luderitz was originally namibia's main port and the termination of the railway line between
keetmanshoop and the coast that all changed in 1908 when a railway worker by the name of zakarias lewala
found a shiny stone and showed it to his supervisor august stauch recognized it for
what it was a diamond before long the fortune seekers arrived and by 1912 kolmanskop was
a wealthy town in the desert and one of the largest producers of diamonds in the world
by the late 1920s richer deposits of diamonds had been discovered further south at oranjumund
and people started leaving by the mid-1950s the town was abandoned completely
it was obviously quite a hierarchical society with the quality of the house
matching the seniority of the manager so the bookkeeper or accountant was
clearly quite a senior guy you can imagine him sipping afternoon tea looking over the desert
i can't pronounce it anyway that means the mine manager
this is the only house that's kind of maintained you can see it's been recently painted i guess
to give some kind of an indication of what it may have looked like back in the day
running water these houses are where the ordinary mine workers stayed like not the management
in other words these would have been the the german workers not the labourers who lived in an
altogether almost slave-like conditions the labour accommodation is not available at kolmanskop
but on my next video at elizabeth bay i'll do a walkthrough of the labourers accommodation as well
kolmanskop had a fully equipped hospital with all the most modern facilities and the
first x-ray facilities in the southern hemisphere it also had a power station
and had electricity before most cities in europe
called a ghost town i didn't see any ghosts but it is definitely spooky walking through those
deserted corridors and i was the only person there on the day there was nobody else around at all
next time i'm going to be visiting another ghost town 30 kilometers south
of kolmanskop don't miss that one catch you next time