Titel: Kernel
Author: Tuulikki Jantunen
Original Finnish title: Pähkinänsydän (1967)
Translation: Krista Sands
Publisher: Namibia Scientific Society
Windhoek, Namibia 2004
ISBN 9991640207 / ISBN 99916-40-20-7
Softcover, 15 x 21 cm, 170 pages, 20 bw-photos, 3 maps
Kernel is a contemporary account on the San or Bushmen of the western Okavango region of Namibia in the late 1950s and early 1960s, a period when the education system was being extended to include these earliest indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa. As a young teacher in 1949, the author, Tuulikki Jantunen (1922-2011), had moved to Namibia (then known as South West Africa) from her home country, Finland, to teach in the Okavango mission fields, a stint of work which continued for over thirty years. In Kernel we are introduced to a small San community living according to its own rules of behaviour in the settlement of Mpungu in the Okavango region. These people, formerly hunter-gatherers, now face a new cultural phase. Following the example of their neighbours, they have become sedentary farmers and have sown their first seeds.
However, they do not want to abandon their nomadic way of life entirely and cannot bear to remain in their fields for long. They have to get back to the forest now and then. Some also want to go to school and the mission station offers them the opportunity to do so. It is this stage in the history of the San community that the author describes. There is no other written information about the San at the applicable time and place, thus Kernel is a new and valuable source for research into the cultures of Namibia. Kernel is also a fine read. It provides a personal and expressive description of the life of the community and conveys a humane close-up picture of San culture. Through it also the San will lie able to obtain new knowledge about their own background and cultural heritage.
Over the decades Finns have done surprisingly much ethnographic work in Namibia, usually through participative observation. Some of the earliest observations of Namibia which have been preserved were made by the Finnish adventurer H.J. Wikar, who spent several years among the Nama tribes in southern Namibia in the 1770s. From the outset of their presence in Namibia, Finnish missionaries colleted and published ethnographic data, mainly in the Ovambo and Okavango regions where they worked. The first of the missionaries was Martti Rautanen, who spent 56 years in the country. Others were Toivo Tirronen, Erkki Hynonen and Terttu Heikkinen, the latter two having conducted particularly detailed studies of San culture.
