ANGOLA: Hidden Tribes of the South

ANGOLA – CULTURAL PHOTOGRAPHY TOUR: OVERVIEW

In 2018, Wild Images proudly pioneered tribal photography tours in Angola when principal photographer Inger Vandyke spent three weeks in the country, walking with Kuvale nomads and travelling solo for extended periods around remote southern Angola, exploring some of the country’s last remaining traditional cultures. As a result, the Wild Images tribal photography tour of Angola is now the most ethnographically extensive, offering an in-depth exploration of the rugged south-west corner of Angola alongside the most experienced support team in the country.

We will explore the incredible ethnic diversity of southern Angola, a region home to a wide variety of tribal peoples and some of its most spectacular landscapes.

For decades, this beautiful country was effectively shut off from the outside world due to a long-standing civil war. After the war ended in 2002, access to the country remained very restricted. Still, tourism is encouraged nowadays, and the recent introduction of an E-visa system has made it easier for travellers from all corners of the globe to visit. Nonetheless, photography tours in Angola to remote tribal areas are still in their exciting, pioneering days.

Compared with developed Namibia across the border, Angola remains another world. The towns and cities are filled with buildings that are remnants of the country’s Portuguese past. Crumbling facades and street plazas characterise urban Angola. Examples of avant-garde architecture are everywhere, from spaceship-looking cinemas to gigantic public monuments erected to honour former colonial leaders and the ‘conquerors’ of this vast and beautiful country.

Outside of the urban centres, Angola is wild, unruly and magnificent. Characterised by jagged mountain ranges, rocky deserts, eroded landscapes and remarkable coastal scenery, the breathtaking beauty of south-west Angola feels untouched and unexplored.

Living in this vast wilderness are some of the most beautiful and gentle tribal people in southern Africa, including the Ovamwila, Ovahimba, Ovatwa, Ovandimba, Ovakuvale, Ovahakaona, Nguendelengo and Ovahanda (Nyaneke). Since the “opening” of Angola, some of these tribal people have changed at an alarming rate, forcing many of them to move to more remote areas to keep their cultures, and in some cases, their livelihoods alive. Many of them reside in the vast Iona National Park in southern Angola or in similarly wild locations like Virei, Oncocua and Cunene.

Unlike the somewhat curated experiences you might have with tribal people just over the border in northern Namibia, in Angola many of the semi-nomadic tribal people of the south-west live in fairly wild areas and visiting them requires a sense of adventure, excellent guides and the ability to camp independently. Where they live has no lodges, and in many areas there are only small tracks leading to their tiny communities dotted around this magnificent region.

The Wild Images Angola photography tour is the most comprehensive cultural photography tour offered in the country. As we explore the south-west, we will visit both settled communities near small towns and camps of tribal people moving across the countryside. We will trace the paths of nomads, camp alongside them in their villages, join their children in their morning livestock herding and share visits to wells with them. As is customary on our Wild Images tours to tribal areas, we will also bring gifts of food as a thank-you to the families we will stay with during our trip. We will explore ancient, unexplained rock petroglyphs dating back 4000 years, and we will drive the spectacular Serra de Leba pass from Lubango down to the coastal town of Moçamedes.

We also explore the wild beauty of Angola’s southern coastline and enjoy stunning landscape photography opportunities in the eroded formations of Arco and Curoca at sunrise and sunset.

It is on this wild southern coast that two tiny fishing communities north of Tombwa are where local Kwepe (or Curoca) tribal fishermen take out tiny wooden boats to fish each day. Returning home, they unload their catch and sell some of it fresh, while the remainder is dried on large racks in the sun or salted through tiny factories. These villages provide a wonderful glimpse into the lives of Kwepe fishing folk in Angola and how they survive in their incredibly harsh environments.

Our special Angola photography tour is for photographers who can respond spontaneously to situations as they arise, whether it’s capturing a street scene in a lively market or a subtle change in light across a wondrous landscape. Unlike other parts of Africa, Angola is not a place that is easily posed or orchestrated. If you are passionate about capturing a truly beautiful corner of the continent and its most beautifully decorated tribal people, we look forward to travelling with you.

ANGOLA’S HIDDEN TRIBES

The anthropological treasure chest of southern Angola is home to around eleven different tribal groups. During our Angola photography tour, we hope to introduce you to at least eight of them. Some of these tribes are semi-nomadic, following the paths of the wind and rain across the seasons. Others are more settled, choosing to stay in small towns and villages that we will travel through on our tour.

Ovamwila

The whimsical, elaborately decorated Ovamwila people can sometimes be seen wandering the streets of Lubango. During our most recent expedition, we explored some very remote communities of the Ovamwila people whose body decorations were unrivalled by those of any Ovamwila you might meet in towns.

While Ovamwila men have largely abandoned their traditional dress, their women remain passionate about preserving it. Much like many descendants of the Herero complex of peoples, Ovamwila women undergo significant changes to their appearance as they grow from girls to women.

Young Ovamwila girls often braid their hair in dreadlock-style strands and colour them with a mixture of deep red ochre and animal fats. They usually will also wear a simple strand of colourful beads as a necklace.

Necklaces are an important part of Ovamwila women’s culture, each symbolising a different phase of life. As they grow towards womanhood, they will start to remove the ochre from their hair and will wear a simple series of three braids across that is unadorned with ochre. They also begin to wear a Vikeka, or necklace made from wicker covered with clay. As a young girl passes into womanhood she will attend a ceremony called a “Fico” which involves drinking their locally fermented alcohol, music and dancing through the night.

After they are initiated and married, young Ovamwila women wear spectacular golden braids called Nontombe, again a dreadlock-style braid that is covered with animal fats and bright yellow ochre. This is accompanied by spectacular, many-stranded necklaces called Vilandas, which are worn constantly until they die. They are so large that Ovamwila women must sleep with their heads resting on a special wooden rest so as not to ruin their Nontombe or Vilanda decorations.

We will meet warm and smiling Ovamwila people in both their villages and at lively, bustling local markets. If invited, we may also walk with them through their fields of corn, sorghum and millet or perhaps enjoy a visit to a well with them during our tour.

Ovakuvale

The ethereal beauty of the Ovakuvale tribe is almost difficult to describe in words. Their stunning culture is being kept alive by both men and women across their nomadic range in southern Angola.

On our Angola tribal photography tour, we will visit ornate Ovakuvale villages that feature beautifully sculpted clay huts, rings of thorny-bush livestock enclosures, and a central courtyard.

Both men and women in Ovakuvale culture engage in teeth filing for beauty. This involves filing the inside edge of the two front teeth and is very visible when they smile and laugh!

They both choose vibrant, beautifully patterned cloth to wear either as a sarong-style dress or as a covering for women’s hairstyles.

Driving around the tracks of southern Angola, it is quite possible to encounter nomadic Ovakuvale people as they move across the region from village to village or from well to well in search of water and grazing land for their livestock.

Ovakuvale men walk bare-chested, wearing sandals fashioned from worn car tyres and a sarong made from beautiful wax cloth. They may also carry spears for hunting or machetes for cutting tracks and wood as they walk.

Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of Ovakuvale dress, however, appears in their women. Ovakuvale women are best known for their beautiful large ‘hats’ called Ompota. These are fashioned from wicker, which is kept rigid by being filled with dried cow’s tails, and they can be used to carry food. Once created, Ovakuvale women cover their Ompotas with brightly coloured fabric scarves.

Ovakuvale women also wear a fascinating ‘bra’ called an Oyonduthi, effectively a piece of string tied around their breasts, to keep them from moving about as they walk.

Ovakuvale women and girls are instantly recognisable for their beauty and large brass anklets worn for decoration.

When Ovakuvale children are learning to walk, they are dressed in a decorated, carved-bone harness that helps keep them upright. Once they can walk on their own, the harness is removed and saved for the next child.

As a culture, Ovakuvale people have a strong belief in protective ancestral and supernatural forces. Their graves are covered with numerous cow horns if they owned many in life. Amulets are worn around their necks, including pretty leather boxes called Ngombe, which signify that they are livestock owners.

Visiting traditionally sculpted Ovakuvale villages at sunrise is one of the most stunning highlights of the Wild Images Angola photography tour, as it allows you to witness life unfolding for the Ovakuvale as they prepare to take their livestock out to graze in the beautiful early-morning light and the dust of Africa.

Ovahimba

Living in both Namibia and Angola, Ovahimba people have often been described as one of the most beautiful tribal groups in Africa. Wandering freely across northern Namibia and southern Angola, they are sometimes known as the Red Ochre people of the desert.

In Angola, the Ovahimba people are distinctly more traditional than their brothers and sisters over the border in Namibia. In stark contrast to the curated experiences you might have with Himba people in Namibia, encounters with the Ovahimba in Angola are more spontaneous and traditional.

Unlike in northern Namibia, where their tribal traditions are slowly being encroached upon by modernity, traditional Ovahimba tribal culture is alive and well in Angola. The men’s hairstyles that symbolise their marital status, Ondatu and Ondumba, are worn freely by men. Angolan Ovahimba women not only wear a crown of Erembe, made from goatskin as they do in Namibia, but sometimes make their Erembes from chainmail-style metal backed by leather, or opt for triple-braided hairstyles that are never seen on Himbas in Namibia. Young Ovahimba girls in Angola have longer Ozondatu (front hair plaits) than their sisters in Namibia.

Dictated more heavily by tradition than the laws of modern society, the Ovahimba people of Angola are perhaps the purest representatives of their tribal culture in the world.

Ovahakaona

In the drier Cunene region of southern Angola, we will meet the stunningly beautiful Ovahakaona tribe. Although Hakaona men have mostly abandoned their traditional dress, their women keep it very much alive. The most noticeable aspect of Ovahakaona women is their headdress, called a Kapopo, which is fashioned from colourful beads, leather, and twirled paper batons. It sits atop her crown of hair, which is styled with charcoal, animal dung, and fats.

If we are fortunate on our tour, we may meet younger Ovahakaona girls wearing an Ena, or wig made from multiple strands of colourful beads, indicating they have reached puberty and are ready to marry.

During times of celebration, Ovahakaona tribal women dance in groups with individual women breaking away to perform athletic twirls which celebrate their beauty.

Ovahakaona women maintain their appearance by regularly treating their skin with animal fats, allowing them to retain an ethereal beauty even in old age.

Ovatwa

The beautiful Ovatwa people are among Angola’s most impoverished ethnic groups. Also called Batwa, the Ovatwa are among the best-known of the many Pygmy groups scattered across equatorial Africa. In Namibia and Angola, the Ovatwa people live in close economic symbiosis with the tribes among which they are scattered, including the Ovahakaona and Ovahimba. They are often employed as livestock herders, blacksmiths, or harvesters.

Physically, they resemble the Ovahimba and Ovahakaona peoples, but it is in their homesteads that the differences between these cultures are most evident. Ovatwa huts are fashioned from a patchwork of sapling timber, sheet iron, tarpaulins, and hessian sacks. They typically live deep in the bush, and their homes blend beautifully with these surrounds. During our tour, we will visit at least two remote communities of these fascinating people, including one of a blacksmith, where we can learn about items fashioned from discarded military rockets and missile remnants from the Angolan war.

Ovandimba

One of the lesser-known tribal groups in southern Angola, the Ovandimba people are rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders. It took a lot of searching by Wild Images to discover their villages hidden deep in the south. Once we found them, we were warmly embraced by the Ovandimba people, who live in spectacular hand-painted huts in remote southern Angola.

Living in some of the most spectacular examples of African vernacular architecture we will see on our tour, Ndimba homes are covered in clay and hand-painted with motifs that represent their daily life.

These beautiful homes are only rivalled by the beauty of Ovandimba women, who fashion their hair into a single beehive style, which they decorate with colourful beads. They may also cover their hair with beautifully coloured scarves.

Wild Images has discovered some of the most beautiful and difficult-to-reach Ovandimba villages in all of Angola. Camped out nearby, the photography inside these remote communities at sunrise and sunset is truly a sublime experience.

Ovanguendelengo

Classified as anthropologically extinct, yet related to the larger Ovakuvale ethnic group, the beautiful Ovanguendelengo tribe lives in the foothills of the spectacular Serra de Chela mountain range that separates Lubango from the coastal town of Moçamedes. Numbering only around 300 to 400 individuals, the Ovanguendelengo people’s culture is kept alive mostly by their women, who braid their hair in three-stranded beehive formations, which they often cover with scarves. Ovanguendelengo women carry their babies in beautiful papooses fashioned out of goatskin. In celebrations, they are known for their athletically wild dancing.

Visiting a group of Ovanguendelengo tribal people is truly a privileged glimpse into a world which is fast disappearing. Their refusal to intermarry, even with their culturally similar Kuvale relatives, means that we may not long live in a world where these people exist.

Ovahanda (Nyaneka)

Another extremely endangered tribe, the Ovahanda, have traditions that are kept alive only by one small group of jolly, good-humoured elderly women in a small, remote town. Finding them involves asking around a local market, and suddenly they will emerge.

Despite their advancing years, this small group of elderly women refuse to surrender to our modern world. They still dress up with their beautiful, elaborate strands of white beads, worn in multi-layered necklaces and spectacular headdresses that drape down their backs. These days, their beads are made of glass, but it is thought that the original Ovahanda decoration was fashioned from mother-of-pearl.

Meeting them is a joyous occasion as they laugh and giggle while you photograph them. They are gracious hostesses who are the last remaining carriers of an obscure yet beautiful culture of Angola.

Kwepe

Angola’s Kwepe people may have lost their traditional dress during the Portuguese era, but they have largely kept their ancient traditions of fishing and living from the coastal seas of southern Angola for centuries. These friendly people reside in some of the harshest coastal environments on the continent. There are no roads, no trees and their villages are connected by sandy tracks caked with salt – tracks that local Kwepe children use to walk to school, that salt workers travel along to the industrial salt pans or that local Kwepe people navigate expertly between the ramshackle villages built just behind the high tide mark. Wandering around these villages is a paradise for street photography where you can capture the gritty, raw nature of these communities while chatting to some of the friendliest people you will meet on our tour. We will visit several of these villages, learning how Kwepe people dry fish, haul in their catch and process it in this wild, remote space. We will also visit a local salt works, where the majority of Angola’s salt production occurs. This part of the tour is extremely drone-friendly, and from the air you can capture both the tiny wooden boats of these communities as they sit alone on the beach and the beautiful colours of the salt works, which can only really be appreciated in full from an aerial view.

EXPLORING ANGOLA’S RUGGED  LANDSCAPES

The beauty of Angola’s tribal people is perhaps only rivalled by the country’s stunning scenery. A natural barrier of rugged mountains, called the Serra de Chela, separates the coastal fringe of south-west Angola. Driving over these breathtaking mountains via the snakelike Serra da Leba pass transports you into another world. Shifting dunes characterise the wild coast of Angola, eroded landscapes and charismatic fishing villages.

Tchitundu Hulo

One of the most difficult facts to comprehend about this region of Angola is how little it has been studied from an anthropological and historical perspective. Compared with other regions of Africa, this remote part of Angola offers very little in the way of a documented past.

The most striking evidence of this is the spectacular galleries of rock petroglyphs at Tchitundu Hulo. It is home to rock art galleries that are thought to date back 20,000 years. Not much is known about the artists who created these works, but they are thought to be from the Ovatwa, one of the original inhabitants of southern Africa. Yet academics who have visited this site have been unable, to date, to decipher exactly what they mean and why there are so many of them.

In the 1950’s, when they were discovered, the region around Tchitundu Hulo was largely inhabited by the Ovatwa people. Still, they were eventually driven out by the more powerful Ovahakaona people of the area.

There are two main art galleries here. One is a small gallery at Opeleva, easily reached by a short walk on flat ground. For the more adventurous, we offer a walk up the granite hillside to the incredible Upper House galleries of Mulume and Pedra das Zebras. This walk is optional but should you decide to join us, the views over the surrounding countryside and its pretty Kuvale villages are definitely worth the effort!

In 2017 the Angolan government submitted the rock art sites at Tchitundu Hulo for UNESCO World Heritage status, but this is yet to be confirmed.

Arco

A short drive on a dirt road in what looks like a desert actually plunges you into the beautiful oasis called Arco. After we park our vehicles under large, shady trees, we will enjoy a short walk across sandy terrain to visit the spectacular rock arch at Arco. It is possible to view this place from several angles, including an incredible spot where we can look through a spectacular rock arch into the surrounding landscape. If the rains have been kind to Angola, a lagoon that often has wading flamingos and other birds in it can be seen from Arco.

Tombua

The port town of Tombua is Angola’s southernmost large town. It sits at the edge of a stretch of coast that resembles Namibia’s Skeleton Coast with its wild dunes, colonies of Cape Fur Seals and shipwrecks.

The ruined cathedral of Tombua stands atop high cliffs that skirt the Atlantic Ocean. Since the end of the Portuguese colonial period, this simple cathedral has lain open to the forces of wind and ocean. It now provides a tremendous viewpoint over the surrounding area.

Lying a short distance north of Tombua, we will visit two very remote fishing villages. Walking down sandy alleys between tumbledown huts, we will learn how local Kwepe (or Curoca) tribal fishermen dry and preserve their catch using salt. We may find small children repairing nets, fishermen hauling their small wooden boats ashore to offload their catch, and women cleaning fish while they carry their babies in colourful papooses.

The Colinas of Curoca

Visiting the landscapes of Curoca is a bit like exploring Mars. A topping of brittle clay holds together layers of eroded red and yellow earth. After centuries of wind erosion, wild Dali-esque formations have emerged. Rock pillars, caves, archways, dunes and grottoes all feature heavily here. We will explore Curoca by vehicle and on foot, searching for incredible formations to photograph from different angles.

Welwitschias

The world’s oldest plant, Welwitschia mirabilis, grows in the rock deserts of southern Angola and northern Namibia. During our tour, we will make a small detour off one of the main roads to visit one of the largest Welwitschia plants in the world. Dating back thousands of years, this ancient botanical wonder is almost as large as our car and has a core so old and strong that it can even be walked through! It is a remarkable example of how untouched this part of southern Angola really is and a living testament to Angola’s history, having survived millennia of human contact, droughts, rains, and even the civil wars that have raged around it.

Accommodation & Road Transport

In Luanda, Moçamedes, and Lubango, our accommodation is in comfortable, tourist-class hotels. In remote Angola our fully supported camps include tents that are tall enough to stand up in and beds with mattresses and bedding (sheets, duvet, pillow and pillowslip, plus bath towel). A shared hot water shower tent will be provided and erected by our camp crew. Seated toilet facilities will also be available. Our camp cook will prepare our meals, which typically consist of a cooked breakfast with fresh fruit and bread; lunch is either a cooked meal or a buffet of cheeses, meats, and fruit. Dinners are cooked single-course meals. The food is fresh and delicious throughout, and most diets can be catered for. Each night, a campfire is set up in our camp, where we can enjoy ‘African TV’ or watch the fire with a pre-dinner drink. Road transport is by custom-built expedition 4WD vehicles as roads in southern Angola can sometimes be quite rough. The vehicles are very comfortable and well-suited to the expedition-style of our tour.

Walking

The walking effort is easy throughout. The only fairly demanding walk on the trip, to see the Upper House gallery of petroglyphs at Tchitundo Hulo, is optional.

Climate

Generally warm or hot, dry and sunny.