The Etosha Pan is a large endorheic salt pan , forming part of the Cuvelai-Etosha Basin in the north of Namibia . It is a vast hollow in the ground in which water may collect or in which a deposit of salt remains after water has evaporated. The 120-kilometre-long (75-mile-long) dry lakebed and its surroundings are protected as Etosha National Park , Namibia's second-largest wildlife park, covering 22,270 square kilometres (8,600 sq mi). The pan is mostly dry but after heavy rains it is flooded with a thin layer of water, which is heavily salted by the mineral deposits on the surface.
18-460: Etosha, meaning 'Great White Place' in Oshindonga , is made of a large mineral pan. The area exhibits a characteristic white and greenish surface, which spreads over 4,800 square kilometres (1,900 sq mi). The pan is believed to have developed through tectonic plate activity over about ten million years. Around 16,000 years ago, when ice sheets were melting across the land masses of
36-625: A World Wildlife Fund ecoregion (Etosha Pan halophytics ). Ndonga dialect Ndonga , also called Oshindonga , is a Bantu dialect spoken in Namibia and parts of Angola . It is a standardized dialect of the Ovambo language , and is mutually intelligible with Kwanyama , the other Ovambo dialect with a standard written form. With 810,000 speakers, the language has the largest number of speakers in Namibia. Martti Rautanen translated
54-672: A change in river direction, resulting in the lake running dry and leaving a salt pan. Nowadays the Ekuma River , the Nipelo River , the Cuvelai River and the Omurambo Ovambo River are the sole seasonal sources of water for the lake. Typically, not much river water or sediment reaches the dry lake, because water seeps away into the riverbed along its 250-kilometre (160 mi) course, reducing discharge along
72-512: A large number of migratory birds. The hypersaline pan supports brine shrimp and a number of extremophile micro-organisms tolerant of the high saline conditions.(C.Michael Hogan. 2010.) In particularly good rainy seasons the Etosha pan is turned into a shallow lake approximately 10 cm in depth and becomes the breeding ground for flamingos , which arrive in their thousands and great white pelican ( Pelecanus onocrotalus ). The surrounding savanna
90-436: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Namibia -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Angola -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Martti Rautanen Bible Translators Theologians Martti (Martin) Rautanen (10 November 1845 Tikopis ( Russian : Тикопись ), Ingria – 19 October 1926 Olukonda , South West Africa )
108-518: Is home to thousands of mammals that will visit the pan and surrounding waterholes when there is water. These include quite large numbers of zebra , wildebeest , gemsbok , springbok and eland , as well as black rhinoceros , bush elephants , lions , leopards , and giraffe . The Etosha Pan is situated completely within the boundaries of the Etosha National Park and is designated as a Ramsar wetland of international importance and
126-775: The Bible into the Ndonga dialect. Beginning his work in 1885, he published the New Testament in 1903, but it took until 1920 to finish the Old Testament. His Bible translation became the basis of a standardized form of Ndonga. Oshindonga uses a five-vowel system: Oshindonga contains the following consonant phonemes: Prenasalized sounds are listed below: Oshindonga also contains many other consonant compounds, listed below: Tones Oshidonga has two tones : high and low. This Bantu language -related article
144-716: The Northern Hemisphere , a wet climate phase in Southern Africa caused the Etosha Lake to be filled up. Today however the Etosha Pan is mostly made up of dry clay split into hexagonal shapes as it dries and cracks, and is seldom seen with even a thin sheet of water covering it. It is assumed that the Kunene River fed the lake in the distant past, but tectonic plate movements over time caused
162-522: The Bible into Oshindonga in 1885. The New Testament was published in 1903, but it took until 1920 before the whole Old Testament was translated and it was not printed until 1954. Rautanen's 'testament' for the Ovamboland people was a selection of texts published posthumously with the title Travel Rod in 1934. Rautanen was also active in the study of ethnography. He respected and gave great value to
180-714: The German Rhenish Mission Society. From Walvis Bay they travelled via Hereroland where they arrived in April 1869 and spent there over a year. Finally, they reached Ovamboland in July 1870. The Finnish missionaries managed to start work primarily in the southeastern territory of the Ondonga tribe. The first mission station was founded that year in at Omandongo , moving to Olukonda the following year. Rautanen worked in Ovamboland over 50 years acting as
198-402: The blue-green algae that gives the Etosha Pan its characteristic colouring, and grasses like Sporobolus spicatus which quickly grow in the wet mud following good rains. Surrounding the pan, grasslands provide food for grazing animals. This harsh dry land with its sparse vegetation and insufficient amount of salty water, supports little wildlife all year round, but is sometimes inhabited by
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#1732773019729216-533: The director of a missionary station established in Olukonda in 1880, translating the Bible, and very patiently educating the local populations. The first local people to become pastors emerged in 1925. Rautanen's literary work consisted of translation of hymns and the publication of a hymnal in 1892 in Ndonga . Rautanen also wrote poems which were used as texts for new hymns in Ovamboland. Rautanen started translating
234-623: The hat". He loved to wear a skullcap, which for the locals resembled a small basket - okambale . His nickname was written on his tombstone. Rautanen is a respected person in present-day Namibia as well. His diaries are held at the University of Turku. The family’s home in Olukonda is now the Nakambale Museum. Rautanen married Frieda Kleinschmidt in 1872. She was the daughter of the German missionary Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt ;
252-717: The indigenous culture. His ethnographic collection is now deposited in the National Museum of Finland . Rautanen's contribution to scientific knowledge concerning Ovamboland is also considerable. He made meteorological observations and collected plants. His interest in plants followed on the 1885–86 visit by the Swiss botanist Hans Schinz ; Rautanen was inspired and became an enthusiastic collector of plants and ethnographic material, collections which were later assimilated by museums in Finland, Germany and South Africa. In turn Schinz
270-843: The province of Savo in Eastern Finland, but had moved to Ingria. Rautanen considered himself a Russian as he was born and living in Russia. Encouraged by the pastor of his church and his mother, Rautanen left Ingria in 1863 for Helsinki to study at the preparatory school for missionaries organized by the Finnish Missionary Society . He spoke several languages included Finnish, English, German, Dutch, Russian, Latin and Greek; he later learned Otjiherero and Oshindonga . Rautanen departed from Finland with four colleagues on 24 June 1868 towards Ovamboland in present-day Namibia. Initially they worked with Carl Hugo Hahn of
288-623: The way. In the colonial era, the first non-Africans to explore this area were the Europeans Charles John Andersson and Francis Galton in 1851. The surrounding area is dense mopane woodland which is occupied by herds of elephants on the south side of the lake. Mopane trees are common throughout south-central Africa, and host the mopane worm, which is the larval form of the moth Gonimbrasia belina , and an important source of protein for rural communities. The salt desert supports very little plant life except for
306-552: Was impressed by Rautanen and named the genus Neorautanenia and the mongongo nut tree Ricinodendron rautanenii after him, while the German botanist and authority on Lythraceae , Bernhard Koehne , commemorated him in Nesaea rautanenii . Shortly prior to his death, Rautanen received an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Helsinki . The local people in Ovamboland called him Nakambale - "the one who wears
324-647: Was the pioneer of the Finnish Mission in Ovamboland , South West Africa . Rautanen was born in a poor Finnish family in Ingria near St. Peterburg , Russia. Rautanen's family lived in the village of Tikanpesä in the parish of Novasolkka (Russian: Новоселки , romanized : Novoselki ) in the Yamburgsky Uyezd of Saint Petersburg Governorate . The family originated from Joroinen in
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