Schlink Attack: Erick Mwiya's Katutura Tour

View from the top of Katutura,
behind Fidel Castro Primary School.

Last July, there was an article in The Namibian featuring a young man named Erick who made a name for himself in the world of tourism as a professional and independent tour guide within Windhoek. This article spurred an interest to visit a town mostly unknown to locals and to get to know someone trying to make real change.

Erick Mwiya was originally from Katima, a town in the Caprivi region over 1,300 kilometers from the capital, is best known for its stop-over value on the way to Victoria Falls. It's a place where elephants make the rules and safari operators seek refuge and restocking after emerging from the bush. The town is hot for Zambia travel as there's a recently opened bridge over the Zambezi river. Erick returns home every Christmas where he hops onto a donkey cart after having driven for 15-16 hours to visit his family's farm and reacquaint himself news of the north.

Twenty-seven years ago Erick lost both of his parents to alcohol poisoning. Unable to continue with his schooling after grade one, Erick went to live with extended family, doing what many Namibians are tasked with: finding work and surviving. By age 14 he ventured south to live with an uncle in Windhoek, or rather, Katutura, the infamous township where blacks were forced to live during South African rule in the 1950's. A Herero word, Katutura means "the place where people do not want to live." Squeezed together in tight quarters, yet tribally separated, creating community and solidarity was impossible. The new location also meant no access to gardening or farming, little to no access to education and medical care, and long commuting distances to the city, usually by way of overcrowded buses or unlicensed taxis.

Finding work for Erick was difficult. He partook in many menial jobs before finding a job as a taxi driver. For several years Erick drove people around, contributing to his family, and saving what he could. Naturally loquacious, he would talk to anyone who joined him on the road even if they didn't speak the same language. A lot of his trips involved driving back up north, so the hours were spent learning to communicate with his passengers. Before long, Erick was fluent in local 7 languages including English and a bit of Portuguese, tools that would prove to be invaluable with his next career step.

Erick credits a lot of his early success to his old taxi boss who encouraged him to do more. So when his clients asked him about real life in Katutura, he saw an opportunity to educate outsiders on the dynamic realities of living in a place that today, still functions without plumbing or electricity. There are no pipes to provide the tin houses with running water. Instead people load money onto fobs that operate the water access points. Residents must store their water in whatever container available and hand carry them back home. There are no toilets, not even drop ones, only the trash dump to do "big business" as Erick tells it.

Erick went for it. With the blessing of his family and community, he started Mwiya Tours and Transfers a couple of years ago. The cooperation of the community was vital. He wouldn't have been able to do this venture otherwise, because one of visions is that visitors get to meet with locals and share their personal space. Guests enter windowless shacks, walk past personal showers and gaze at the pile of cow skulls tucked away in outside corners. There's no trash service either, but the bones are anything but trash: Meat Co., a Namibian company has a program called Meat Ma that sells cow heads, legs, and entrails at N$40 ($3 USD) for the whole set. Buyers take them home where the meat is stripped off the skulls and legs, piece by tiny piece, and hung out to dry in the sun. They are a main source for nutrition, frequently paired with pap, a corn based porridge. Leftover skulls are also dried and will be used as fertilizer for the family farms.

The vices of living rough are everywhere. Every neighborhood in Katutura has bars stocked with liquor, beer, and tombo, an illegal sugary home brew. The neighborhoods are filled with drugs and marijuana, if you know where to find them. But as a white person, don't ask because they won't tell you. Narcing is something they take seriously. Prostitutes do what they can to survive and unfortunately, it's almost never worth the price. HIV-AIDS continues to be a problem, (here and throughout the country) as are orphans left behind. It paints a deary picture, but Erick tells the stories with blazing candidness. He knows the solution lies far away especially with corruption, lack of funding, and overall disorganization of a new country trying to make its way in the 21st century.

He doesn't let himself think about the injustice too much, because he has his priorities: managing his company, and taking care his family, particularly the younger ones. Erick visits two of his younger cousins, one who will study biology at the University of Namibia, and other who should have left a few days ago to start the 11th grade. Instead she stayed home, unmotivated to make her way into the city. Erick responds not with anger, but love and patience. School starts Wednesday and he will drive her himself if he needs to. He tells her that education is the only way out, and hopes she hears him. When asked about whether he'd ever go back to school, he responds with a firm "no" but acknowledges that he's been studying Islam for the past couple of years. He calls it his perfect religion and enjoys the time spent exploring God and praying under the guidance of his teacher, who also works with Erick on his English.

Every tour ends with a visit to a local market for lunch. The unbeatable smells of fried fat and meat linger in the street. The markets sell beef which doesn't require the same stringent testing standards as game meat (oryx, springbok, kudu) does. There are several aisles of dried goods: mopane worms, grains, beans, and spinach, followed by lunch tables where drinks and breads are served for about N$40-60. Down the next aisle is the butchery where the slabs of beef are chopped apart with whatever is available, though usually it's an axe. Some cow heads stare blankly on the darkened bricks ready for sale, but the choice cuts of the cow is what really sells here.

The butchery tables provide easy, fast access to the grills where piles are meat are cut down to finger foods, seasoned with salt or kapana spice and sold at N$50/plate. The fires are readily restocked from the last aisle, where people are chopping logs of wood. Grease, wood chips, and flies are everywhere, but with the sensational meal that is about to take place, none of it matters. Erick says white people should only come with someone legit from the community, otherwise service might not ever happen.

He loves to watch the reactions of his guests, who eat with either alacrity or suspicion. Either way, this is downtime for him to sit and evaluate what they liked best or least. He offers language lessons to the lingually inspired or settles into a comfortable quietness after having spoken for 3-4 hours straight. A brief reconnaissance of the market finishes the tour, and it's time to head home. Usually, he is scheduled to do airport pick ups thereafter. It is evident Erick likes to keep busy not just because of the money, but he says people walk away from his tours with a deeper appreciation and respect for Katutura. He has a hard life, but it is still a beautiful one because it is lined with hope: maybe he can be part of the change that Katutura desperately needs by doing it one tour at a time.

Tour with Erick:
https://www.facebook.com/mwiyatoursandtransfers/
http://www.mwiyatours.com/