On the way to Palmwag Nature Reserve (pronounced Pla-ma-ruge) on Easter Sunday we visit the Damaraland Living Museum. Damaraland is a sparsely vegetated mountainous region once occupied by the Damara tribe, a Bantu-speaking people. Bantu is considered to be the first language and all other languages, all of them, are derived from Bantu. Latin, Greek, English, living or dead, all language came from Bantu here in Africa.

Here at the Living Museum, young people revive their culture in a village set amoung the huge granite outcrops. The men and women are talented and enthusiastic – their skills are unique and their reenactments are heart-felt. We have a super time, trying the games, and attempting to speak in the clicks – the Damara make it look so easy- and getting a make-over with red ocher. There are older people who do not speak English (or German, or French as the younger people do) and they love it when we try their language – it gives them something to laugh at. If you go to one of these Living Museums, you’ll see that it is not a chore for the people, it is a job and they are proud of their work. They live a modern life now, they tell us, but appear quite comfortable wearing the skins their ancestors wore.

The Palmrag Lodge will give us a permit for two nights camping in the Nature Reserve, one of the largest in the world. Seventy percent of the free-roaming population of Black Rhinos live here. We get a cup of coffee and wait on the veranda of the lodge, not expecting to see much although they have a wetlands right in front of us. Another table holds a family and there is a couple on a couch also drinking coffee. Presently an enormous monitor lizard comes out of the wetlands and goes under the deck – and then it reappears on the back of the couch where the people are sitting. They kindly give up the couch – the lizard cannot get a grip on the fabric and slides down to the cushion, tongue flicking out to taste the forgotten coffee. No one blinks. I have no camera.