The caged fowl of Alexandrine Hanabis aka Kuku. Gravel plains, Die Kruising (“The Crossing”), D2342, Uis District, Namibia. December 2014
While Marta Rooinasie lives out her day in the nearby Klein Spitzkoppe Mountain digging for tourmalines, her Africanis dog Skrikkie (Afrikaans for “little fright”) guards her home, poultry and pigeons. Erongo Region, Namibia. January 2015
Dorothea Papier and her baby daughter Elneray take a nap in the shade of their roadside stall. Black Ranch Pos #2, Spitzkoppe, Namibia. January 2016
Ashanti Gaises drags a bag of cardboard boxes from an illegal dump on the outskirts of town to the DRC informal settlement. Swakopmund, Namibia. March 2014
Stryker !Keip rests in the shade of his newly built shelter on the side of the gravel road. D1918, Erongo Region, Namibia. July 2015
Menete Hȗsas with her dog Penduka (Herero for “wake up”). Omaruru District, Namibia. March 2015
Liza Beukes’ ducks waddle off to find water. Rooibank, Walvis Bay District, Namibia. March 2016
Maria (the name she has chosen) at the entrance of her bedroom. She wears a string of beaded ostrich eggshells around her waist, a traditional Ovambo custom for children before they reach puberty. DRC, Swakopmund, Namibia. June 2015
Liskien Gawanas on her way from an aquifer, a daunting journey on foot up a rock sentinel and a gruelling descent underground. In 2016, owing to a three-year drought, the aquifer dried up. Erongo Region, Namibia. June 2015
A morning at the ‘amphitheatre’ in the sand dunes. Dorob National Park, Namibia. April 2015
Gottlieb ǂKhatanab ǁGaseb aka Die vioolman (The Violinist) plays traditional Damara music at the funeral of Ouma Juliana ≠Û-khui ǁAreses on the family farm beneath the Dâures. Uis District, Erongo Region. December 2014
!Nara melons (Acanthosicyos horridus) are endemic to the Namib Desert. An essential food source for the Topnaar (≠Aonin) people. Kuiseb River, Walvis Bay district, Namibia. January 2017
Ferdinand Matsuib’s dog ǂOebes. For fear of frequent animal poaching, Satan the donkey is caged until sunset when she will be released into the veld to graze overnight. Uis District, Namibia. October 2014
Boesman’s carwash and padstal (“roadside stall”) with firewood and trinkets. Soutrivier, Namib–Naukluft Park, Namibia. April 2016
Tattered by wind and burnt by the sun, an effigy made by Tolikie Dausab is meant to attract buyers/tourists to his pile of rose quartz stones on the side of the road. A road grader returns to camp for the night. Uis District, Erongo Region, Namibia. August 2015
Cry Sadness into the Coming Rain
With strong memories of my formative years growing up on the edge of the Namib Desert in what was then known as South West Africa, I have returned to explore my obsession with this place and my lifelong curiosity for the notion of shelter. I have covered thousands of dusty kilometres across remote plains, through dry river beds, over sand dunes and salt pans, through conservancies and communal lands to photograph families in desperate, forgotten outposts. I try to capture the ‘transhumance’ – the search for work, forage and water – and the remnants of former habitats alongside once productive land.
In coastal towns I move with women and children across stretches of desert from one garbage dump to another – often with the loot they carry in their quest to create shelter and eke out a living. I focus on human enterprise and failure, on the bare circumstances of ordinary women and men forced to negotiate life, and of an environment in crisis.
Namibia – a nation of diverse peoples and cultures in a vast land of seeming nothingness and unparalleled light – is rapidly shifting towards foreign popular culture. The momentum of urban development has triggered local populations to migrate from rural dwellings to the fringes of urban areas where they have settled on deregulated land – often falling prey to crime, alcoholism and abuse.
This transition of the social landscape is exacerbated by the scarcity of water and the implications of mining in a constantly drought-stricken land. In the desperateness of what is revealed on this landscape, I photograph what I care about – human intrusion, passage, negligence, waste, destruction and intervention.
Cry Sadness into the Coming Rain is about this space, these people, my place among them, and my existence at this time of my life.
Margaret Courtney-Clarke, 2017