Bethanie

Bethanie, village, southern Namibia. Bethanie is situated at the site of a spring in an arid region; the region edges into the extremely arid Namib Desert on the west. It lies at an elevation of 3,773 feet (1,150 metres), 19 miles (31 km) north of a station on the country’s main rail line, 165 miles (265 km) inland from the Atlantic fishing port of Lüderitz.

In 1814 Heinrich Schmelen, a missionary of the London Missionary Society, established at Bethanie the first mission station in southwestern Africa. The mission was set up for the Nama (local Khoekhoe) and the Oorlams (people of white and Khoekhoe ancestry who arrived with Schmelen from the Cape Colony). His home at Bethanie is believed to be the oldest European dwelling in Namibia. Although abandoned shortly thereafter, the mission was reopened in the early 1840s by Hans Christian Knudsen, a Norwegian missionary of the Rhenish (German Lutheran) Missionary Society. Schmelen and Knudsen made the earliest (independent) attempts at putting the difficult Nama (Khoisan) language into written form. German colonial troops were stationed at Bethanie in 1894. The region surrounding Bethanie has long been one of the principal Karakul (Persian lamb) ranching areas in Namibia, and Bethanie is the area’s most important local market centre. Pop. (latest est.) 4,400.