Oshanas: Sustaining People, Environment, and Develepment in Central Owambo, Namibia

I had this book, Oshanas: Sustaining people, environment, and development in central Owambo, Namibia, sitting on my bookshelf for a while. I finally decided it was time to read it. This book pops up I think in a lot of school libraries in Namibia. I know I have seen a bunch of copies around. I bought this copy off of Amazon.

Oshanas are the temporary lakes and rivers created every year by the flooding in the rainy season. It starts in Angola and comes all the way down to the Etosha pan. The book was kind of a dry read, but it had some very interesting points and great pictures. The book is was written after Namibian Independence. It surveys all the different aspects of the oshana region: geography, biology, human interaction with the area, and threats to the region. I really came away with a desire to know how much has changed in the past twenty years. I fear that many of the concerns (using up resources like wood, desertification, etc) have become true. However, since people in the government made this document, maybe there have been some gains. I wonder what they may be.

The other cool part of the book was seeing pictures and reading references to the crops and food that I ate while in Namibia. They gave the Kwanyama names for things along with the scientific names. Some I remembered, others I didn't.