turn, the production of Herero social memory and history.25 Not only do elders shape their stories according to audience, but some stories are only told on certain occasions. Indeed,

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Magord often told me that it is difficult to “get the history.” The choices elders make about what to say and to whom are not always clear. For example, do they make choices to shield youth from traumatic memories altogether or do they situate such memories within selected conversations? Are some topics not appropriate or relevant to teach one’s family? The most basic lessons of these considerations about the rules guiding conversations is that elders are considered more knowledgeable about the past and that not all stories about the past may be told at the fireside, despite its status as the key site for communicating cultural and family