Coping with drought conditions has been essential for north-western Namibian pastoral communities. Household wealth and survival have depended on the capacity to cope with climatically induced shocks (Bollig 2006, van Wolputte 2007). Bollig (2006:157–169) sketches recollections of major droughts of the 20th century. These droughts are named and are addressed as vicious agents. "The Drought of the Great Dying has destroyed us" is a framing often heard. Droughts are referred to as ourumbu, from the Otjiherero word rumbu (yellowish), indicating a world that becomes dry and colourless, shorn of green and devoid of life. Droughts are not thought to be caused by social disharmony (as, for example, among neighbouring communities, see Sullivan 2002, Schnegg 2021) or by divine power (as, for example, among the Maasai, see de Wit 2016). Extensive interviews conducted in the mid-1990s provided evidence of a worldview that saw drought as accidental and without deeper metaphysical cause, a geophysical phenomenon humans had to cope with in order to survive in a landscape that had horrible droughts but also years of copious rainfall.