Skip to content →

Reading the signs (in northern Namibia. #1 in series)

 

 

 

The photo (copyright Doug Spencer, taken on 08 November 2022) shows a typical northern Namibian shebeen.

Signage in northern Namibia often provides visitors with delight…and/or surprise, confusion, bewilderment…

You’ll find no superb photography in this single-image series; almost everything in it was shot “on the fly”, through the window of “our” bus, as it zoomed past one one of many thousands of owner-operated businesses.

All were small, in reality.

However, their signs often “talked big”…

“Shebeen” derives from síbín  – an Irish Gaelic word for beer of poor quality. According to some sources, síbín was originally a unit of measure.

“Shebeen” came to mean an “informal” drinking establishment, usually modest in scale and ambition, often unlicensed/illegal.

The term eventually gained its widest currency in southern Africa, where umpteen thousand shebeens served a mostly-poor, mostly-black clientele.

The “negative” connotation of the word is progressively lessening, I think.

My hunch is that mid-21st century Windhoek and Johannesburg will sport not a few decidedly-swank, entirely-legal, “upmarket” drinking establishments, self-labelled as “shebeens”.

Meanwhile, in non-swank northern Namibia, shebeen proprietors usually have near-identical, decidedly modest premises, often located within just a few metres of each other.

However, each one is differentiated by its particular signage.

A couple of personal favourites that flashed past too quickly for me to photograph them:

Old Traford (sic)

Let Them Talk

You can discover more about shebeens here.

(as foreshadowed in previous post, I am unlikely to be able to spend much time online in the next few weeks. Today, however, finds us resting in a near-airport hotel, so I am taking the chance to set up and schedule this little series, which may be “it” until mid-March)

Published in Americas and Eurasia and Africa nature and travel photographs