“How do white women not have babies??” The Himba girl insists on an answer. She is practically stamping her foot with impatience. How could I not have children?? I’m frank and tell her through the interpreter that there’s condoms, rhythm, drugs – two of those three choices being unavailable to her. Jesus. She is young and already a mother. We stand in their corn garden and discuss it. There is not much more to say.

But there is much to say about the Himba women. Look at how they present themselves – how can we as westerners expect everyone to be like us? Their tribe’s recent history is fraught with genocide from German colonialists and the threat of the Namib government to build a dam that will bury their homelands in water. They don’t want to change – but schooling would do good.

We visited a true Himba village, not a reenactment, and through an interpreter we are shown a life lived on the ground. It was a moving experience.