Keeping the Legacy of the Damara Dress Alive

Set at the historic venue of the old compound kitchen which has transformed into a college for arts students some decades later, the ‘Dining With My Culture’ event was a traditional spectacle.

Throngs of women of all ages filled up the Katutura Community Arts Centre (KCAC) hall last Saturday in colourful traditional dress, with most wearing the Damara dress which was the star of the evening.

Young and old women alike were adorned in this dress which has a rich history of its own, much like the hall in which it was being celebrated for the second year in a row.

An initiative of the ≠Nukhoe /Umis Cultural Group, ‘Dining With My Culture’ started off as an event that solely celebrated the Damara dress.

This time around, however, organisers went a little further by adding a unifying approach to the event that now also advocated cultural diversity and tolerance for one another’s cultures.

“Culture is a way of life that any society is blessed with,” said Reverend Maureen Dausas at the event where she was enlisted to give a scripture reading and an opening prayer.

Guests were treated to traditional cuisine and traditional beverages with mageu and ginger and maroela ale to quench their thirst.

For entertainment, the legendary Ugly Creatures band was on hand to add to the historic ambiance, performing some of their popular tunes for the audience.

The only exhibitor at the event, Francis

/Hoxobes has been making and selling traditional Damara dresses for six years and said that business has picked up over recent years because of renewed interest in the dress.

Many young women are taking to the dress, and despite calls from elders to keep the dress in its old form, are modernising it.

“We make the dresses so that the younger women can also like them,” Francis said of her decision to also design modern versions of the dress.

It takes her about five hours to make one dress and she can make at least three per day. When it comes to dresses made from the traditional patchwork pattern, Francis can take almost an entire day to make one because of the labour intensive nature of the pattern.

One of the event organisers, Steffie Skrywer is a young woman who is not shy to add her own touch to the Damara dress. She showed up to the event in a purple bare-back version of the dress which also had the absence of some of the traditional features usually expected of the Damara dress.

“The elbow is definitely missing from my dress. Of course it causes conflict with the elders but we (young women) want to move to a modern way of wearing the dress,” she said.

She admits that she realises she cannot wear the same dress to certain sacred occasions such as funerals or weddings.

The mastermind behind the event, Mariane Thanises uttered the same sentiments, saying that young women can deviate from the traditional style and silhouette of the dress but not at traditional ceremonies.

“The dress worn at funerals by widows should be worn for up to a year but modern women are discarding it as soon as a few days after the death of their husbands. That is why some misfortune ends up following the households of these women,” she cautioned.

“There are cases where you can change the dress the way you like it but not here. Nothing about this dress should be changed,” she said of the dress worn by widows.

Weddings and funerals as well as traditional ceremonies and cultural festivals are not the place to wear modernised Damara dresses, she said.

With Hans Eixab providing a brief history of the dress from the time it was inherited from Christian missionaries to present day, Mariane too gave lessons on the dress.

She opened the floor for guests to discuss what constitutes a ‘proper’ Damara dress and also talked about the head scarf and how it should be worn.

She however admitted that young women may not be interested in wearing the dress the way their elders do but offered to teach and continue to advocate for this to change.

“My pride is your pride and it is our pride. This is a dress that comes a long way and it has deep pockets and it is from these pockets that we would be fed by our mothers, aunts and grandmothers,” she offered as a way of explaining the deep roots and importance of the dress and its original design.

The Damara dress has come a long way.

Today, the dress comes in variations of patterns and colours but there are still those who are so traditional that the colour itself will tell you where the woman wearing it is from.

The Damara communities north of the Swakop River are known for wearing the dress in blue while those south of the Swakop River wear it in green.