Word: namib
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...settled by British pioneers from Cape Town in 1843 and subsequently annexed by Britain; since 1910 it has been governed by South Africa. The community that developed after rail lines were laid in 1915 occupies a narrow space, hemmed in by the gray-flecked ocean and the vast Namib desert...
Walvis Bay residents wish the desert could provide them with a living as well. Says Paul Vincent, editor of the local Namib Times: "Think how rich we could be if we could get into the business of exporting sand." As it is, the town's principal source of revenue, fishing, is slowly dying. Production of processed pilchard at Walvis Bay canneries has slumped from 1.5 million tons ten years ago to 45,000 tons now, either because of overfishing or ecological changes in the South Atlantic...
...must combat desertification, agreed. But some deserts need to be protected from man. For instance, one of the world's most remarkable deserts: the geographically confined Namib. Its flora and fauna are unrivaled, in part because of the great diversity of ultra-psammophilous adaptations. It is a great pity, therefore, that the South West African department of water affairs is now hellbent on pumping dry the underground water resources of the Kuiseb River to satisfy the corporate hunger for uranium...
...stream of refugees chose the inland route across the shifting sands of the Namib Desert into South West Africa. Others boarded fishing trawlers sailing down the southeastern Atlantic's treacherous Skeleton Coast to Walvis Bay. Still others joined a convoy of trucks that crossed the Cunene River and headed along the scorched Namib coastline, known locally as the Coast of Loneliness. The refugees were the vanguard of an estimated 350,000 people who are trying desperately to escape from Angola. As the vicious civil war among the Portuguese territory's three black independence parties has steadily worsened...
NAMIBIA lies directly to the northwest of South Africa on the Atlantic coast. Though the country is the size of France and Britain combined, the Kalahari and Namib deserts cover most of the land. Of a population estimated between 610,000 and 750,000, 88 per cent is black or coloured and the remaining 12 per cent, white...