Home is where the river is

One of the Zambezi’s “happy and helpful” people, the UNAM graduate Sharon Muyatwa, found herself back where her heart truly belongs.  

One day, she hopes to open her own restaurant. She dreams of curating a menu of home-grown dishes. It would feature fish, fruit and other ingredients that Mother Nature so abundantly provides to those living alongside the mighty Zambezi River and in the villages scattered along its banks.

Sharon Muyatwa's journey took her across regions and towns, from Windhoek to Swakopmund, before coming full circle and returning to the place she calls home — a place that shaped her deep love for nature and the people of the Zambezi Region. 

Today, Sharon, who holds a degree in business administration from the University of Namibia (UNAM), is assistant manager at Caprivi Mutoya Lodge & Campsite, situated about 40 kilometres from Katima Mulilo, the town where she was born in 1989. “I was born on the cusp of Independence and just missed it by a few months,” she laughs. 

After completing her schooling in Katima Mulilo, Sharon moved to Windhoek to enrol at UNAM. Degree in hand, her first full-time job was at Woermann Brock Supermarket. She later left the capital in search of new opportunities, moving to Swakopmund, where she lived for two years. 

In 2018, she finally returned to her roots. 

“My first job back home was as a human resources supervisor at Zambezi Build-It before I found myself here, where I started as a receptionist.” 

Apart from being home, the region is unlike any of the places she has lived before, Sharon says. “It is completely different — the fauna, the air, the water.” 

Windhoek is beautiful, she admits, but the noise eventually became too much. Swakopmund was quieter, but the cold proved challenging for someone accustomed to the warmth of the north. “Here is just home,” she says. 

One of the benefits of working in tourism is the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. One day it's Germans, the next Italians, and later perhaps visitors from China. “You just never know who you are going to meet next. Today we had a bus full of tourists and sometimes you might find a German couple travelling alongside visitors from India. Everyone has a story.”

The people of Katima Mulilo and the surrounding areas are “happy, helpful people”, Sharon says proudly. Yet she worries about the pressure being placed on the natural environment. “We are also ruining nature sometimes.” 

Many people live along the riverbanks or slightly inland and rely heavily on trees for their livelihoods. “We build with our trees. We use them for firewood and for building kraals, but we should also learn to replace what we take. We are very in touch with nature, but at times we are also destroying it.”

Life in the Zambezi is closely tied to the river. Local fishermen depend on it for survival, catching fish to sell and support their families. The problem, Sharon says, is that fishing now takes place throughout the year, leaving little time for fish populations to recover. 

“A few years ago the government, through the Ministry of Environment, had a closed season from March until September when nobody was allowed to fish. For the past three years, for some reason, that has stopped and now everyone is fishing.” 

It is disheartening, she says, to see small fish caught in nets and sold at markets. The reality struck home when her Grade 7 daughter recently asked her what a tigerfish was — a species synonymous with the Zambezi. 

“It dawned on me that she had never seen one and didn't know what it was. This is a child who is 13 years old and has never seen a tigerfish.” 

If her child has never seen one, Sharon fears future generations may not either. “They won't see the bream, either. They might only see it in a fish pond one day, but that is not the same as seeing it where it originally came from.” 

While she enjoys working with people and is equally comfortable behind a desk, Sharon still dreams of opening a restaurant of her own. Although she is not a chef, she loves cooking. “I might enrol at a culinary school and create something centred on local cuisine.” 

Across northern Namibia, local restaurants often serve the foods people grew up eating, she says. “We are mostly known for our Zambezi bream and we have different types of kale. Some are available throughout the year and others only appear during the rainy season. We would have something unique to every season.” 

For dessert, there would be the fruit of the jackalberry tree, which ripens into golden sweetness during winter. “I tell my children that these are nature's sweets. Your teeth won't go bad from them. They are healthy and a gift from nature.” 

And if that restaurant one day becomes a reality, Sharon knows exactly what will be on the menu: the flavours of a region whose rivers run through her veins and beneath whose trees she has always found home.