Otjimbingwe Springs

Otjimbingwe Springs is a historic natural spring site at Otjimbingwe in the Erongo Region of central Namibia, where bicarbonate-rich waters have sustained human settlement at this strategic location on the Swakop River since at least the pre-colonial era, when the site was an important gathering point for the Herero pastoralists before becoming a significant German mission station and early colonial administrative centre in the 1840s. The springs made Otjimbingwe the most important early settlement in what was then German South West Africa, hosting the first printing press in the country, the first post office, and early trade between the German colonial mission and the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples. Today the springs and the remaining colonial-era buildings at Otjimbingwe represent a historically significant but little-visited layer of Namibian heritage at the intersection of indigenous cultural geography and German colonialism.