I duck under quickly, and open my eyes for a second. Everything is opaque and black. A place to lay upon, a place to tread and float, a place where mystery lays beneath and even so, lifts you up.
I let the water carry me to other places in the reeds. Its whispers begin to wear down my jagged edges. Tumble me, like sea glass, to arise smooth.
When I step from the water, shivering slightly despite the hot sun, I turn around to watch the lake. The water looks as though it is glossed with navy blue and gold licks, and every now and then a swirl of black, as though a tunnel was opening and closing. A mouth.
I couldn’t quite work out the balm water offered. Was it the possibility of being removed for a time from the world, to be cleansed and emptied? Or does the water offer us the chance of tide, a place to fill up?
Before we push our canoes back out, I trickle a bit of water across my legs, and it feels like a benediction.
I WAKE easily before sunrise. The night still lingers outside in the ashy dawn, and stars twinkle in the sky. The moon’s fullness hangs low and sleepy. I pull on shorts and a singlet silently, a cotton sweater. Zip the tent behind me. Build the fire. Boil the water. Take a cup of coffee and walk to the edge of the camp; then further.
Hands rest on scratched bark trees, taut and cool before the sun begins to rise. I blow on the coffee to cool it; watch the skies turn soft coral, dusty rose then quartz pink. The sky is performing miracles, and the air is still cool from the long night. Birds start singing the day to life. Dawn cracks through the sky. Cicadas take up the harmony, humming in waves.
I make toast over the fire. Squatting over piles of ash and seared logs, holding the stick at the furthest tip so my hands don’t burn. Camp starts to wake.
At first light we have eaten and washed, and are rolling up tents, dismantling chairs, screwing lids on jars and packing them in the truck. We carefully place the butter near the ice cooler, the cheese too – today is supposed to be over forty degrees. We finish quickly, before the sun has fully woken. Months on the road have made skilled campers of us all.
Below us the valley surges with heat. The sand becomes coarser, losing the muddy delta tones. Deep earth seeps up the colour of blood and settles on the top baking everything in terracotta; the colour of chipped pots.
We stop for a moment in Maun. A town on the outskirts of the Okavanga. After so many days of thick jungle, the noise of the town crescendos. Chatter. Brakes. Trucks. Music booms from speakers, blaring loudly, as if inside my ear canal. Is this what it’s like to hear after days of being silent?
‘Who would like to see the delta from above?’ Gift asks.
I imagine ascending a very tall building, like Sydney Tower, but he’s pointing to a small light airplane perched to the side of a mottled brown building marked Maun Airport. It’s more than small. It’s miniature. I’m surprised someone can fit in the back behind the pilot. Even Gift looks uncomfortable when four people raise their hands.
The pilot walks over and introduces himself. He’s South African and, in another life, he’s a model. Dark blonde hair carefully styled. Square jaw, smooth olive skin. Of course, he’s wearing gladiator sunglasses as though he just stepped out of Top Gun.
Suddenly more of the girls want to see the delta from above.
‘You can go with my buddy,’ and the pilot nods over to a rather normal-looking, middle-aged man standing near another tiny plane.
They decline. ‘Oh, it’s okay. You go ahead,’ they say, looking longingly at God pilot.
I’d like to see the delta from above, to see how the tributaries run into each other, how the inlets become coves, where they flood across the plains, how the water weaves in and out of the land like a giant green and blue tapestry. But I had my moment in the middle of the delta, swimming deep into her turbidity. Something tells me I’m ready to move on now.
As God pilot throttles down the runway and carefully lifts the steel bird into the sky, I’m sitting with the others on a dusty bench in front of a bus stop. A man is selling postcards. Aerial views of the delta. That will do me, I think and purchase one. That’s all I need from here.
IT GETS sparse as we leave Maun. Huts and houses are spaced out. We pass the last few huddles and after that it’s just blue skies and sandy soil. I find myself staring out the bus window, thinking about nothing. Run my hand over the carpeted truck seats, the blue plastic trim.
The others are all sleeping. Leigh is covered in a Kiwi flag. Ant is out cold as though someone has clocked her on the head and she’s collapsed across the seat. After being with each other for weeks, thankfully we are wrung out of conversation and sink into the lull of contentment.
We have learnt that words do not need to cover silence.
I tilt my head and rest it on the window. Tussock grass below, flashing past our bus windows. The land forms new cracks, splitting under the sun; parched lands thirsty for a drink. Off in the distance, the horizon moves and I watch as the specks of white become zebras and water buffalo and bison swaying together.
After an hour I feel myself dozing in the heat. The truck stops. Toilet break. Everyone is tired and moving like they have no bones in their body.
When we first started in Kenya, we scrambled for large trees, to squat behind them. Toilet breaks became long stops as we clambered sometimes a hundred metres up the road looking for privacy.
‘You watch, while I go,’ we said to each other.
One by one we took turns squatting behind the trunk, checking each direction several times.
‘Are you watching? Is anyone coming? Are we okay?’ we yelled before committing to the act.
A last-minute bout of anxiety flushed us – that can happen when you’re wearing pants around your ankles – but soon we realised no-one was coming. More relaxed, we found ourselves going together, thin veils of trees between us.
Of course, there was every opportunity to see someone else’s bum, but out of respect, and because that could have been us in full view, we had an unspoken rule. No looking. Stare at the ground, watch that you’ve put your feet in the right place, ensure your dress or skirt or pants are hocked up at the right angle to avoid splashes, or worse – being in the path of full trickle.
There were lessons learnt – some quickly. Especially when you went near the acacia trees that dropped leaves as sharp as needles. These pen-sized spikes could pierce through rubber thongs like they were soft butter. Don’t squat too low. More than once or twice we heard the double yelp of someone who got too close to the tough briar bushes that covered the land. One yelp when the spike went in, wedging itself deep in soft white buttock flesh, and one louder when the wounded had to reach around and pull it out.
But as we worked our way out of Botswana and towards Namibia, there were less trees, fewer tall grasses. There weren’t even any briar bushes left to squat behind.
We stop on a small shoulder of the dusty, gravel road. Off in the distance there’s a tree. One scraggly tree. It would barely reach my head in height and the trunk is no wider than a fence post. We may as well squat right here in the sunshine as try and find a place behind it to cover us.
Quickly we decide we can go one by one, just a few metres from the truck. A casually flung scarf, transparent in the sun, is held up for what little privacy it offers. Thankfully the roads are empty; no other buses have passed.
We climb back onto the truck and continue straight ahead. The terrain flattens even more. Small hills and bulges become tiny knee-high mounds, and then it’s just flat and straight. Because we’re heading due west, the sun finds us eagerly through the windows.
I feel the strength of the rays feeding my skin. Kissing our shoulders, making us ripen. I’m darker than I’ve been in years – since I was a child and refused to go inside during the hot, summer months. Back then, there was the constant ritual of sitting by the pool until I got too hot, then diving in, the freshness of water fizzing around my ears, instantly cooling my body. What we wouldn’t do to find a skerrick of water ou
t here. To drink. To bathe. To dive into.
My hands have dirt smudged across the palms. Where is that from? My feet wear the permanent marks of thongs – a white strip that lies like an inverted V below my toes. It could be a suntan, but it’s possibly dirt too.
At home I hated the thought of being so, well, dirty. I’d be showering, or planning my next shower. And nothing was better than my lovely, clean shower at home. Strong and hot, I could linger in there for hours. I turned my nose up at public showers. I wanted it clean, and to have no bits of other people; stray hair strands, or the mottled gunk you find on shower floors when you share them.
It is strange how happy I am without the comforts of my life back home, and this surprises no-one more than me. I remember how I never had enough skirts, or how I snuggled in bed all weekend with a raft of books. How strange it all seems to me now. I don’t care anymore.
I am learning how little you need to get by. No hot water, no air conditioning, no electricity. Our food is cooked over the heated coals of a fire. Everything tastes the same yet wonderful – of smoke.
Cleanliness is not next to godliness here. We are dry and dusty and parched and covered in sweat and dirt. Tonight we will scrub our underwear in river beds or tiny rusted camp sinks without washing powder or machines or dryers. Life is less exhausting when it is simple.
THE SUN is brilliant and high. We stop by a small town. Shanty houses, walls and roofs made from old pieces of tin roof, large rock bricks, the mortar made from local mud. Here in the African dust, farmers sell their produce by the side of the road.
An old man wears a torn jacket with bold letters that read Niked. He is quiet, alone with his thoughts, unassuming, and beautiful to watch. The deeply creased lines on his face, the greying tinges at the widow peaks of his skull. Soft padded fingers delicately separate vegetables, patting each one of them into place as though they are his children. Freshly picked, still covered in the ground they came from – oversize brown potatoes, bursting pea pods, bent carrots.
Sometimes we find apples. Pumpkins large enough to hug. Rarely oranges. Mostly there are bananas, brown, broken and soft. Picked and piled on a piece of ratty blue tarp, held to the ground at each corner by large rocks.
Someone buys bananas and hands them out on the truck and before we even open them, the ripe flesh oozes out the top, through small slits in the skin. We eat large mouthfuls of the white flesh, ripe and gooey. I glance at Ant and she has banana across her hands.
‘It’s delicious,’ she says, licking her finger.
It’s true. It tastes like cake batter.
‘If we lived here,’ I say, ‘I’d buy bananas from that man every day.’
‘Could we live here?’ she asks.
Isn’t that the question I’ve been asking all along? In Kenya and Zanzibar and Malawi and Australia and Paris and Italy – could I live here?
Of course. We can all live here if we want. Every place offers a certain something, a sense of excitement in offering what we don’t have.
But I’m starting to realise, perhaps it isn’t a country that I’ve been searching for. Or a city. No. Something has been unearthed out here and presented itself to me, like that postcard of the delta.
And I’m seeing it from above, my life, as if for the first time.
ON A map, Namibia floats at the south-western cape of Africa, a long sandy stretch that meets the Indian Ocean, and then turns back on itself and juts into the middle of the continent, stretching for miles into desert. Angola lies to the north. Botswana to the east. South Africa below.
The border crossing is lengthy. Thousands of pedestrians, cars, utes and trucks also want to make their way into Namibia today.
We’re told we must disembark and walk – with our shoes on – through a tub of soapy water. Signs everywhere demand we save Namibia from foot and mouth disease. Even the truck has to be driven in a perfect line, its wheels lined up against soft squishy antiseptic pads that bubble with soap when it lumbers over them.
We wait for hours, almost three, for our passports to be stamped. We swelter in the heat. It’s even hotter, if that’s possible, inside the small brick hut marked with a lopsided blue sign that reads Immigration. Fans are on strike. There’s no air conditioning. Our truck is locked and would be hotter still. So we sit outside, in the stifling heat, moving only to swat away flies under the single shadow of a baobab tree.
Back on the truck we travel through desert. Flat. Red. It’s as if the earth’s crust has been sliced open and her blood has seeped up, staining every grain of dust. The red of desert dirt, of Mars. Overhead stretches of blue silk sky. It’s hard to imagine a place with more space.
Nature turns up the oven dial, and daily temperatures hug us in heat before the sun has even risen. Hazy days where the mercury hits forty and all you can do is sag under the weight of heat and lay still. The hot winds are fierce. Strong and dusty, they burn our faces, wrapping us in earth and sweat. The Westerly gusts scatter red dust all the way from the desert, spilling Namibia from the inside out.
Driving with the windows closed becomes unbearable, but with them open, it’s like sticking our heads into a furnace. We nurse water bottles that bubble in the heat. I sit with one leg bent on my chair and the other in the aisle, some weird frog-legged position, and shove my skirt underneath each thigh, wrapping them so they don’t stick. I sweat like I’m made of water and when I exit the bus at bathroom breaks I have damp, soggy patches of skirt. The wind blows me dry within minutes.
We stop for lunch. Hunks of tomato, tails of cucumber and soggy bread. It’s too hot; no-one can eat. The grated strands of cheese melt on top of each other.
We’re still so far inland, there are no coastal breezes or water anywhere. The last bit of water I saw was the tub of soapy suds at the border crossing and before that, I can’t remember.
I love this place. But what I wouldn’t do right now for a screaming cold African shower.
SAND IS in everything. Our clothes. Hair. I find a pile of it like a mound in my right ear. When we eat lunch it’s always accompanied by the familiar crunch of sand between teeth.
Everything is red. Scolded. Scorched. Even the trees have a sugar dusting of Namibian soil. Anything white is now a dusty rose. T-shirts. Socks. Our skin.
It is terrible bus-driving weather. Matilda is burning up like a feverish child. Having the windows open doesn’t make a lick of difference. Closed, it begins feels like a pressure cooker.
Scott says, ‘Something has to be better than this,’ and opens the window.
I feel like I’m at a hairdresser’s and all of them have pointed their extra hot hair dryers at my face on the fastest speed. Our lips wobble against the air pressure like we’re skydiving.
Straight roads. Red soil. Nothing else. Days pass. Each night we sink fatigued into our tents. No-one speaks. No-one drinks. The party bus has exhausted herself. We’re a place of sleeping.
Our tents smell, and so do we. Showers are wonderful when we can find them. We learn to improvise. Wet tissues can soap an underarm quickly. You can get a good ten wipes in there if you’re careful, before they disintegrate.
Nothing moves out here. There are no birds. No animals. When we stop on the dusty stretches for a chance to squat and pee a few, miserable dehydrated drops, there aren’t even any ants. I know this, because I spend time bent over, trying to find them.
The sun continues. No clouds. No chance of rain. We are in the middle of the middle of the desert.
I’m finding it hard to move. To think. I wonder if the sun is broiling my brain. Hunter’s ring is chaffing me. My fingers have swollen like fatty sausages. Every part of me feels on fire. I could spontaneously combust. And despite this, I want it all. Every bit of it.
I feel more alive out here than I ever did back there, on the train, going to work – same nights, same days. Frantically doing things, and going nowhere.
How delightful it is, to thaw out. The freeze has left and the earth is on fire. I can fe
el everything. The heat on my face. Every grit of sand in my teeth. The dry air in my lungs, scratchy and hard.
I look out at the stretch of barren land in front of us. I have a feeling that I’m on the edge of discovery; there is the smallest glimmer. An inkling.
What if none of us are meant for fluorescent lights and technology and soft bellies? What if we’re all meant to be under the hard, blue sky?
‘THERE’S A zebra’s head!’ comes the call when we’re in the middle of Etosha National Park.
The truck radio is scratchy. A loud blast of white noise.
‘Fresh kill,’ the ranger’s voice says again through the bad line.
Gift is gathering everyone quickly. The words, zebra’s head, move around camp, gathering momentum, chanted like a mantra. People are gathering cameras, additional filters, zoom lenses.
Scott says, ‘This could be the money shot.’
Steve wonders how close the trucks will be able to get.
I don’t want to go, I think.
Candy is yelling at Bazz, ‘Get the video camera too, honey.’
Ant is wondering if it will get cold, it’s almost sundown.
I don’t want to go.
They tumble into the truck, eager.
‘Kate, are you coming?’ Ant calls out.
Gift is about to lock the truck door. There’s no time to wait. The lions will come back for the head soon. The cubs will have learnt how to rip meat from between the rib cage. The vultures will circle and wait for their turn. The flies have already begun to land and lay their eggs, and it will take less than a day until the entire corpse is being eaten from the inside by newly hatched maggots.
How do they know when something is dead, the vultures and flies and maggots of the world? How do they sense it? Because they do know. They can smell the unique scent of sulphur that decaying meat emits almost spontaneously upon death. They know the moment it happens. Rangers can spot a kill from miles away. The circle of vultures in the air ready to scavenge.
Ways to Come Home Page 17
