From March 1, 2024, guest operations will be taken over by a new team
The previous operators Waltraud Straube and Friedhelm Hund pass the business on within the family to two of Waltraud’s siblings and their respective partners.
Waltraud and Friedhelm continue to live on Hakos and operate the current remote observatories.
Ali (Alfred) Straube
Born in Windhoek and grew up as a farm child on Hohenheim, Hakos’ neighboring farm. Even when he was at school, he loved helping his father Walter with farm work during the holidays. He later completed a dual course of study in Cape Town to become a mechanical engineer. The practical part of his studies took place in the copper mine in Tsumeb, in the far north of Namibia. In 1993 he emigrated to Germany, where he initially worked as a construction manager and converted an old manor house into a holiday farm. He then began working as a programmer and project manager at Abas in the ERP area. But the connection to Namibia never broke and the dream of working on a farm again was always there and can now be turned into reality on Hakos.
Doro (Dorothea) Straube
She was born and raised in Tsumeb and emigrated to Germany at the age of 18. First she learned the flower art profession as a florist and later, after the birth of her two children Timo and Ronja, she trained as a child educator. She was able to live out her connection to nature as a leader in the farm forest kindergarten. She also loves traveling with her husband Ali. Almost every year she and her family visited relatives in distant Namibia, which is why she always toyed with the idea of returning to her old homeland at some point. Although she now has to leave the ecological wooden house in southern Germany behind, she is looking forward to the new challenge on the guest farm in the areas of kitchen, gardening and guest care.
Uschi Pond (Ursula Straube)
Born and raised in Namibia – the vastness of the landscape and the great outdoors are deeply rooted in her. Her original training was in office administration with later re-training in bio-environmental science. Since then, an ecologist, artist and traveller with a particular interest in desert and wetland areas. Uschi is trained in nature conservation and landscape architecture and has been professionally involved in botanical assessments and cartography, the design of courtyards, botanical collections and their preservation, graphic design of books and environmental posters. She has travelled widely across the African continent. Her art relates to watercolours, sculpture and ultimately the combination of graphic art with photography in the astronomical field. Uschi is facing the new challenges with anticipation, mainly in the areas of office, interior/exterior design, outdoor activities and interesting guest encounters.
Jürgen Obstfelder