Diamonds in the Rough

Likius Ananias was born in an area of northern Namibia once called Ovamboland. For many living far from Africa’s contentious borders, Ovamboland presents an endless horizon, which includes Etosha National Park—one of South Africa’s most important game reserves. But for Likius and thousands of others, Ovamboland was better known for the intense guerilla warfare that lasted more than 20 years and killed nearly 25,000 people.

Today, Namibia is an independent country offering a world comparatively free of bloodshed and political struggle. Likius now lives in Dordabis, a small town of less than 1,500 people and not far from Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. There, in a small cinder-block building barely cooled by a sub-Saharan breeze, Likius sits in front of his canvas—a series of colored threads going up and down, back and forth, with black-faced impalas, leaping gazelles, and rambunctious warthogs coming to life before him.

Likius is one of a select group of handweavers at Ibenstein Weavers, a company that has been producing handwoven carpets, runners, and wall hangings from Karakul wool for almost 60 years. Ibenstein is more than just a workplace; for Likius, it is where he has made his home since 1992, and where his gift for drawing animals and working with his hands has earned him a new way of life. In a country that suffers from 30% unemployment, Likius is fortunate not only to have a job, but one that utilizes his talents as well.

When one thinks about the world of wool, Africa would seemingly be about the last stop on the wool train. With rampant malaria, scorching droughts, and hippos submerged in mud, wool would seem low—very low—on the list of natural resources. However, its untamed landscape encompasses a range of topographies and Africa possesses an abundance of dry, barren land—just where the Karakul sheep feels most at home.

Although originally native to central Asia, Karakuls were imported from Uzbekistan to the German colony of Deutsch-Südwestafrika in 1906 for the fur trade. The Karakul lamb’s soft, curly black pelt known as Astrakhan was so highly valued, it was and is called swakara, meaning black diamond.

Astrakhan comes from lambs that are slaughtered within the first 48 hours of life. Older than that and the quality of both the skin and the “fur” begins to change. At its peak in the 1970s, Namibia produced five million Karakul pelts annually for an audience of wealthy fashionistas in both Europe and the U.S. However, once animal-rights activists uncovered the truth behind Astrakhan, buckets of paint began smattering the stars in their finest, and the demand dropped dramatically.

When Ibenstein Weavers began in 1952, there were still large flocks of Karakuls in the country; yet coincidentally, Ibenstein’s early roots came from real diamonds—the very first diamonds discovered in Namibia.

His name was August Stauch and in 1907, at the age of 29, August left his native Germany on the advice of his doctor and moved to South-West Africa to help alleviate his suffering from asthma. He arrived in Lüderitz; a coastal town in what is now Namibia and the site of some of the most inhospitable sailing waters in the entire continent. It is called the Skeleton Coast. August soon became the bahnmeister (station master) of Grasplatz, a position that was often characterized by watching the towering sand dunes “dance a merry jig” over the railway tracks and hide them. Among other responsibilities August had the task of keeping the tracks clear.

In all likelihood, August would have been sentenced to an insufferably hot, monotonous life, living in a simple shack of corrugated iron where solitude and sand storms were his constant companions. But life for August was soon to be anything but routine. Within a year of his arrival one of August’s laborers, Zacharias Lewala, was shoveling sand to clear the way when he spotted a small, shiny rock. Zacharias picked it up and inspected the unusual-looking stone, then handed it over to August. Suspecting that this find might indeed be a buried treasure, August took the stone and tried scratching the glass face of his watch. It cut and cut deep. Zacharias had discovered Namibia’s first diamond and from that moment forward, some might say, ‘the rest was history.’ But it was just the beginning.

August Stauch moved swiftly to gain mining rights to the area before word of the finding could spread. He soon left his position as bahnmeister and literally began following the wind. The very thing that had once been his nemesis would now lead to his windfall. August surmised that the direction of the winds (which he had been studying as they perpetually covered the tracks) would likely lead him to the source of the glittering jewels—and he was right.

After two failed attempts to cross a formidable sand-dune barrier leading to Namibia’s southern coast, August’s workers quit in protest. On the third attempt, August made it to a valley in the Pomona area and began setting up camp. Jakob, one of the laborers on the excursion, had gone to fetch firewood when August stopped him and jokingly said, “Jakob, don’t look for wood, look for diamonds!”

So dutifully Jakob dropped to his knees and within moments had scooped up a handful of diamonds. Hundreds of them! He began grabbing them so quickly he had nowhere to put them—so he stuffed them in his mouth. Soon August was kneeling beside him and they were both raking it in!

The valley proved to be the richest deposit of diamonds ever known. In fact, traditional mining tools weren’t even required in the beginning; workers simply used their bare hands to dig up the raw diamonds.

During the next 20 months this once desolate, dismal valley yielded one million carats of diamonds.

Wolfgang Ramdohr, husband of Anne Ramdohr, the great-granddaughter of August Stauch, sits in a room adjacent to the weaving studio where the rhythmic clanging and bumping of the heddles traveling up and down provide the perfect ambient noise. He has just gotten off the phone with a customer in Europe who has ordered a large, custom rug. As one of the co-owners of Ibenstein Weavers, Wolfgang wears many hats including company historian. He describes what happened next to August.

“August invested his wealth in many ways and one was in farming. He owned various farms. He raised cattle in southern Namibia and he also invested in Karakuls. He was one of their early pioneers.

“By the 1930s there were 1.5 million Karakul sheep just in Namibia. The demand dropped during World War II, but by the 1960s and 1970s there were about 5 million.

“Unfortunately,” says Wolfgang, “August’s success did not mirror that of the Karakul industry and through a combination of misfortune and the Great Depression, he eventually returned to his homeland.”

In 1947 August Stauch died a poor man.

Thankfully, a few of August’s investments survived. In 1931 August’s daughter, Marianne Krafft, moved to her father’s land in Dordabis, a few miles from Ibenstein. Marianne and her husband, Nikolai, farmed Karakuls, raising them for the soft, black lamb pelts and selling them to the fur industry. The wool of the older ewes, which turned grey and coarse, was considered useless. Farmers often took piles and piles of these shorn fleeces and used them for road repair or simply threw them into the river. But that practice was soon to change.

Once Marianne and Nikolai were settled into their new home, Nikolai’s father came for a visit—a trip that ultimately helped direct the future of the next three generations. Nikolai’s father was Russian by birth and knew that Karakuls had indeed great purpose beyond just their pelts; Karakul wool—the scratchy stuff that was being thrown away in ditches—was the very same material used to make the legendary carpets woven in Bokhara, Uzbekistan. Perhaps—just perhaps—carpet weaving could have a future in Namibia as well.

The transition from farming to weaving did not come swiftly. Marianne had studied art at the famous Bauhaus School in Germany and was soon captivated with the idea of working with the local women to build a rug-weaving business. But it would be twenty years after Nikolai’s visit before the first rug was snipped from the looms at Ibenstein.

As Wolfgang explains, “Marianne was an artist, not a weaver. She had to bring master weavers here to help train the locals. The first weaver who came was Jeanette Ganzert. She was from Germany and very successful. She brought looms, spinning wheels, and other necessary equipment to get things started. It was a brand new skill for the people to learn, “Wolfgang explains, “and the women soon became very good at spinning and weaving. Of course, Marianne did all the designing.”

The original Ibenstein rugs featured a variety of geometric and abstract patterns that reflected Marianne’s Bauhaus training. There were 27 natural colors to choose from; that is until Gonda Pengel came to Ibenstein and a new world opened up with the introduction of dyes she imported from Germany. With practice, the weavers soon became more skilled and the business began to grow; and then other weaving companies started to follow suit.

“We were the first,” says Wolfgang with pride. “So much has changed over the years. But some things haven’t changed at all.”

Wolfgang and I walk across the courtyard where freshly washed wool hangs from a clothesline like the tangled hair of a Raggedy-Ann doll. Eva Nou-Gawases, who is married to Frans Otto, one of Ibenstein’s weavers, sits spinning in an open patio. Her left hand carefully draws the wool out to one side of her body while her right hand adjusts the twist as the wool feeds onto the wheel. Her arms move in a steady balance with one another. Eva works quickly and quietly. And then for just a moment she looks up at me, smiles softly, and then goes back to working. According to Wolfgang, Eva has been spinning at Ibenstein for 20 years and, as for Likius, this is her home. Before Eva came to Ibenstein she worked as a domestic for several different farms. She has never been to school, but she has always been willing to work hard and spinning is unquestionably her forte.

I notice another spinning wheel besides Eva’s, but it is quiet for the moment. I am fascinated by the simplicity of the machine, which looks to be a unique configuration of old car parts coupled with a cast-iron treadle from an old sewing machine. It serves to illustrate the point that spinning and weaving do not require fancy equipment or technology.

Beside the two wheels a drum carder sits on a home-built wooden table. There is nothing elaborate or unique about it either, just a large wooden drum covered with metal teeth and a crank-handle jutting out of the side. Undoubtedly it has seen virtually tons of tangled, matted Karakul over the years and with no motors to oil or breakdown, it runs on true manpower and works just fine.

In an age driven by power and technology the rudimentary equipment is a poignant reminder, and yet, Wolfgang says, “We didn’t have any electricity here until 1990.” And then he raises his eyebrows at me as if to say, “now think about that!”

Even in the shade it is uncomfortably hot, the type of heat that you can smell. It makes most people want to do just one thing—nothing. As a result, the shop closes everyday for several hours while the workers go home to have lunch and spend time with their families. Everyone who works at Ibenstein also lives there. But with the less than two-dozen workers now left at the company, nearly a hundred people live on the property. And that, according to Wolfgang, can present problems.

“Everyone has at least four, five, six, seven children, maybe more. Sometimes their mother or father is living with them. Sometimes it’s their cousins. Unemployment is very high and so many can’t afford a place to live,” says Wolfgang.

“I want to help and as a company we try to provide for our workers. But it puts a strain on our limited resources like water and firewood, which is what everyone uses for cooking. On the other hand, families are very tight-knit and if they don’t live close to one another they might take several weeks off from work to go and visit.”

Clearly, Wolfgang needs to wear many hats adding landlord to the list. It is all but impossible to try to police who comes and goes from their tiny village that is adjacent to the weaving studio. A chain-link fence surrounds the entire property, but it really isn’t effective in keeping people out, it just slows them down.

“Lots of farmers have problems with animals being stolen. All the thieves have to do is herd the animals towards the fence at nighttime and then either cut a hole or figure out a way to go over. You really can’t stop it, you just try to minimize it as much as possible,” says Wolfgang.

Typically, the animals are stolen for food or to sell at the market. Farmers have guard dogs but most properties are so large it’s impossible for even the dogs to be everywhere at once. Wolfgang has two German shepherds, but they are lying in the shade; I sense they don’t like working in the hot afternoon sun, either.

In the far corner of the courtyard a woman sits wearing a white face mask and a headscarf decorated in camouflage green and black. There is a large polypropylene bag on the floor beside her full of raw fleece that she is deftly sorting by hand. Although the business was built on the premise of using fleece from their own sheep, it has been many years since there were Karakuls on the land. Twice a year Wolfgang and Anne go to the wool auction in Windhoek and buy what they need. But that market is changing, too.

According to Wolfgang, the market rebounded somewhat in the 1990s, but it has never regained the losses sustained during the anti-fur campaign. The annual export market has gone from five million to 100,000 in the past 30 years. Although Ibenstein works with the fiber, not the pelts, the downsizing of the market has in turn affected supply and therefore price. Only 40 Karakul breeders remain in Namibia and less than half as many in South Africa. Consequently, Ibenstein is incorporating other natural fibers into their product line including wild silk from the Kalahari, bamboo, and cotton.

While Wolfgang oversees the day-to-day operations at Ibenstein (an interesting twist for a man who is a trained zoologist), Anne is the one who continues the creative side. Her mother, Berenike Gebhardt, took over the business in 1974 from her mother, Marianne Krafft. Berenike had studied textile design and took the company in a different direction by creating woven works of art that were subsequently featured in numerous galleries including the National Gallery in Windhoek. In turn, Anne and Wolfgang took up the reins of the business in 2002 after Anne had studied handweaving back in Germany. Although her hands are never idle keeping track of two small children, Anne still manages to keep a hand in everything that goes on in the weaving studio. She has an extraordinary sense of color, which is reflected in their new line of woven fabric, and she also sees an exciting future in producing sustainable clothing.

For many the words “big game” and “Africa” are nearly synonymous. The first sighting of a giraffe cantering across the desert floor or a leopard silently eyeing its next prey is decidedly part of this continent’s great allure. And I fear no amount of PR will ever put the Karakul as a runner-up for the Big Five, no matter how ornery those rams may get. And yet in the weaving studio at Ibenstein, the romance of Africa and the beauty of wool seem to unite beautifully in a single space. In fact, the coarse but artful nature of their products might lead one to say that not much has changed since the days of August Stauch, Ibenstein is its own diamond in the rough.