In northern Namibia, Harald Pager and later Tilman Lenssen-Erz and Marie-Theres Erz have spent more than 40 years documenting and publishing the rock paintings of the Brandberg, which are up to 30,000 years old. After completion, the entire documentation will be handed over to the state of Namibia. Now the Brandberg project is being given a new facet: all local knowledge about the Brandberg, i.e. natural history as well as history, is to be collected on the basis of oral traditions. The collection will be concentrated in and around Uis, a village close to the Brandberg. Local people, some of whom were already involved in the rock art project as helpers, will work together in the new project – organized in the “Tsiseb Conservatory” body. For the first time, it will not be Europeans or North Americans exploring the “Daureb” (or “Daures”), as the mountain is called in the Damara language, but Africans themselves exploring their ancestral environment. The name of the mountain peak, for example, proves how important it is to take the language into account: “Ganibeb” means “honey mountain” and indicates where the inhabitants used to get their honey. The knowledge contained in such names and stories disappears with the old people, because the young no longer live with the mountain in the traditional way. Along with the knowledge about plants and animals, hunting and the extraction of raw materials, knowledge about the associated ceremonies and rituals is also lost. The project is expected to last about a year. The results will be published in a bilingual brochure in Damara and English. This will be a significant addition to the research into the rock paintings of the Brandberg. Above all, however, this collected knowledge will be passed on to schoolchildren and future mountain guides for environmentally friendly tourism. Visitors to the Brandberg will then contribute to cultural preservation in this region with knowledgeable guides.
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Qualification in tourism projects in rural communities. A training program by Marie-Theres Erz.
