On November 28, 1903, Vedder boarded the "SS Helene Woermann" on the Woermann-Linie for German South West Africa. On December 27 of that year, Vedder and his fellow missionary Friedrich (Fritz) Eisenberg disembarked at the beach near Swakopmund and traveled on foot the 30 km to Walvis Bay. In the wooden church of Walvis Bay, he preached his first sermon on African soil in Dutch with a schoolmaster interpreting in Khoekhoe. He then left with a Dutchman, the Rev. Hermann Nijhof (Nyhof), for Rooibank (Scheppmansdorp) on the banks of the Kuiseb River, where some impoverished Nama people lived who could teach him Khoekhoe. Since there was no authoritative primer on the language, Vedder worked with a pair of linguistically gifted missionaries to write the first such work. In February 1904, six weeks after the outbreak of the Herero Wars, Vedder took the opportunity to relocate to Karibib, where the missionary August Elger offered him lodging and training in the Herero language. The journey from Swakopmund to Karibib took two days, with a stop each night, on an old narrow-gauge railroad. While he was assigned to work specifically with the Topnaar Nama of Walvis Bay, his year-long journey between Scheppmannsdorf, Karibib, and Otjimbingwe allowed him to learn Khoekhoe, Herero, and the Ndonga dialect of the Ovambo language.