From March 3-14, 2025, a two-week orthography workshop on the Khwe language took place in the Bwabwata National Park in north-eastern Namibia with funding from the Jutta Vogel Foundation. The workshop was in response to an explicit request from many Khwe. Although their language is the best documented of all the San languages in southern Africa – there is a dictionary, a grammar and numerous published texts – so far only a few individuals have been able to read and write their own language. The aim of the workshop was to teach a larger number of Khwe from as many Khwe villages in Bwabwata National Park as possible to read and write in their own language and thus enable them to consult the numerous documents that foreign scholars have documented in Khwe in the original.
The workshop started with 24 participants who had been sent from the 12 Khwe villages in Bwabwata National Park for this purpose. The lessons took place all day on 11 days and daily from 9:00-16:30. It included teaching the Khwe alphabet with writing exercises, explanations of the marking of sounds and the different orthographic conventions used in the publications, the spelling of Khwe people and place names, which are often incorrect in official documents, a large number of dictation and reading exercises to practise the theoretical knowledge imparted and writing and reading tests to check learning success. The content was taught partly in English and partly in Khwe.
Background:
The Oswin Köhler Archive houses the world’s largest collection of documents on the culture and language of the Khwe in the Bwabwata National Park in Namibia, consisting of original language texts, photos, films, sound recordings, ethnographic objects, plant specimens, drawings and material files, most of which have now been published, which were collected by the Africanist Oswin Köhler between 1959 and 1992. The Oswin Köhler Archive endeavors to give the members of the community of origin access to these documents, to establish lasting and sustainable relationships with them and to research the material together with them. The partner organization in Namibia is the Bwabwata Khwe Custodian Committee, which was founded in 2012 and is dedicated to the preservation of the Khwe language and culture and which intends to co-organize the planned orthography workshop.
During a workshop held by the applicant Dr. Gertrud Boden, also in cooperation with the Bwabwata Khwe Custodian Committee, in Bwabwata National Park in Namibia at the beginning of March 2024 entitled “Understanding and presering Khwe cultural heritage”, two representatives from each of the twelve Khwe villages in the park discussed ideas on how the cultural heritage of the Khwe can be preserved and passed on between generations and how the documents in the Oswin Köhler Archive can be used for this purpose. In the concluding discussion, it emerged that an orthography workshop was at the top of the participants’ wish list in order to preserve their own language and culture.
Aim of the workshop
The aim of the workshop was to teach a larger number of Khwe to read and write in their own language and thus enable them to consult the numerous documents in the Khwe language, which can be found in Oswin Köhler’s estate and in various publications, in the original, i.e. without having to rely on interpreters or written translations into English. The workshop should enable the participants to disseminate what they have learned in their respective villages with the help of the curriculum developed for the workshop and the teaching materials used there.
The workshops contributed to the preservation of an endangered language and, through literacy in the local language, also to the preservation of the ways of life recorded in the historical documents. It promoted exchange and encounters between a university collection and members of the community of origin and counteracted discriminatory tendencies, which are expressed, for example, in the lack of mother-tongue teaching in Namibian schools and the non-recognition of the political leadership of the Khwe by the Namibian government.
All participants showed great enthusiasm and commitment. Some of them continued learning late into the evening after the end of the lessons.
Here is the feedback from an enthusiastic workshop participant:
