Nakambale

I want to introduce you to Nakambale of Olukonda.
The former Finnish mission station in Olukonda is about 40 minutes from our house.
Olukonda was one of the first Finnish mission stations in Ovamboland and was founded in 1871. Throughout the German colonial time, Olukonda was the ‘capital city’ of the North.
From 1880, Olukonda was the home of the pioneering Finnish missionary, Martti Rautanen (Nakambale) until his death in 1926. He was called ‘Nakambale’ (little basket) because that’s what the locals thought his pith helmet looked like - you can see David wearing THE helmet!
He married Anna Kleinschmidt who was the granddaughter of Johann Heinrich Schmelen who himself had been a pioneer missionary to the nomadic Nama people. (He married a Nama woman and travelled with the tribe, learning their language and translating the Bible for them.). Her father, Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt, had also been a missionary.
In 1889, Rev. Dr. Rautanen erected at Olukonda the first church building of Northern Namibia. A mission house was built four years later in 1893. Both buildings still exist, and in 1992 the Government proclaimed them National Monuments of Namibia. (You can see them if you come to visit us!)
He translated the Bible into the Ndonga language (Olukonda is just outside Ondangwa, the capital of the Ndonga people). He and his family are buried in the cemetery of the thatched mission church from 1889 together with many kings of the Ondonga Kingdom. The church building is now a National Monument under the care of the Lutheran church.
One of Nakambale’s daughters married a missionary called Tonjes, who laboured to produce a grammar book for learning Oshikwanyama. He wrote it in 1910 and we have a photocopied version of the hand-typed manuscript that was done later. Although some words are archaic, it is a great book and a marvellous legacy. Here we are, 100 years’ later, able to benefit from it in our own labours for the Kingdom!
Because of Nakambale and his fellow labourers, Nodonga are now ‘born’ into the Lutheran church. In general, it would not occur to an Ndonga to go to any other denomination. In the same way, due to the labour of Anglican missionaries among the Kwanyama people, they tend to grow up Anglican. (I think it is the Kwambi who are Catholics in the same way).