Home - HouseFinder Property and Real Estate listing and Magazine Namibia

Featured Article - Jun/Jul 2021

From barren to busy – life at the coast over the years


From barren to busy – life at the coast over the years

Let’s imagine for a moment that we are one of the hunter-gatherers of way back when, patrolling the Namib coastline in search of seafood. Some theories pinpoint earliest human life along our shores to 800 000 years ago. If that seems awfully far back in the mists of time, rather imagine being a sailor stranded after a shipwreck (around 300 ships and their crew came to harm here). Or if you are female, imagine being one of the German brides-on-order offloaded from ships at Swakopmund and destined to join an unknown husband in the hot inner country.


If you were one of those people, chances are that you would have marvelled at the absolute nothingness of the coastline. Sheer barrenness. As far as you could see, there would have been only sand. And if it was a misty day? Well, mist and sand. On a sunny day you might well have found the colours beautiful.

But enjoying stark beauty is one thing, and surviving is another. According to Abraham Maslow, American psychologist of the early previous century, man’s longing for food and shelter is a very basic need. The early people’s survival tactics would have been honed to perfection.

Maslow’s so-called hierarchy of needs consists of five levels: Firstly, biological and physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, warmth, sex and sleep. This is followed by level number two which is the need for safety - protection from the elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, etc. Then follows the need for belonging and loving within relationships. Fourthly, once these basics have been met, human beings generally strive for things like self-esteem, achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance and prestige. This is topped by the so-called self-actualization needs of level five: realising personal potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Early inhabitants along the Namib coast would have focused on the basics. In contrast, we today have the freedom of focusing on any number of self-fulfilling and peak experiences. For some these would be skydiving, for others participating in the Musikwoche, for others winning the annual angling competition in Henties Bay.

We could easily think that we have arrived. But beware. The guano-mining era came and went. The uranium era came and waned. The tourism era blossomed and stalled to a halt thanks to Covid fears.

Property development has grown from the first shacks-in-sand to impressive public and private buildings. Raging flood waters have taught us that buildings alongside dry riverbeds ought to stand on stilts. In reality, there are still some shacks-in-sand, but we are a pioneering people.

We have built up this coastline from barren to busy.

Christine Stoman

Catalea Properties

Okamita

Mcpherson Realtors

Rightmove Properties

Doris Hentzen Properties

Sylvie McTeer Properties

Jireh Real Estate

HomePage Estate Agency

Kruger Real Estate

Rina de Bod

GPM Services

HouseFinder Namibia. © 2019, All rights reserved
Disclaimer Privacy Policy
Another website escaped from the Asylum Design and Development