No Stopping for Lions

by Joanne Glynn

  We move on northwards to Barchan Dunes, a farm that offers accommodation I’ve been wanting to stay in ever since I saw it on the Internet. Called KuanguKuangu, it’s located a kilometre up the valley from the main house in a lonely, lovely spot. The design is inspirational, with the kitchen and bathroom open to the stars. We eat at a table under a solitary thorn tree and look down an ancient valley of yellow grasses and purple peaks. For hot water, Neil lights the donkey heater, and for food, I cook on an outdoor gas stove. Hannetjie, the chatelaine at the main house, is an excellent cook and on the first night Neil and I walk down the valley for dinner. They serve springbok fillet — ‘seared for five to eight minutes only’ — and a lovely yoghurt and chocolate dessert, an old German recipe that Hannetjie graciously translates for me. Her husband used to be an engineer on the Windhoek municipal council before Black Empowerment replaced him, but it’s obvious that his heart has always been out here in the empty valleys and hills of his homeland. He takes us on a drive around his farm, mainly looking for his baby gemsbok and the elusive mountain zebras. The former he farms for meat, while the latter are protected wildlife and have the run of the range.

  Going through the Namib–Naukluft Park on our way to the coast, with nothing else in sight and desert on either side, the first car in an hour drives past and throws up a huge rock that hits the Troopy’s windscreen. We’re momentarily deflated, seeing a big tennisball-sized crack on our pride and joy, then we perk up a little when we convince each other that this battle scar adds something; the Troopy no longer looks like a brand new cadet but a war-weary general of character and experience.

  A SERiES OF UNFORTUNATE MiSTAKES

  Swakopmund is roughly halfway down the coast of Namibia, just north of the commercial port of Walvis Bay and due west from the country’s capital of Windhoek. It’s trendy and smart and very much the holiday destination for Windhoekers, with its cafés and boutiques, and overseas tourists fill the streets and hotels. Driving in for the first time you can’t help but be amazed by its position slap in the middle of desert, where dunes roll right up to the sea. Over the next few days we settle into town life in a house rented from a Windhoek family. Town water is a little salty but okay to drink, and there’s a garden hose so Neil tops up the Troopy’s drinking-water tank reasoning that the salt and the metallic taste of the new tank will counteract each other.

  I go to an overworked, rude dentist to get a wobbly front crown glued back in and Neil goes to the post office to try to phone the United States about the satellite phone, which is still giving problems. The repairs done in Upington were short-lived and the on/off switch has jammed in the on position. Neil is once again preoccupied with solving a technical problem and spends most of his time trying to contact the right people overseas and organising the posting to America of the offending phone. He becomes grumpy and forgetful, and when he starts to leave things in cafés and repeatedly walks off leaving the Troopy unlocked, I become apprehensive. We’d always said that the only way to take this journey was to treat it as an adventure. We’d done as much forward planning as we could and hoped that we’d anticipated most things that could go wrong. If problems started to grow into obstacles it would be time to re-think what we were doing. Well, now it is time. After a coffee and a walk on the beach the decision is made to forget about pursuing the satellite phone problem any further; we’ll just work with the phone as it is, which means keeping it continually plugged into the Troopy’s battery so that it’s always charged and ready to use.

  We have the Troopy serviced by a particularly pleasant German–Namibian who, we later learn, called up his friends to come and admire the Troopy. He tells us that it would be much easier to sell the Troopy in Namibia than in South Africa and asks if we’ll agree to give him first option to buy when we’re finished with it. We agree in a flash. Apart from the window crack the car still looks brand new but I hate to think what it will be like in ten months’ time.

  On our last afternoon in town we take a two-hour flight over the desert to Sossusvlei. This is the sort of flying that you’d never get away with in more regulated countries, and Neil is rapt. We’re 30 to 40 metres above ground, zooming down gullies, between red dunes, flashing by ostrich and gemsbok at eye level. Then circling over Sossusvlei and the valley that we’d driven down days before with Sonje and Gigi. Then dive-bombing seal colonies and abandoned diamond mines before scooting back up the coastline where the sea breaks directly onto high golden dunes. What an amazing place.

  The house we’ve been renting is on a corner opposite the beach and it’s exposed and windy cold. It comes with a night watchman, a young thin man who curls up like a cat on his polar fleece to keep warm and who always waits for us to greet him in the mornings before going off duty. Neil has insisted on giving him a meal every night. It started with half a pizza, but by the last evening I was making enough chilli con carne for three. His plate and cutlery are always left washed and neatly stacked by the side door.

  We wake up on our last morning in Swakop to the famous fog. It’s very eerie: everything is grey, black and white, and even though they are going slowly, oncoming cars appear from nowhere then disappear again, lost in space. Landmarks are invisible and road signs unreadable, and it takes us twice as long as it would normally to find our way out of town.

  On the way up the coast road to the seal colony of Cape Cross, we detour in to see the famous sand golf course at Henties Bay. It’s built on dunes with fairways of sand and greens of grass, but with the coastal fog still hanging around, it’s a deserted and slightly spooky scene.

  The Cape fur seal colony is something else. No fog, but the smell is unmistakable: a mixture of urine, wet fur and rotting carcasses, as mangy black-backed jackals slink around preying on the young and infirm. We’re tempted to stay a night at the beautiful Cape Cross Lodge but settle on lunch after hearing the cost.

  To get to Spitzkoppe, our next destination, we must retrace our steps to Henties Bay and now we notice for the first time little piles of rocks and empty bottles at intervals beside the road, always on the western side. It becomes apparent that these are individuals’ markers indicating the turn-off to their favourite fishing spot down on the shoreline, and they are the only sign of human presence in this barren, misty landscape. At Henties Bay we turn eastward and it’s not long before we can make out the red Spitzkoppe peaks hovering on the horizon, even though we’re still a couple of hours drive away.

  Up close Spitzkoppe is just like the postcards: a towering mass of orange-red granite peaks sitting like an island in the middle of flat semi-desert, reminiscent of Kata Tjuta in Central Australia. The only accommodation available is in the campsite run by the local community, and this is spread over a large area among the outcrops and gullies. Neil begins to have doubts about the Community Campsite when the man at reception is vague about our site’s facilities. He tells us that there are no showers because either the bad boys in the village have taken the fittings, or there is not enough water in the village to supply all the sites. We later determine that there is just one workable shower with a rusty collapsing tank for the entire grounds, and the en-suite toilets are literally that: a toilet bowl hidden in the rocks, no plumbing or pit attached. Dinner in the restaurant that night? No, because the ladies in the village need time to prepare.

  We find our allotted site number 2 and it’s a wonderful spot, right in the heart of a deep chasm between two towering rock faces. It’s so isolated and the landscape so overwhelming, that it’s all a bit surreal. We pitch the tent where we’ll get the best view, bang in the middle, and over a glass of cheap South African wine and with a CD playing, we wait contentedly for night to descend. It seems like only yesterday that we were sitting in Algeria trying to think of something to fill in this languid time of day, but now alone and under the stars we listen to Maria Callas throw herself off the parapet while we talk animatedly about where we’ve been and where we’re heading.

  Next morning a slight breeze comes up, wh
ich turns into a gale whooping down our chasm and dismantling the tent and sending the toilet paper in a ribbon all over the site. It’s dawning on us that you don’t automatically choose the best-looking site to set up camp, you have to consider things like wind flow and weather conditions and seasonal variations. A combination of this realisation and the wind whistling incessantly around my ears makes me irritable and I harp at Neil, who is trying his best to retrieve clothes and utensils scattered all over the place. He points out that we have two options, we either stay or we can leave, and the simplicity of this is enough to diffuse my exasperation. Then clip-clop up our track comes a young boy with his donkey cart to sell us a ride. We settle on three photos for six pens instead and decide that this place isn’t so bad after all.

  Neil negotiates with reception for a move to a cabin and this turns out to be very rudimentary. It’s like an old Australian bush slab hut where sun and wind creep in through the gaps between the slabs, and there is no glass and no secure fastenings over the windows. No wonder the ladies looked confused when we asked for a key to the door. We entertain ourselves by making up stories about the young European woman in the next-door cabin living, so it would seem, in near poverty with a black man. Is this the secret that seems to be hovering over the camp, making the locals guarded and a little standoffish?

  The ladies have been in the kitchen all day preparing our dinner. We are to be the only guests. At seven o’clock we go to the restaurant, order a beer each and are immediately served a plate piled high with packet macaroni cheese and potato salad, and three little chicken wings and one thigh between us. That’s dinner. Over the dregs of the beer we debate the fate of the remaining three thighs and one wing as we take in a month’s supply of carbohydrates. The ladies are very pleased with themselves and have already started preparations for our breakfast.

  The following morning we’re back in the restaurant for breakfast and the ladies are becoming decidedly friendly. We have fried eggs, which come from the kitchen one at a time, and freshly baked bread that’s the best we’ve had to date. Steaming tea comes out in a big aluminium pot, and it’s just as well we take it black because there’s no milk. Well, there was milk — we saw the ladies pouring the last of it into their tea in the kitchen when we first arrived.

  Further north into the Namib Desert in Damaraland, just 70 to 80 kilometres east as the crow flies from the notorious Skeleton Coast, is Twyfelfontein, Namibia’s first World Heritage site. Here, an enormous number of engravings and paintings by hunter-gatherer communities, said to be more than 2000 years old, cover an absurdly small area of rock face. There are several theories as to their purpose but this uncertainty seems to add to the enigmatic draw of the place, and we had resolved early on to see it for ourselves. Now we’re heading for Doro Nawas, a lodge within striking distance of the site.

  The main building of the lodge sticks up brown and forbidding from a single rocky outcrop in the middle of a floodplain rugged with rocks and dry yellow grass. On our approach the staff appear at the entrance, hands shielding their eyes to focus more clearly on the beautiful machine humming up their track. They trot down the steps and greet us with a cool drink and a joke, and the drivers, mightily impressed, jostle for the privilege of taking the Troopy around the back to the car park. We’re shown to our chalet, which is glamorous and large, and it has a large bathroom with an isolated toilet, which is just as well because both Neil and I have picked up some sort of bug and have diarrhoea.

  On our second day there we go on an afternoon drive looking for desert elephants. The guide, Barnabus, is greatly intimidated by a South African bird expert aboard and stops answering our questions after the birder constantly corrects him, but one thing he does tell us is that there are no predators in the area. So driving back to camp after finding the elephants we are startled when a big dark cheetah appears going like the clappers parallel to our vehicle, in pursuit of a springbok. This follows hot on the heels of a near miss with an incoming light aircraft after Barnabus, unaware of its approach due to him being rattled by the birder, drove across its path at the start of an airstrip. In all the excitement my crown again becomes loose.

  Driving through the countryside, past villages and small homesteads, we’ve commented on the number of abandoned bandas. These simple thatched dwellings are always well built and look to be weatherproof, so we’ve speculated as to why squatters haven’t moved in, or at least purloined the building material in a land where any possession is precious. Barnabus provides the answer by telling us that these dwellings are usually not abandoned, but temporarily vacated. As villagers move around seasonally with their goats or to tend crops, shelter is needed in different places and at different times, and it’s accepted by all that any banda, whether currently occupied or not, is private property.

  Over the next three days Barnabus shows us many weird and wonderful things, including the amazing welwitschia plant, a prehistoric leftover which grows only in the Namibian desert and can live for hundreds of years, just one spongy leaf which splits and furls into a low, convoluted mass sometimes metres wide.

  We leave Doro Nawas with an early start for Grootberg Lodge via the town of Otjiwarongo, where I have an appointment with another dentist. We’ve been on the road for a couple of hours when Neil realises that we’ve forgotten to visit the rock art site at Twyfelfontein, so wrapped up were we in old plants, loose teeth and even looser tummies. But it’s too late now, so we press on to Otjiwarongo and locate the dental surgery. What a difference in practices. Here everyone is chatty and helpful and genuinely trying to help. My recalcitrant tooth is stuck back in with extra strong glue then off we go.

  It’s late by the time we get to the wild and desolate Grootberg Plateau, and almost dark when we come to the turn-off to the lodge. Their road is one of the worst I’ve ever driven on, a contender for an advanced four-wheel-driving course, but the position of the lodge is spectacular. It’s perched on the very edge of the Klip River Valley, which includes elephant, zebra and rhino among its wildlife. If we were to stumble out our chalet door in the dark without a torch we’d be in danger of falling into the valley to join them.

  We’ve been trying to pinpoint the cause of our diarrhoea and the lodge’s manager confirms our fears that the water we put in the Troopy’s tank in Swakop is contaminated. Apparently garden water there is recycled waste water. He very kindly offers his staff to drain the tank, slush it out then refill it with his clean mountain water. I self-prescribe and get us on a course of antibiotics, Imodium and lots of water, mountain water. Apart from a daily walk through the surrounding bush we stay in the comfort of the lodge, content to take it easy. The manager takes to joining us when he is free, and over the next few days we learn about life in such an isolated location, and about the people who inhabit the region.

  The two main ethnic groups up here in the far north-west are the Herero and the Himba. They’re relative newcomers to Namibia, both descendants of Bantu-speaking people who moved across from East Africa about 150 years ago. The group split and the majority, known today as the Herero, moved southward to the central plains of Namibia where they settled and became successful cattle ranchers. The ancestors of the Himba remained in the north and lived a semi-nomadic life as herdsmen, following their goats and cattle in search of water and pasture. Their way of life is much the same today, as their harsh homeland has always been inhospitable and isolated from the rest of the world, and an undesirable option for colonists and commercial farmers. On the other hand, the Herero have had to compete first with indigenous people, then with the Germans when they colonised the country. The Herero were greatly influenced by the Germans and the most obvious sign of this is in the traditional dress of the women. Reacting to the prudishness of missionaries, they moved from wearing very little at all to an adaptation of the clothing they saw on the Europeans — full, voluminous skirts with many petticoats underneath, long sleeves and high necks, and often a shawl as well. Their own unique touch is the headdress, whi
ch comprises long lengths of fabric rolled into wings resembling the horns of their beloved cattle. Today in the towns older women still dress up in their finery, but more often than not the younger generation wear simple Western clothing. The men once dressed in a variation of the German military uniform of the day, but this practice too has almost died out and is now rarely seen except for the odd old man at an important gathering.

  Appearances are obviously important to the Herero, and the story of Ronald bears this out. Ronald is the nanny for the young son of a friend of the manager’s. He is an Herero and also a transvestite and he can be found on any one day wearing a stunning Capri outfit or perhaps an understated housedress and necklace, singing the child soft Herero lullabies or pramming him to sleep over the rocks and potholes in the car park. He favours wearing an outfit the colour of the Aeroplane jelly that’s being served that day, and it’s understood that he has first option on the mother’s cast-offs. The parents have total trust in Ronald, who loves the little boy unconditionally. Apparently they are a familiar sight in the street of their town — the mother, father, and Ronald in high heels proudly pushing the pram.