Rehoboth
lays some 90km south of
Windhoek on the main B1 road, and in one's rush to get to
Windhoek
it is easily passed by without a thought. It's not a pretty town,
however, like many such small towns, it has got some hidden
attractions. The original hot water
springs attracted early man to this area and in modern times it was
a natural progression that a spa should be built here in order that
people could enjoy and take advantage of the 'therapeutic' waters.
The Bushmen of old knew this area, and where the hot water spring
bubbled to the surface the place was called /Anhes (or Annis or
Glenelg-Bath). During the early years of the nineteenth-century the people of
the Red-Nation of Hoachanas, know as the Swartbooi-clan
had settled here, and in 1845 the Rhenish missionary Franz-Heinrich
Kleinschmidt, who was also a trained carpenter and blacksmith established a
mission-station. He named the place Rehoboth using an extract from
Biblical scripture Genesis 26:22 "And he
removed from thence and digged another well; and for that they
strove not; and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the Lord
hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land".
