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Rupara

settlement in Kavango West, Namibia

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 11, 2024
Entity authorityQ7380210
Source-derived summary

Rupara (in older print media and maps also known as Lupala, as it is pronounced by the Ovambo people) is a settlement and a former mission station of the Finnish Missionary Society in the Kahenge Constituency in the Kavango West Region in Northern Namibia. It is located 76 km west of Rundu, and 57 km south-east of Nkurenkuru.

History of the mission station

The Finnish Missionary Society established its first mission station in Kavango in Nkurenkuru in the beginning of 1929. Its first permanent missionary there, pastor Aatu Järvinen (later Järvineva) founded a small station in Rupara in 1931, and built there a residence for the local missionary, consisting of two rooms, along with four round huts for the new clinic. The first missionary there was Anna Rautaheimo, a nurse.

In 1935, the clinic had more than 100 inpatients, and it was reported that the outpatients numbered “several thousand”.

The same year also teacher Maija Länsiö arrived there. She was given the task of developing an education system for the eastern parts of the tribe of Uukwangali.

Rupara today

There is a community school known as Rupara Combined School, it goes up to grade 10, and it has a dormitory which accommodates learners from other villages. In addition there is also a clinic.

Editorial summary

“Rupara” enters the record as settlement in Kavango West, Namibia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Rupara, settlement and Kavango can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1929, 1931, 1935—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Rupara, settlement and Kavango.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Rupara” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Rupara, settlement and Kavango provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 11, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7380210. Authority coordinates are -17.667, 18.233. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1931 and 1935.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Rupara”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Rupara primary sources, Rupara archive and Rupara research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Rupara”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Rupara” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.