Namibian Roads are Good to Think With

Uncharacteristically I nearly missed my flight but, thanks to my trusty taxi driver jumping a few red lights (only feasible very early on a Sunday morning), I made it to the boarding gate just in time. Friends in Windhoek laid on a wonderful relaxed brunch, tucked against the hillside in Eros, and the next morning I caught a bus to Swakopmund.

Swakopmund is a little difficult to put one's finger on. Its postcolonial essence is perhaps captured in a shop sign painted on the entrance of an old German building that caught my attention when I first visited a few years ago. It proclaims: “Where N$1 is still worth R1”. I always found this a little bizarre, given that the Namibian dollar is pegged to the South African rand…so surely there would never be any doubt about this particular equation. My anthro-historical interpretation of the sign is something about colonialism's continuity, I suppose, and a hankering after certain (non-monetary) values. Anyway, one of Swakopmund’s selling points is its quietness. Not a lot happens there. Walking the beach was liberating, and my friend Angela has two fabulous golden labradors which kept me company most times.

We enjoyed sundowners in the Swakop river dunes one evening – a quite extraordinary moonscape of scenery. Namibia is home to a strong circle of women friends who are all leading unconventional lives and doing interesting things. It was really good to be away from the city, not to have to care about my appearance, or whether my clothes matched.


Where else in the world can you hire a car for $45 a day with unlimited mileage? Clearly I was so impressed by this little nugget that I was already half-way from Swakopmund to Henties Bay on the Skeleton Coast when I realised that I didn’t have my driver’s licence. Oh well. It clearly wasn’t that important to the rental company either! And at the turn off to Uis, where the road is barely differentiated from the surrounding desert, flanked by miles of flatness, I figured I was unlikely to encounter any roadblocks. Uis is a really a dorp. I think it only has about 20 buildings. Nevertheless, I’m lucky enough to have friends in most dorps, regardless of country, so had a guided tour of the area with my friend Victor that afternoon. Namibian roads are good to think with – they are long, wide and empty.


I received some curious look from other travellers, surprised to see a blonde gal with shades driving alone around dusty Damaraland in a Walvis-Bay-registered 2x4 sedan car. My wheels may have been modest, if not amusing, but nonetheless it was exhilarating being on the road again. There are long stretches with no mobile network – not that common an occurrence nowadays -- so that too was somewhat liberating. I spent two days in the Brandberg, Namibia’s highest mountains, under an incredibly bright moon, the night-times big and still, and traversed by my old friends, the Scops and Pearlspotted Owls. I had forgotten what it’s like to witness that endless blanket of stars overhead, to be enveloped in that big silence. The landscape is rugged and striking, full of granite and ancient lava flows, and the colours of the mountains change by the minute. The Damara homesteads are dispersed and desolate, and I wondered where they get water.


Food poisoning prevented me from making it to the White Lady rock paintings – sadly I had to turn back when I was already over halfway -- but the guides at the site were wonderful and, seeing that I was on my own, offered to drive me and my car back to the campsite, and walk the 7km back to work. The nearest doctor was only 100km away, they reassured me.

At the next-door lodge, where I had a luxury ready-made tent, the menu was heavy with oryx and not much else: oryx schnitzel (obviously), oryx bolognese, and so on. I passed on those and managed to procure some yoghurt and maize meal porridge. Next to the bar was an empty fishtank, and the conversation went something like this:

Victor: Where’s the snake?
Barman: Oh, it’s gone. It escaped. We think someone helped it.
Me: Oh? What kind of snake?
Barman: A python.
Victor: What happened?
Barman: Yeah, well, we took it out during the Germany-Spain game to show some guests, and we’re not quite sure what happened after that…

From Brandberg I took a long slow gravel-road drive through Khorixas to Twyfelfontein (“doubtful fountain” – altogether an appropriate destination given my love circumstances) to see the ancient rock engravings which are Namibia’s first World Heritage Site. Having the freedom to stop whenever and wherever one pleases is such a privilege. I clambered up rocks and hillsides to see the views, ponder over a never-ending miscellany of curious rocks and stone formations, and breathe in those wide open spaces.




Near Twyfelfontein I camped on the Aba Huab river, neighbouring with a horse safari group and some overlanders. I exchanged some Nam dollars for US dollars with a Belgian traveller who, poor soul, hadn’t realised that there aren’t exactly ATMs at every corner once you get out of Windhoek. En route to Omaruru via Outjo I stopped at the remarkable Vingerklip for more striking landscape.

My trip was rounded off with a visit to another friend who is raising eyebrows in Omaruru by bringing yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, and contemporary sculpture to this conservative marginally-bigger-than-Uis dorp. Altogether very inspiring and refreshing. From there, a short stop in Windhoek to enjoy the culinary delights of the Craft Centre cafe, and now back to life in Jozi ...I'm already into my eleventh month back in southern Africa. Unbelievable.

The World Cup Comes and Goes

I'm not ashamed to say that I let myself get caught up in some of the World Cup fever. It was almost impossible not to! The build-up to the opening game was indeed quite something. Vuvuzelas could be heard from early in the morning for at least a week beforehand, starting from 6am, no less. And on the 11th of June, it seemed that the entire city left work at lunchtime and took to the roads to make their way to see the opening game. The streets were overflowing with yellow-and-green tshirts and South African flags, and everyone was terribly excited. The traffic was so congested going down to Melville that I had plenty of time to practise blowing my vuvuzela out of my car window, which is actually something of an art. The first week of the Cup was blue-skies-but-bitterly-cold. The sun shines, but the average winter morning is about 6 degrees, and we had a few days of 2 degrees as well, which certainly shocked all the European visitors. There's not really anything by way of indoor heating, so it requires something of a different wardrobe approach.It seems there's nothing like a big sports tournament to distract a nation from its chronic problems. It was certainly a unifying experience for South Africans, even if temporary and surface-deep. There were some issues, of course, especially on the transport front but, contrary to all the Afro-pessimist predictions in the European and American press, the stadiums *were* ready, and so was the fabulous new high-speed Gautrain.


I watched my first ever soccer game at Ellis Park (Slovenia-USA) with visiting Croatian friends, preceded by Portuguese lunch at the legendary Troyeville Hotel. The whole experience was really surprisingly enjoyable. Everything was well-organised and professional, and all the facilities operated totally smoothly. Go South Africa! I also went to the Ghana-Uruguay quarter-final which was devastating for Ghana, and for all of us African supporters, but experiencing Soccer City at night with 85 000 spectators was quite something. I did have to wear earplugs, fyi. My favourite game, however, was South Africa-France, which I saw in the Newtown fan park: really an amazing atmosphere. I had plenty of visitors, some of them friends, some sub-letters: Mexicans, Germans, Americans, Croatians, Swazis, and Lesothans, so that also made for quite a lot of fun and quite a lot of linen laundry.

My explorations of downtown Jozi continue. On a public holiday during the tournament, I had a lazy brunch at Narina Trogon in Braamfontein with a collection of internationals and one or two locals. Yeoville was next on the cards, to visit the Hotel Yeoville exhibition at the new public library. Sadly it was closed due to the holiday, but I persuaded the group to acompany me to visit the Congolese artist whom I commissioned to paint a hair dressing sign. I've been wanting one for ages. I think Yeoville's residents were a bit surprised by this group of apparent tourists wandering around their neighbourhood, but we felt no hostility or threat. Needless to say I'm thrilled with my new sign.After Yeoville we went to Arts on Main, after checking out a regenerated block of apartments next door -- all of the spaces are very modern and minimalist, with some fab cityscape views. They are selling for next to nothing, given the relatively 'undesirable' location, but difficult to know what will happen in this area in the long run. Jo'burg has a number of these experimental projects, which is good to see. Main Road is verging on being Brick Lane-ish, albeit on a much smaller scale. There's also a small new independent cinema downstairs, and funky coffee-come-fashion shop. Other recent cultural visits include a Cuban exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and sitting in the winter afternoon sun for open-air Senegalese kora music at the Alliance Francaise.
There is no shortage of things to do here. So, the World Cup came and went, after many months of preambular hype and speculation. Many of us started to fade about halfway through, once Bafana was knocked out, and we realised that we'd been burning the candle at both ends for a few too many weeks. But all in all, it was great to be around for it. And although there are now lots of vacant stadiums littered about the place, we do have some nice new roads and some progress on the public transport front!