Languages: Namagowab, Naro, Somali, and English
Speakers: Bodhari Warsame, Nichodimas Copper, and Anette Hoffmann
After the elephants and other large mammals in the border region between what is now Namibia and Botswana were hunted to the brink of extiction, large cattle herds arrived. The camels came later, together with the German colonial soldiers. Around 2000 of the animals were shipped to what was then German South West Africa from British Somaliland for the colonial war of 1904-8. Today, historical photographic collections and ethnographic film from 1908 show camels as part of the imperial project of war and occupation, while Namagowab- und Naro speakers gave accounts of the genocide and the loss of their land. In these spoken texts camels appear as companion species of colonial powers and agents in a violent process of terraforming.
Our installation presents a multi-lingual approach to this aspect of colonial history as inter-species-history, based on Somali poetry, archival sources and recent interviews. Following the spoken texts of Namagowab- and Naro speakers and the visual trace of the camels in Namibia enables the audience to see and hear of the colonial war, the extractive and violent research practice of an Austrian anthropologist, and the arrival of camels as harbingers of irreversible change.
Shown at the festival “Into the Dark” organized and hosted by the Volkskundemuseum in Vienna.