Good Hope and the Cape

Self-renovation has indeed been in need, and so a late-winter road trip to Cape Town, known as the Cape of Good Hope in the 17^th century, seemed appropriate.  A Canadian acquaintance spontaneously agreed to join me and we hit the road before sunrise for the start of a 3-day, +2400km journey south. 

In Bloemfontein we visited the Afrikaans Literature Museum, which has a outdatedly-curated quirky collection of beautiful antique writing desks, photographs, paintings, letters and other memorabilia.  Wall biographies of liberals Andre Brink and Ingrid Jonker are appropriately nestled together in the furthest-away corner.  We also managed to swing a free private 30-minute tour of the Bloemfontein High Court at no notice, after making friends with a security guard downstairs and avoiding a visitation of Alsatian police dogs.  

Thereafter we took less of a beaten track.  A few hours later we arrived in Richmond, known as the ‘literary jewel of the Karoo’, and for good reason.  It’s a two-street village with a church (that goes without saying for any settlement in the Karoo) and an extensive, atmospheric second-hand and collectibles bookshop.  We zoomed in late on a Friday afternoon, crossing fingers that we weren’t going to miss out on bookworm time. I couldn't resist another Doris Lessing, this time Martha Quest.

You only need to have a conversation with one resident in the bookshop to ensure that the whole population knows your business in under an hour. Sitting down for dinner at the only restaurant, the manager was quick to say, ‘Oh, I hear you’re from Zimbabwe’. So was he, it turned out. It was low season, so the guesthouses were either closed or virtually empty; we were the sole occupants at ours. We went to grateful sleep that night on crisp sunshine-dried sheets ironed by the coloured women who were gossiping in Afrikaans next door in the kitchen until late.

Another early start the next morning took us on a smaller road through the Valley of Desolation to Graaff-Reinet, where the price of a cut-and-colour at the hairdresser is exactly half of what it costs in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.  Pity I didn’t have time to take up that opportunity.  We visited Reinet House, a former Dutch Reformed Parsonage dating to 1812, which has a beautiful mill-house adjoining the back garden.  Nearby, the Old Library museum gives insight into slave histories and charts the life of anti-apartheid struggle activist Robert Sobukwe, for whom Graaff-Reinet was home.

Heading into the Eastern Cape, we made a special diversion to Nieu Bethesda, a settlement established in 1875 but which only got its first electricity in 1993.  We were egged on even further when the local tourism officer described its main attraction -- the Owl House -- as ‘pretty weird’.  Pretty weird turned out to probably be the highlight of the journey. Helen Martins, the woman who lived in and created the Owl House was a recluse, twice divorced in a tiny, conservative and isolated society where – unimaginably - she had stopped going to church.  In her fifties and the '50s, she began re-creating her living space with crushed coloured glass and gave life to some 300 glass and concrete figurines, including owls, mermaid, wisemen and more.  She committed suicide in 1976.  It is a fascinating and tragic story, which in part inspired Athol Fugard's Road to Mecca. I’m looking forward to learning more.

From Nieu Bethesda we had a long day’s drive south to Plettenberg Bay, arriving after dark. We tried to take a shortcut from Uniondale to the coast but after about 15 minutes on a bumpy dirt road, I stopped to ask advice from an elderly man who was carefully driving an elderly bakkie behind us. “I don’t want to be a killjoy”, he said in the sincerest fashion, “but I really don’t recommend this route. You’ll damage your car.” And so we had to travel further east first to Jourbertina, adding an extra triangle to our journey.

The popular Garden Route deserved more time and exploration, but I was surprised at how settled and developed it is.  We dipped our feet triumphantly in the southern oceans for the first time at Wilderness before heading through vast fields of yellow canola fields to Hermanus in search of whales.  Sure enough, it only took 20 minutes to glean a some whale-surf sightings, but then it was time to push on again and get my co-traveller to her flight back to Jozi.  

And what thereafter? It’s easy to seclude oneself in the salubrious parts of the southern peninsula and indulge in exploration: in Noordhoek with the Ugg-wearing yogis, where I attended classes taught by a former Israeli Olympic marathoner; in Muizenberg with the walkers and surfers (including the man who’s running 3000km along China’s Mekong River); in Kalk Bay at the cafes and with the artsy-enviromental types. Happiness came in vegetarian food and lemon cupcakes at the Tibetan Teahouse in Simons Town, cycling along Chapman’s Peak on an early spring day in sun-and-blue, the heavenly flourless chocolate cake at the easy-to-miss-apart confectioner’s in Fish Hoek, and hiking around Cape Point surrounded by the extraordinary biodiversity of the fynbos winter flowers.

Ah yes, it can be a bubble in these parts, broken occasionally by the Zimbabwean immigrants, often easily identifiable by their name badges in restaurants and shops (there’s only one country that Learnmore could come from) or by snippets of Shona regularly overheard.  There’s the girl with tears in her eyes when she talks about home and her mother; the woman who hitches a lift with me from Scarborough to Masipumelele township; the man who is about to take his dead brother’s body on the long journey home for burial.  This far-end-of-Africa has been a source of Good Hope for many during uncertain times to the north, and for these few weeks I guess I am among them.

[With thanks to K. for two photos included here]

Nowhere Anymore: From Kariba to the Queen's Jubilee

In the immigrations queue at Heathrow, an American oil worker fresh off a Mozambican rig asks me where I'm from. I have to take a genuine pause. "Nowhere anymore, really", I say, without further elaborating. "Oh dear", he says. He's on his way back to the US because his son has been in an accident and sustained serious head injuries.

It is a public holiday and the final day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. There are only about 5 people on the Underground that morning, and 4 of them are wearing coat tails and fancy hats, on their way to St Paul's Cathedral. The British have an amazing capacity to get completely carried away by public displays of, well, Britishness. Formerly Empire.  They've had centuries of practice, I suppose. Based on the TV footage, it appears that the vast majority of celebrators were white, though the BBC was sure to re-play several times a short interview with a Muslim girl in a British-flag-hijab, and I catch a glimpse of a Sikh man in the crowds.  I do hope they haven't exhausted all their ceremonial enthusiasm before the Olympics.

Later, in the cab with my Nigerian colleague, the white English working-class cab driver asks us where we're from. "Zimbabwe, originally", I say. "And my colleague here is from Nigeria".

Him: Oh, Zimbaah-bway.  Did that used to be Rho-dee-shah?

Me: That's right...

Him: What does Zimbaah-bway mean anyway?

Me: It means 'houses of stone', from 'dzimba yemabwe'.  After the historical Zimbabwe Ruins.

Him: And what about Rho-dee-shah?

Me: Oh, that was named after Cecil John Rhodes, the British coloniser.

Him: Well at least Zimbaah-bway means somefink.  Rhodee-shah don't mean anyfink, does it?  It's just a made-up name.

Me: I guess that's right...

Then the driver addresses my colleague:

"Nigeriaah, eh. D'you eat shaki then?"

T. thinks he's misheard, because he can't believe that a London cab driver would know what shaki -- the Nigerian tripe dish --  is. The driver waxes lyrical: "Yeah, me friend's mum's always sayin', 'Shaki's good for ya, shaki make you strong!' But once you know what it is...!"   T. chuckles in disbelief.  Welcome to the world in one city.

Speaking of origins, I returned to Zimbabwe recently. It was a genuinely interesting and contented visit. Our small diaspora family came together from three countries to celebrate my mother's 60th birthday and my father's successful open-heart surgery. We were surrounded by old friends that day in the winter afternoon sun -- all those who have stuck it out these past 12 years, despite everything. The generator hummed in the background (12-16 hour power cuts are still typical), and the lights, oven, kettle and other electrical appliances were carefully coordinated so as to avoid any untoward power failures that would affect the catering.  

The same week, I attended the Harare International Festival of the Arts for the first time. A few days earlier on the plane, I was filled with juvenile excitement when celeb musician Oliver Mtukudzi sat down next to me. At the Festival itself, a host of old friends and teachers appeared, most of whom I had not seen in well over a decade. Many had returned to Harare specially for the occasion.  

Turkey, England, Australia, the United States, Spain, South Africa: people have been everywhere, in exile of various kinds, carving out lives for themselves, bettering themselves however they can. One of the pianists, once an intimidating older star-musician at my primary school, and now the organiser of an annual music festival in a Turkish fishing village, gave a tear-jerking Beethoven performance in the Dutch Reformed Church downtown. I remember meeting her teenage MDC activist brother on a plane; I was struck by his apparent fearlessness. He was later arrested multiple times and tortured and, unsurprisingly, left the country afterwards.  Yet still his sister is willing to return.

Also that week, we drove to Kariba, accompanying my mother on a work trip. There was more traffic on the roads that I've seen in many years, including numerous heavy trucks travelling to and from Zambia. The farmlands along the Chinhoyi-Karoi road are so overgrown and disused that within a few years no one will guess that there were ever any farms. According to a senior representative at National Foods Zimbabwe, the country now imports 80% of its wheat from...the Ukraine. And sourcing it from the Ukraine is 25% cheaper than sourcing it locally. Those stats are enough to make one's head spin rather wildly.

Yet there are other spheres where Zimbabwe has boosted its exports. In Kariba, for example, we visited the largest crocodile farm in the world. They supply the leather for Hermes' luxury designer handbags -- we're talking circa £6000 per bag and upwards. The farm's new HR manager had just returned to Zimbabwe from a decade in London, where he worked at a leading software firm. A bit different to crocodiles.

The following day we attended a graduation ceremony for one the training programmes that my mother's organisation funds. Wives and children gathered to watch their husbands and fathers, soft drinks were had all round, fun were poked at participants in a mix of Shona and English, and afterwards the catering ladies - who probably couldn't all fit in the tiny kitchen at the same time - fed sadza (maize porridge) and fried fish in voluminous cooking pots to some 80 people. The Zimbabwean hinterlands are full of interesting characters, and everyone has a story. One of the trainers, white, in his 60s and fluent in Shona, was born in Botswana, where his mother taught President Seretse Khama's English wife to speak Tswana.

And so ends another few weeks in the postcolony. Nowhere anymore is not too bad - just different.

West with the Night

Two years since my last visit to West Caprivi, and my skin has grown unaccustomed to the bites and itches of the field. The names of places and people are rusty on my tongue. It is good to hear Khwedam again. There are more village settlements now, a little disorienting.

The 'creole' camp at Buffalo, my label for the mix of cultures and languages of its residents, is as it ever was. All sorts of familiar objects of curiosity - markers of Friedrich and his determinedly outdoor and individualistic life. No one was there on arrival, so I made myself at home in the open-air clay kitchen, with its view over the Kavango river and its high clouds. I made cucumber soup and coconut dahl whilst an old buffalo, a hippo, two bushbuck and a family of warthog took turns to feed within a hundred metres.

The next day I went into Mutc'iku with a German student researcher for her interview with a local Khwe leader who appears to have made a remarkable recovery from alcoholism. We found the men playing wera (mancala) at Dikwe's Place, the local watering hole, with a spat between two old ladies going on in the background. Business as usual. We made our way to a quieter setting. It was a bit surreal, sitting there in a wretched Khwe courtyard, with the litter, death's-door dogs and chickens scurrying around, the family piecing together a meagre meal, witnessing this researcher, as if watching someone else live my former life. Yet she is more relaxed in her manner, less concerned with 'doing it right' and pleasing everyone, like I was. She will do better.

The grass is high after the long rains; I was unsure of the turning to /'Ui-Sha's house, but I got it right. She was just heading out with the goats and I received a warm welcome. Her beautiful, smart, breadwinner daughter (and my fieldwork friend), whom I saw a week before her death in 2010, is gone, lost to the scourge of AIDS and witchcraft, but /'Ui-Sha looks strong in body and spirit, as she always did. She has planted an even bigger field of maize this season. Her friendly but deranged grandson was there. He's never been the same since the armed rebel attack on Bushbaby shebeen in 1999, still scrawling the name of that fateful place on the outside walls of her two-room government-issue house.

Carol came to pick me up from Buffalo, and we ate solar-cooked Persian biryani by the fire under a magnificent tapestry of stars. On the way back to Katima, we stop at an NGO base in East Caprivi on the Kwando river delta, where one Nadia has recently saved a third pet cat from being eaten by a kingsize python. She eventually wrestled the python into a cooler box. (Rule number two: every white southern African must have a cooler box, primarily for alcohol and red meat, and then also just because you never know when it might come in handy). Meanwhile her hyena-specialist colleague attended to the barely-conscious cat.

From the funny to the sad, it's life and death all the time in this place.

The next morning Carol loaded me into her 30-year old Toyota which gets us curious looks of admiration at the border post, and off I went to Livingstone once again, dodging the potholes with the Rhodesian-Zambians. A Zambian taxi driver crossed the bridge with me on foot, and hooked me up with a Zim taxi driver on the other side. The latter was a Tonga-speaker from Binga, with possibly the cleanest smartest taxi I've ever been in. He has a 4-year accounting degree from a university in Gweru. There weren't any jobs for him afterwards, of course, so he drove second-hand BMWs and Mercedes from Walvis Bay to Zimbabwe through Kazungula (vehicle import loophole, for those in the know, like the Rhodesian-Zambians).

Before heading to the airport and disturbing the immigrations officer from his lunchtime nap, I buy divination sticks at the craft market. They are laid out on the floor across a piece of old newspaper, directly on top of a photograph of Mugabe's face. The seller tells me they mean good luck: it's going to be seriously needed if the rumours about the president's poor health come to bear.

'Like Bread from the Congo': Katima Revisited

The smoke coming out of the earth catches at the heart: that first sight of the distant Victoria Falls from the air. I'm still surprised at these unexpected moments of patriotism, having left nearly half my lifetime ago. After landing, I crossed the Zimbabwe-Zambia border by foot, breathing in the dramatic whirlpools and rainbows far below the railway bridge. Well-known views, lesser-known emotions. At immigrations, a black Zimbabwean man was taking his two granddaughters to see the Falls for the first time. The official passed a wry comment about his ID card which still said Rhodesia. I came across the bridge last in mid-2008. It was a horrible time in Zimbabwe's demise, the air thick with desperation and despondency. This time, thankfully, it felt more positive.

Transport to Caprivi has a way of just falling into place. Usually I take the Mazhandu Family Bus but this time Carol arranged a lift from Livingstone with some friends of hers. They are white Rhodesian-Zambians with a fighting spirit who have moved from place to place, mine to mine, much of their lives. Now retired, they had lengthy negotiations with the local induna for 7 acres of land down a bush track in western Zambia, on the edge of the Zambezi. Their business card simply gives a latitude and longitude, and 'Upper Zambezi River, Western Zambia'.

We negotiated the potholes of the Livingstone-Sesheke road at some speed, and arrived in the dark. The journey included the only conversation I've ever had where someone has offhandedly referred to the characteristics of bread from the Congo, as if eating bread baked in the DRC was the most normal of things. At bedtime I moved my campbed onto the veranda to enjoy the night air, its moonlight, and its many sounds. The Zambezi river is fast-moving at this time of year, bulging from its northern post-rain tributaries. Rule number one: always travel with your own mozzie net -- you never know when you might need it.

The Sesheke market (also the main photo on this blog) was the first stop of the next morning. It's been some years since my last visit, but I took the transition back to smallest-town Africa like a fish to water. We indulged in chitenge fabrics, dry beans, boiled nyimu beans and eggs, before being dropped at the Namibian border and hitching a lift into Katima Mulilo with the only gay in the village. Katima has grown. Less dust, new shops, more cars on the road. People didn't take much notice of me when I walked into town the next day, crossing paths with a boomslang on the way. (As a child I recall how its very name was as ominous to the English ear as the snake.) I went to the market and unsurprisingly maxed out on more of my favourite goods: chitenges and beans.

Katima reigns in unusual characters with interesting stories, as ever. The local masseuse (yes, imagine), for example, is no less than a natural-medicine-toting missionary en route to Tanzania, on horseback, nogal. They were stopping over in Katima when her missionary father hit two drunk pedestrians at night on the main road. They await his court case. My old trailer home now houses a Scottish fish biologist who has spent the last 30 years in Africa and was just back from a consultancy in Liberia.

The Fish Farm is past its heyday and rather dilapidated, overgrown, unkempt. But it was good to be back in Carol's corner cottage, the birdsong in the early morning is overwhelming (they're certainly not complaining)  and I still feel fond of what was my fieldwork base in 2003-2006. Tatenda has returned from death's door and looks well and healthy on his anti-retrovirals. We dropped off medicine and foodstuffs for Bill, diagnosed recently with advanced cancer. His wife, the ever-resilient Lydia, gifted me with a bottle of her signature homemade lemonade in a Smirnoff Vodka bottle. Change is always in the air, but the Fish Farm friendships live on.

[ *names have been changed]

Bokkom Laan and the West Coast

Hopefield was founded by five Portuguese shipwreck survivors who married local women but, this afternoon as we look out across the rather barren landscape, instead of church bells we hear the imam’s call to prayer.  Something about the air and the colours of the sky here remind me of West Caprivi  - a rough beauty.  We drive to the coastal fishing town of Velddrif along a somewhat pitted and bumpy tar road – badly constructed or perhaps tar simply deteriortates fast on these sandy soils.  

Behind the counter at the curiosity shop on Bokkam Laan at the mouth of the Berg River, Dawie has already had several drinks by the time we arrive.  I buy a jar of honey (labelled, ‘This jar took about 6 months to make since we only have 2 bees in town’),  my friend J. buys some vintage cake tins, and we admire Dawie’s direct lines to President Zuma and Julius Malema.  In the spirit of the moment, I ask Dawie if I can also have some Klippies (cheap brandy) and coke – and there on the shop counter he readily pours me a glass that has almost more alcohol than mixer.  

Afterwards we drive to the local hotel, where one walks down a long orange corridor of bedrooms in order to reach the bar and restaurant.  The grass in front rolls down to the harbour’s edge and a few dilapidated piers, as the evening draws in.  We have another Klippies-and-coke and a plate of oily chips to keep the feeling going, and within a few minutes Dawie and colleagues have arrived too.  After all, it’s a small town.

Not long afterwards, we witness an extraordinary conversation between the drunken Dawie and a black waiter at a neighbouring table.  Or, rather, more of a monologue.  Dawie grasps the waiter’s hand firmly, for no short period of time, and tells him loudly in Afrikaans: “Don’t let anyone call you a k****ir!  You black bastard…I love you.  Call me white boy.  Don’t let anyone call you a k****ir!”  And all the while the black man shocked into a frozen fake smile and a nervous laugh, to try and show that he too finds this frightening interaction to be one of camaraderie.  Welcome to post-apartheid South Africa.  Parked in front of the bar inside, meanwhile, sits a row of about six Afrikaaners, one or two tattoos peeking out, and above them in the corner, a modest TV screen airs the SABC, the public broadcaster.  As they sit there drinking and talking, irony crystallizes in slow motion.  Historical footage scrolls across the screen, showing the faces of banned black activists during the struggle.  The ticker on the screen says ‘BANNED’.  The volume has been turned down to quiet, maybe silent, and the whole scenario is a parallel mimicry of what is happening outside with Dawie and the waiter.  The un-banning of apartheid, the coming of democracy,  is in many ways a silenced backdrop to those whites living in the backwaters of this country.

Two nights later, we eat at Die Vishuis on Bokkom Laan by the Berg River.  Having been under the impression that booking was imperative, it turns out that we are the only customers and, during the course of the evening, at least 4 other people in addition the waitress ask us if we're alright.  One of the new partners who comes over to check on our table is a former SADF colonel - he says he should have been a two-star general but wasn't promoted thanks to black empowerment policies.  He has moved to Velddrif from the government’s seat of power in Pretoria, to start a new life after his son nearly died in a motorbike accident. 

Over generous portions of fish and calamari, which was followed by dessert on the house, we talk about the coloured community in the Western Cape: the minstrels at New Year, the atmosphere of family inclusion, the men pushing prams and carrying babies along with the parade.   And yet this apparently joyous ritual and family festivity is juxtaposed by the harsh reality that the Western Cape is marked by systemic and structural violence, the most peculiarly extreme individual acts of violence, and the highest rates of child sexual abuse on the whole continent.  

For the next few days we drive from place to place.  The turquoise warm-watered Langebaan.  Jacobsbaai with all its rock pools perfect for curious children.  Trendy Paternoster and its properties in the 3 -7 million rand range.  And Darling, bohemian gay village which is home to "grandma and grandpa Wendies", retired academics and artists (local lingo from J.).  It's also home to the superb museum of political satirist and cross-dressing comedian Pieter Dirk Uys.  

Uncharacteristically I nearly miss my flight back to Johannesburg.  Luckily my taxi driver - a Zimbabwean probably far too educated for his current occupation - arrives 10 minutes early, at which point I realize that I am already an hour late.   Norman puts his foot down and speeds to the airport at 130 km/hr.  I barge through queues and make it just in time.  I text Norman afterwards to apologise for asking him to break the speed limit.  His response:  “It’s okay…I was enjoying it…lol…kuonana [see each other] very soon!”

To Otambura, hill of marble and myrhh

So the journey continued, with 2 four-wheel drives, 2 dogs, and 4 unusual and remarkable women whom I greatly value.   It was completely the right combination.  We were a spectrum of ages and backgrounds; and we were collaborative in the easy way that women often are.  Carol assumed the role of chief tea-maker. We had a small teapot which served 3.5 cups, too small for tea for all of us at one sitting, so a compulsive tea-maker like Carol was a requisite for the journey.  I was chief packer, at least for one of the vehicles, which was a good challenge for my rather poor spatial awareness skills, not to mention an ode to my expert-packer parents.

I caught up on sleep and began to wake up early with first light. We saw both sunrise and sunset most days, and we forgot what day of the week it was.  I had neither a watch nor a phone to look at, so I never knew what time it was either. It was a relief to let go of scheduling altogether.

We drove for another day through dusty Sesfontein to the ochre sand plains of Puros, through kilometres of mysterious fairy circles that none of the experts can explain.  In Puros, herds of oryx graze together with cattle, the lifeblood of the Himba people. 

Our camp was frequented by pearl-spotted owls and gurgling crimson-breasted shrikes. The landscape is arid, striking, and older than the human mind can begin to imagine.   The Himba are as exotic as the reputation that precedes them -- and for the most part seemed disinterested in us and the outside world, including the women whose 'traditional homestead' we visited.

From there, on to Orupembe on an unmapped 'back route’, which only allowed a speed of 20-30km/hr, and much of it up a dry river bed.  After about 3 hours of driving, and having not seen any sign of human life for all that time besides one other tourist group and a handful of unused Himba kraals, we came across a lone Himba man standing in the river bed, selling some crafts, probably one of the most remote hawkers in the world.  We had no common language with him, though he spoke a little Afrikaans: apartheid’s legacy found its way here, even to the remote northwest.

Not far from Orupembe was Otambura lodge, our taste of luxury for the week, with its infinity decks and views forever, blending into the dry hills. Groves of commiphora – the myrhh of biblical fame – are the defining characteristic of Otambura. 

They are a litany of curious trees, thriving on a bedrock of none other than marble. Threads of lava and ancient metamorphoses wind this way and that amongst the boulders. The metamorphic rocks of the Kunene date to over 1800 million years old, so perhaps no surprise that these commiphora trees are like a foreign language from a different epoch. Their papery peeling bark rustles, clicks, whispers in the air currents; they sport flowers and pods like I’ve never seen before.  Nowadays, the myrrh is harvested by ochre-clad Himba women and sold to L’Oreal as part of community conservation projects.

Our Otambura guide was a man called Onuva.  Alice and I visited his seasonal homestead on the plain, and met his sisters and wife, who were dressed in the traditional way, as most Himba women seem to be.  They were friendly, relaxed, proffered jewels - to which I succumbed – and a taste of woodsmoked maize porridge from the communal cooking pot.

Beyond the biblical trees, my enduring impression of Otambura is an all-encompassing night-time silence that makes me hunger for more.  One late night, I stepped out under the sky, looked up, even though I hadn’t planned to, and stood paralysed in complete wonder.  It sounds cliched, but I was bowled over by my own insignificance under its vastness.  Not much time for philosophising though....from there, the journey back south began and our final nights were spent in the happy crook of boulders near Sesfontein and Twyvelfontein respectively.

The Awaited Journey: Namibia’s Far North West

August brought with it Namibia and a journey I’d long been waiting for: to travel through Erongo and into the far north west to Kunene region.  The stylish Alice joined me from London, and we met at Jozi airport before boarding for Walvis Bay, where Angela collected us from the next-slowest immigrations queue after Heathrow Terminal 1-3.

We began in Swakopmund on an uncharacteristically sunny day, and took Angela’s dogs for a customary walk along the beach.  The next morning we were off and away with streamlined luggage and camping gear.  We edged our way up the Skeleton Coast for 4 hours and then down an unmarked gravel track to Wereldsend, an oasis set amidst the lilacs and ochres of ancient hills and plains. 

We arrived in time for a sunset walk with Namibia’s premier conservation doyennes.  The space of Wereldsend and its surrounds is pure exhilaration.  Space, openness, and the curious feel of being with people that one has a history with.  There is grass, white grass, as far as the eye can see, uncharacteristic thanks to the heavy rains this past season, and the one before that.

Across the plains, ostrich, zebra, springbok, and the incredibly regal oryx feed in abundance. I saw my first desert elephant, and the fake-dead Weltwitschia plants which can live to be more than 1500 years old.  As Carol says, “So when Jesus was kicking around, these were here…”

Our next day in Wereldsend brought the first clouds in 3 months, graffiti-sweeps across a monumental sky.  The sunset was fluorescent, its pinks almost artificial, before we headed back to camp to imbibe the aroma of woodsmoke.  Poor Alice, fresh from London, was dealt endless lion stories around the campfire by the bush old-timers, including the one about MJ and GOS’ first night together, when GOS had his foot mauled. Uber-romantic to the extent that it no doubt created the first of their lifelong bonds. No wonder Alice nearly had a heart attack when I stepped out of the tent to pee during the night, having just heard a hyena.   I had to reassure her the next morning that it was probably about 3km away.