Binti: Home

“When you face your deepest fears, when you are ready,” she’d said. “Don’t turn away. Stand tall, endure, face them. If you get through it, they will never harm you again.”

watched for a moment, as the woman’s

My father was speaking with a tall old woman. Behind her stood two camels with packs on their backs. I watched for a moment, as the woman’s hands worked wildly while she spoke. Sometimes, she’d stop speaking entirely yet her hands would keep going, moving in circles, jabbing, zigzagging, sometimes harshly, other times gently. This was the way of the Desert People, one of the reasons the Himba viewed them as primitive and mentally unstable. They had no control of their hands; the elders said it was some sort of neurological condition. When the old woman saw me, she smiled and then told my father, “We’ll bring her back by tomorrow night.”