American Life In The Summertime #14 - Namibia

19 May 2008


Namibia definitely gets the award for most striking natural landscape so far. A large part of the country is consumed by the Kalahari desert and you get these unbelievable red sand dunes for hundreds of miles from the interior of the country running right up to the Atlantic coast. Namibia was a place that looked really interesting to visit but when planning this trip I wasn't sure that I'd get the time to get there at all, so having an extra week up my sleeve was an unexpected bonus. The Germans were late entrants in the race to "colonise" Africa at the end of the 1800's, but like everything else once they got started they did it properly. Namibia *IS* Germany: the country is full of place names like Windhoek and Swakopmund, as well as German tourists in suspenders and lederhosen. Swakopmund in particular is a resort town on the Atlantic coast brimming with brown and white sloped-roof gingerbread houses and ice cream shops with names like MittschlaggHasselhoffhaus. I happened meet up in Swakopmund with some Germans I knew from the hostel in Livingstone, and they were actually a little unsettled by it: they felt they could be walking around any town in Germany, yet here they were in Africa with parched red desert dunes and the Atlantic ocean both within easy sight. I was disappointed not to see blonde serving wenches in plaits strolling up and down the main street balancing steins of beer upon their bountiful bosom, but I'm always disappointed not to see that.

Namibia was also the start of what I would call "western" Africa: things largely work the way they are supposed to, streets are relatively clean and paved rather than dirt, bus schedules run roughly on time etc. However this is still Africa, and so "on time" still means Africa Time. In Africa Time, "now" means any time before Saturn re-enters your astrological sign. If you want something done immediately, you specify "now now", which, while sounding more promising, could still be any time before the end of the day. I have not yet been able to determine the number of "now"s that would be required if, say, you were suffering multiple organ failure and needed an ambulance to take you to hospital NOW, but I am comfortable in assuming that you would bleed to death long before you were able to utter the necessary number of "nows", let alone the ambulance actually arrived. You also start to get more "tourists", rather than travelers. One thing that has surprised me about Africa is the number of travelers who, like myself, are here volunteering, working, on exchange or otherwise doing something more than just spending their time drinking beer in various hostels. I had thought that doing something like the volunteering would be at least a little unusual, but virtually everyone I have met traveling in Africa to date has been here with some sort of community purpose. In Namibia I was traveling with 2 Canadian pharmacy students doing their final stint at a clinic in northern Namibia, and an American Peace Corp volunteer stationed in Zambia (and who was, she informed me, AWOL from her posted village in Zambia for the entire time we were in Namibia, which seemed to be relatively normal for most of the Peace Corp I met). White water rafting in Uganda, our group contained a couple of medical students from Canada, another couple from Belgium, and another American Peace Corp volunteer. My trip to Murchison Falls in Uganda had another couple of Danish med students, the Canadian journalist living there, and yet another Peace Corp volunteer. The 2 Danish girls had been stuck in a tiny little village in western Uganda for some months, and this was their first time back in anything remotely resembling civilisation for some time. Their English was excellent, however they did not perhaps have all the slang bedded down, and complained to me many times about the cocks in their village which kept waking them up every morning at sunrise. Given the enthusiasm the local gentlemen have here for mzungu women, I determined it best not to inform them how much danger they were still in.

Despite the lack of serving wenches, Swakopmund has establish itself as the adventure sports capital of Namibia, with a distinctly desert twist: sandboarding down the dunes, quad biking over pristine desert sands, skydiving with the unbelievable backdrop of both the endless red sand and the ocean. I did all of these now (adventure sports, not serving wenches) and I have to say again that the red sand dunes of Namibia really are amazing, virtually worth visiting Namibia for themselves, virtually worth visiting Africa for themselves: red sand piled hundreds of feet high with knife-edge creases whipped up by the wind off the Atlantic, and complete silence and solitude for hundreds of miles. I could not think of a better way to appreciate the beauty of this delicate and unique landscape than to destroy it with a two-stroke engine and a quad bike at full throttle. How's the serenity. It's not often that after 5 minutes I already feel I've got my money's worth from an activity, but as I gunned my quad bike all over this desolate and beautiful landscape I was consumed by one profound thought: God I miss financial planning.

After almost a week in Namibia it was getting time to finally begin my volunteer projects in South Africa, and so I arranged to fly into Johannesburg the next day. On my last night in Swakopmund we had the customary farewell beers when travelers who have only recently met are once again moving on, and retired to the dorm. Early the next morning as the alarm went off I groped around in the darkness to get myself organised before the van arrived to take me to the airport. I ducked into the bathroom inside the dorm room and before too long heard the back-and-forth creaking of the bathroom door, which I had not shut properly, swaying in the breeze. I thought to myself I won't bother to close it - I won't be too long - and finished up. As I moved back toward the door and reached out my hand to open it, it finally moved and snapped shut, right in front of me, just like the Uganda ATM taking my money as I reached for it. Faintly amused how these things happen, I went to open the door and this is when I discovered that there was no handle on my side.

Although I was already late and the van to the airport was due any time, I took a brief moment to contemplate how all the crossroads, all the turning points, all the small decisions I had made in my life so far had all come together to find me trapped in a hostel toilet in Namibia. There was no way - absolutely no way - that I could open the door from my side. Several minutes' solid banging produced nothing more than a sore hand and nobody came - a highly embarrassing sentence in any other context. However I am comfortable sharing it here, because after several minutes I remained trapped and the airport transfer was due. Finally I ended up having to use my mobile phone to call one of the girls in the dorm, sleeping no more than 4 feet away on the other side of the door, to come let me out. I do not think, if you asked, that I could explain why I had brought my mobile into the bathroom, but those who have known me a while will be highly amused by this, as well as in learning that due to an unscheduled swim in the pool at the hostel in Livingstone, my old mobile had been irretrievably drowned and this was actually the third mobile phone I have had to buy. My freedom achieved, I grabbed my stuff, took one last look around, and just managed to make the van for the transfer to the airport as it was driving away up the road. I was finally going back to South Africa - intentionally this time after the Air WhereAreWe? experience - to start my volunteer projects, but once again my update appears to have taken on essay proportions, so 'til next time: take care of yourselves.....and each other.