Himba people of northern namibia

We stop in Kamanjab to ask for directions to the Himba tribe. The Himba people are nomatic and have been living the same way for thousands of years in their mud and stick huts the size of an average garden hut and raising their cattle and coats. What's unusual about the Himba people is the women. They never bathe, yes, they never wash their bodies. They take a mixture of red ochre rock pigment mixed with animal fat and cover their bodies in it. Their dreadlock hair is also covered in this mud mixture. They are topless and just wear loinclothes and beaded & metal jewellry. When we enter the village, we are immediately surrounded by the children about 2-12 years old. A lot of the the young children don't even wear any clothes. We are shown around the village with woman working on beadwork, making the ochre bodypaint or just resting in whatever shade they can find. The children and women are facinated with getting their pictures taken and want to see themselves in the digital display screen. Many of them start laughing when they see themselves and want to show everyone else what they look like. Too bad I didn't have a polarid camera to leave some pictures behind. The children have no toys, just empty plastic bottles, bits of metal and sticks to play with. Depending on how many cows a man has he can take more than one wife. Girls are normally married around 14 years of age and it's when they mature that their hairstyle changes and they are allowed to start painting their bodies. We were shown into the leaders hut, a bit larger than the rest and sat in a circle while they showed various tools, weapons, wooden head pillows (men only) and how a woman squats over a smoking leaves that have a bit of a scent to clean herself. These people seem truly happy to live the way they do without modern conveniences that we take for granted everday. The only thing that concerned me was that when a woman has a difficult childbirth or a child gets sick chances are they won't survive since they don't seek modern medical attention.