END OF NAMIBIAN ROAD

We left, gearbox intact, bank balance radically reduced, and headed to Rehoboth on the Kalahari Highway where we treated ourselves to a overnight stop at the dam. Theo had a go at catching the fish jumping brazenly in the water.  Then on to Mariental where we expected a slightly bigger town than what we saw.

One of the things which make travelling to new town exciting is wondering about the town and what it’s made up of before you get there. An imaginary picture pops into your head of a general dealer and the cutest gift shop where a chatty, friendly girl sells unusual local crafts and goodies so you can buy just the right gift for your family back home and she even points out a 2^nd hand book shop and invites you to her house to read your palm or show you her travel photos and you meet her exotic looking boyfriend who’s into falconry or is studying to be an entomologist and tells you fascinating things about insects.  Wide shady roads flanked by old fashioned houses with brookielace stoeps lead you down to the market where you can buy fresh farm veggies and free range eggs.  There must always be a pub where you can meet the friendly locals over a cold beer and if not get offered a job then at least get invited to park the truck in some generous persons yard.

When the sign says 50 k’m to go you start thinking about things you might need like tomatoes or toilet paper and whether you should stop at the tourist info centre.  Eventually, over the koppie you see a cluster of roofs peeping out, their walls growing longer as you get nearer.  You’ve arrived but its 1 o clock and the only shop selling toothpaste is closed.  The whole town has buggered off for lunch except a lady waiting for Pep Stores to open so that she can buy another hankie. There’s no gift shop, info centre or anybody at the bar.  It’s just you and the 3 beggars in the parking lot who accosted you hoping to bum a few dollars.   You leave town and forget to buy Doom to exterminate the excessive flies.  It’s never what you expect.  

Arriving at bigger towns I anticipated busty German ladies serving draught beer in noisy pubs nestled in between quaint old German buildings dating back to another century.  You arrive, all spruced up and find all the shops are open but everyone in the country is out there doing their shopping as well.  After driving around in hectic traffic (anything more than 3 bakkies, a traffic light and a pedestrian crossing confuses you at this stage) you eventually find the laundry.  There’s no place to park the truck nearby so you give up and decide to do your washing at the next small town except you know in the back of your mind that you haven’t seen a laundry for the last 2 villages.  Instead you walk the streets among the working force, popping into deli’s and curio shops all selling the same stuff.  You leave town none the wiser for its secrets but you’re happy with your cold six pack of Tafel beer and a loaf of dark molasses sour dough bread under your arm.           

Another unexpected thing about Namibia is that everyone speaks Afrikaans so you barely feel as though you’ve left home.  The nation is made up of 4 million people consisting of some white people, many more bustars (better known as coloured / brown folk in SA) and then mostly black people.   A mixture of 2 million modern people live in the big city of Windhoek, while another 1 million live in smaller cities of Swakop, Walvis, Keetmans and Luderitz and serving industry and commerce from fishing to florists.   The remaining 1 million people must live in the few villages widely spread throughout Namibia, and work in Pep Stores.  some big enough to accommodate a hotel, a boerevereniging and of course the obligatory Pep Stores, while other villages are actually just a farm with a petrol station. The open stretches of sheep and beef farmers fill vast spaces in between these villages and then there’s 100’s of lodges. I hear a lot more people live in the north but unfortunately we didn’t get there.

As you drive past surprisingly many mountains and surprisingly green bushveld (in summer) you see a farm house and wonder about the people who live there.  How long have they been living there and what are they having for dinner in their kitchen filled with all kinds of things which I could only wonder about?     We stopped overnight before reaching Aroab when we spotted a shady pullover under a tree on the roadside which happened to be close to a farmhouse.  Within 10 minutes the family had come over to meet us, offered us free milk and tomatoes, we swapped a bunch of movies with their 16 year old son and they even invited us to join them for coffee and a church service at Galloway (± 100 km away) early next morning.   We certainly never expected that. 

Next day we chanced the less graded gravel roads, thunder still cracked in the distance threatening rain every night but tough. We arrived at Aroab and stayed over at the municipal camping site for R5 p.p.p.n.  How frigging cheap is that?  Not totally unexpected though since we had read Toast’s article in the January issue of Weg magazine about his trip to southern Namibia in which he mentioned the spot.  When it cooled down we went for a walk and discovered Aardvark spoor which we tracked back to its hole.  Later that evening we took our chairs and a torch down to wait for him to emerge but no luck.

We crossed back into SA at the border town of Ariamsvlei with my new stone collection and rocks but we were concerned that the bike on the back of the truck didn’t have entry papers.  We had produced our ownership papers when entering Namibia but only realised later that we hadn’t actually been issued cross border papers for the bike.   We encountered many roadblocks in Namibia where occasionally a cop would ask about the caravan papers but after big smiles and a chat we explained that it didn’t have a chassis and was fixed onto the truck.  No-one ever asked about the bike, not even back at the SA border.

If you’re so inclined to smuggle stolen vehicles across the border, then all you have to do is hang bells and whistles from the vehicle which you are towing and perhaps no-one will look upfront and notice the fancy tractor you are perched on and smuggling across.

So what did I enjoy about Namibia?  I loved the fact that you don’t drive past dozens of factories spewing smoke or rows and rows of chicken runs to feed the masses.  I loved the simple lifestyle and the friendly, down to earth people who aren’t racing to evolve into a high tech breed of society. Mostly, I loved all that space.             

IS YOUR CUP HALF FULL OR HALF EMPTY
I don’t think it really matters.  Nor does the shape of the cup matter, but what does matter is what’s inside your cup.
And the plot thickens.  All part of the trip which we will remember I’m sure.  To cut a long story short, we slept on the road for 2 days, waiting for the mud puddles to dry up, got stuck a second time on the same 30 km road before hitting the tarmac back to Omaruru.  The mozzies were having a fat jol in all the water puddles and we hadn’t taken anything for malaria but quite frankly my dear …...  We decided to give Etosha and the Caprivi a miss and rather tour around the south of Namibia where rain floods weren’t a problem. We arrived in Omaruru and Theo announced that the gear box wasn’t working so lekker.  Happy days. 
We chatted to a guy at a pullover about the rain and road conditions up north while he waited to buy a big red rooster.  I didn’t ask.  He told us about the time the floods hit Rundu one year.  He woke up to a flap flap flapping noise.  The river had come down and was running through his house and a big fish was flapping under his bed.  He said crocodiles and all kinds of animals get washed down.  I chatted to a homeless 15 year old Herero boy who spent the night sleeping on top of a roadside table.  We gave him some breakfast and he showed me his pocket album filled with happy photos of himself, other young boys and volunteer girls. I read some letters written to him from the foreign girls and I realised they worked at the Haven which I suspect he had run away from.  He was educated and couldn’t have been on the street for very long.  We gave him a pep talk about going back but I wondered what would become of him and what had happened in his past life. 
Next morning the gears seemed to be a bit better so we moved on to Okahanja where a mechanic looked at it, said it should hold till we reached Windhoek where we could go to a gearbox place.  We booked into a campsite and wow, like wow.  You have no idea how blissful it was to soak in a bath and scrub.  I cleaned the inside of the caravan and Theo hosed down six inches of mud on the bike and the bottom of the truck and six inches of salt packed on the rest of the truck accumulated from Kleinzee to Henties.  We chatted to other travellers camping, mostly Germans, who also had changed from their original plans to go north after hearing about the heavy floods. 
Next day we left for Windhoek, all spic ‘n span and broke down 20km before reaching the city.  We were stuck without any gears.   There wasn’t really much space to pull over and heavy traffic zoomed past into Windhoek at 4.30 in the afternoon.  But wait, over the fence was a truck place.  Gert, the owner at Truck and Cab had us towed the 200m into the yard and will open up the gearbox tomorrow.  He said luckily it didn’t happen on the other side of Windhoek or towing would have cost a fortune or further south at Keetmanshoop where there aren’t always spares readily available. We thought bloody hell, luckily it didn’t happen in the bundus on the way to Etosha where’s there’s buggerall. And so we wait. 
Well, turns out we need a new gearbox.  We contacted our insurance to put a claim in since the gearbox gave problems after working it hard from trying to get out of the mud. They aren’t happy.  R26 000 later we have a reconditioned gearbox and new clutch plate but we’ve been sleeping here at the garage for nearly a week waiting for the work to be completed and for our own money to be released from savings to pay the truck place.  I’m feeling down.  It’s been raining most of the time so we can’t even explore the area by bike.  We did go into Windhoek one day to shop for a few groceries, visited the most uninteresting museum ever, made a bee-line for Joe’s Beerhouse, apparently the one place you have to visit in Windhoek but they were closed. 
The whole truck breakdown has really affected my psyche.  I’m depressed to realise that life really does revolve around money.  I mean, if we didn’t have backup funds we’d be totally screwed.  What happens when that runs out?  We aren’t looking for work right now cos we have to be back in South Africa in April to renew the truck license and have the roadworthy tested again so our time here is limited.  No prospect of any income, and sitting here a week waiting for our payment to be cleared has made me feel like a criminal and a failure.  Yes we have our health and yes there are people out there who don’t have anything but its not about being thankful for what you have its about how you feel inside.  Right now my insides are despondently sad.  We watched a movie on the laptop earlier which made me think.  The chick said feeling sad is easy cos it means you’ve given up.  Our lifestyle to permanently travel this way was our own choice and we have always felt proud, no matter if we are parked in a friendly persons driveway or in the bundus by ourselves but today I feel like a squatter waiting for my luck to change.  
I’m sure my spirits will lift once we leave here.  Gert has been friendly, in fact he even took us into town this morning to get more groceries and is letting us use a bathroom with a shower behind the factory.  I would also want payment for work done before letting customers disappear.   More fights lay ahead with the insurance though and hopefully we will be refunded.  Can money buy back your mojo?
      

BUTTERFLY, MY BUTTERFLY WAIT FOR ME DON’T FLY AWAY

BUTTERFLY, MY BUTTERFLY WAIT FOR ME DON’T FLY AWAY

Well we did get out of the mud.  Eventually.  After more rain.  A tractor tried for hours and eventually pulled us out, in the pouring rain.  When the rain stopped thousands and thousands of white butterflies fluttered by.  What a wonderful site. They all seemed to be going somewhere.  I wish I knew where.  Definitely somewhere more important than the mall.  We have been waiting 4 hours for the road to dry out (ha that sounds familiar) before turning back to the tarmac and the butterflies are still going by.   I wonder how this whole migration thing works.  There’s no memo that goes out to everyone saying pack up we’re moving south on the 13th at 09h00.  I can understand Wildebeest all migrating across the Serengeti but that’s more of a food thing.  I guess the main canoni Wildebeest nudges his buddy, hey dude the grass is greener on the other side.  His whole family move along, others join up and before you know it, 1 million Wildebeest trek off in search of better pastures.  The young are probably shown the odd landmark on the trek.  “Look Johnny, see that funny shaped mountain, it’s the halfway mark.  Flo, will you stop your whining, no we are NOT there yet and if you and your brother don’t stop fighting I’ll send you both to great aunt Mabel for the day and you can hear all about the good old days when the grass was sweeter before the Tsetse flies came along.”  Junior:  “Please no mother, she’s always on about us not swishing our tails enough”.  Translated into human simile that means “Aren’t you cold?  You must be cold, go put on a jersey before you get sick”.  Father Wildebeest puts an end to the whining.  “That’s enough children, you can be dam lucky you aren’t pulling an ox wagon over these plains.  Now follow my dung trail, eat grass and shut up”. 
So the butterflies are more of a solo thing since they don’t do the whole family thing in their cocoons. Thousands of them all going in the same direction are more intriguing to me.  Damm, its times like this that I miss having Wikipedia. Theo says he thinks they only live for a day cos what happens when the rain comes and their wings get wet.  So what, like they pop out of their cocoons and all just happen to fly in the same direction?  Keep the sun on the left, keep the sun on the left is all they think about for a day. Why don’t you get individuals who think to themselves, gee I think I’ll go left here at this bush. Where do they all go to is what I wanna know?  Are they off to their own butterfly Nevada?  It’s not like you come over a hill and there’s 4 million dead butterflies all lying in a heap.  What drives them?  Is it just to get laid?   I’ve forgotten the process again, do the worms bonk or is it the butterflies?  I know butterflies pollinate the flowers so do they pop out of their cocoons after a good stretch, think to themselves, wow that was an awesome dream, my goodness I feel different, less hairy today and hey look I can fly.  I think I’ll fly to that flower and suck out some juice.  Ooh look, there’s another one oh look there’s another.  My, I wonder if all those other butterflies know of a place where there are more flowers?  I think I’ll follow them.  Meanwhile the first butterfly is humming to himself, I believe I can fly, spread my wings and fly away……..as any right minded butterfly would, and next thing, jeez where did all these other dudes come from?  Follow me, I’m lost. There are hundreds of thin blue hairy caterpillars walking a thin blue line all over the show here as well.  I’m sure they must be connected to these butterflies.  I can just imagine them thinking, gee that butterfly reminded me of my old neighbour.  Same facial hair. 
All I do know for sure is, the guy who organised the tractor to tow us out the mud, said if you stand on one of the caterpillars, your foot will burn for 2 days.  What I’ll leave you with is, what came first the butterfly or the worm?                 

HERE I AM, STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU

HERE I AM, STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU
Driving from Henties to Spitzkoppe, I reflected on all the intriguing diamond smuggling stories we’d heard about along the whole West Coast from South Africa right up into Namibia.  Now the road took us away from immigrants on street corners offering you diamonds wrapped in old tissue paper and the bars filled with manne who either knew at least one person who made it big from smokkeling diamonds or they themselves had some dealings in the blink klippies, “maar ons praat nie uit nie”, is a well used expression.  More inland, the pigeons were safe to fly around without worrying about being shot out of the sky by a member of the pigeon security team since homing pigeons were sometimes used to smokkel diamonds in bags tied around their necks, sending the smugglers secret stash out of the secure mining areas.  
Back on the desert road, gravelly sand stretched all around us meeting the horizon.  We stopped in the desert overnight.  We walked to rocky outcrops and soaked up the desert stillness which is occasionally broken by the sound of a lonely bird in a lonely bush calling to anyone to hear its distant chirp in the desert sun.  We saw a variety of lizardy reptiles, painted in exotic colours, sunning themselves on the rocks.  No fences or power lines to be seen.  The occasional irritating beer bottle left to lie in the baking sun was the only evidence of man.  Not even Bear Grill would be able to survive out here. 
We stopped at Klein Spitzkoppe mountains where semi precious stones are excavated out of the mountains.  A cluster of poor people sell beautiful crystals for next to nothing, in fact favouring food in exchange for their collected stones. I couldn’t resist a crystal or 2 which cost us a little pap, sugar, veggies and rice.  We walked around the mountains and picked up a few more crystals ourselves.  I’ll dam well have to turn them all into jewellery or shove them up my bum like the diamond smokkelars but they are going back with me across the border.
Driving on to little towns, all having a Oma or a Otja in their name, and marked on the map with a reasonably significant white dot, we were to hoping to replace our burst tyre (we do have a second spare) and fill up our 2nd gas bottle.  Ha, no such luck.  You could only buy the odd groceries or a fuse or a pipe fitting etc at the general dealer and of course there’s ALWAYS a Pep Stores making sure everyone in the bundus has enough underwear and hankies.  We chatted to an old man standing in his shop doorway.  He told us that he moved to Usakos in 1954, as an apprentice, when the railway siding station was booming, having its own workshops, carpentry and stores.  He said that in those days, some people lived in tents or in garages and I definitely don’t think he made it up.  When the railway station died mid 90’s, so did employment opportunities and the town now barely survives on a bit of road works thereabouts and caracal sheep farming.  He gave us the lowdown on farming as well, saying that his friend, who had since moved to Cape Town, farmed on 60 000 hectare with 17 000 caracal sheep.  Caracal newborn lambs are slaughtered within a day for their pelts.  Shame.  My eye caught the antique looking wooden cupboards in the shop which were mostly bare but he proudly told us they had been custom made for the shop in 1922 when it first opened its doors for trade and that the shop had stayed in the same family ever since.    I imagined people coming into the shop, women in sweeping dresses and bonnets to buy a pound of sugar and men in breeches and braces to buy a pound of nails.

Then we moved on.  We had travelled the last 800km on good gravel roads but we were driving into the rainy area so decided to get onto tar roads for safety.  Tar roads here are nothing like home, no cats eyes, street lights or yellow lane for pulling over. Just a narrow tarmac stretching northwards, like the old N1 from Cape Town to Transvaal with a fuel garage at a dorpie if you are lucky.  Surprisingly the vegetation had changed to thick lush green grass, loads of acacia thorn trees, too thick to see the wild life we were passing, except an occasional family of warthogs running a fence line, stacks of raptors circling the skies and thunder rumbling in the distance. 
We had been well warned to stay off gravel roads during rain but the prospect of seeing dinosaur footprints about 30 km down a dirt road was too alluring. The sandy road seemed reasonably dry and firm so we risked it.  We negotiated the first pool across the road rather well and patted ourselves on the back saying we really shouldn’t underestimate our truck.  Right now I’m sitting in the truck where we spent the whole day and night stuck in the mud.  The only clowns to the left or jokers to the right is us, stuck in the middle of the mud.  Yesterday we dug, packed braai wood and our rubber conveyor belts and dug some more. The back wheel spat the conveyor belt out and the front tyre dug itself deeper.  Theo dug some more.  Eventually we gave up and ate massive mushrooms, bought from a woman on the roadside that morning and hoped the road would dry out during the night.  Thunder and lightening crashed through the night and it rained and rained and rained some more.  This morning the left front wheel is submerged in a mud pool. Theo and a Herero farmer, who pitched up on foot early this morning after also getting stuck 10 km back, have taken the bike down and gone in search of someone to tow us out.  Mmm, I wonder if you get 4x4 military tanks with a winch around here. 

I’ll see what the day brings.  The only footprints out here are Theo’s, squelched in the mud. The dinosaur footprints will have to wait for another day.
Manne  - men
Smokkeling - smuggling
blink klippies – shiny stones – word used to describe diamonds 

maar ons praat nie uit nie – mums the word

dorpie - village

And Thanx For All The Fish

AND THANX FOR ALL THE FISH
Henties Bay and its fishing frenzy go back a lonnng way.  People have been flocking to the coastal village from far and wide to hengel and others to fish during the holiday season since toeka se dae.  Eventually some of the manne met die kanna somer moved to Henties permanently and are still around to tell the tale.   
We rambled into town passing houses with names like Spyker se Gat, Die Vleisfreters and a hangout called Die Skubbebar which had a sign board stating Viswas, Karwas, Keelwas, Aas.  We had arrived at fisherman’s paradise and I could just imagine the tall fishing stories being conjured up here.  We pulled over next to very inviting looking pubs, quaint craft shops, fishing shops and a seal shoe shop (I knew you could do more with a seal skin than make a bedside maatjie).  Within seconds a bubbly woman came rushing over, waving a copy of December Weg magazine around vigorously.  Someone had posted a picture of our truck to Weg magazine and she was so excited to see us in real life that we had to pose for a photo, her clutching the Weg magazine while the truck looked very dusty, salt crusty and positively more rusty.  Besides being a keen photographer (she carried her camera around in a cooler box), she was connected to the local radio station, Kanaal 7, “Inspirasie vir die Nasie”.  We might have got mentioned over the air but unfortunately later that day we met Gaaring and his buddy who taught us how to hengel and that was us, off the radar. 
We met them just after experiencing our first tyre blow out which happened on the salt road around Henties’ endless magnificent coastline. Theo handled the moerse heavy tyre change fine and we were just done with cleaning up when Gaaring and Marius, who were out hengeling for the day, stopped to see if we needed any “refreshments”.  We ended up spending the weekend with them, which became a blur of fish, feast and I suspect fowl play when it came to our glasses which never emptied. 
We explored the coastline in their 4x4 bakkies, stopping when the sea looked right to cast a line.  Gaaring gave the men a head start to catch their fish while he hung over the back of his bakkie, telling stories from those days when Pick ‘n Pay was still a padstal and the Castle was still a tent.  He had Springbok fishing colours with a few records to show, and he knew the sea better than a woman’s body.  He claimed you could read a book from cover to cover while waiting for his cast to eventually land wayyy out in the ocean.  Theo caught a decent size Galjoen, about 1,2 kg’s which we braaied and which tasted deevine.  Sometime over the weekend we went to Mary’s house, Gaaring’s 73 year old hot looking girlfriend, and she fried some of the massive Kabeljou (Cob) which the manne had caught the previous day.  I didn’t get their weight but they were each about 3 foot long.  In between the fishing and hengeling (they explained the difference to a soutie like me and basically it seems it’s the difference between having either white mussel bait or coke for your brandy in your cooler box) we stopped at a cool pub and restaurant out in the middle of nowhere for a round or 2 or 3 of Jugermeisters.  The owner had 2 cute meerkate (surrogates) which were tame and I scratched their tummies while they jabbered away excitedly.  Gaaring got nipped and was hoping to catch klem in die kaak so that he could have an excuse to visit the new nursie at the doctors.  
We recuperated on the beachfront near town for a day, and got chatting to a young guy who together with his dad, do fishing tours up to Angola.  We nearly changed our plans to go to Angola instead of the Delta and Etosha, after hearing his stories about how cheap diesel and fruit & veg was and abundant fish.  We later found out that we should have done the paperwork (visas, letter of invite and yellow fever) in advance otherwise it costs a fortune. About R5 000 just for the visa. Diesel price had also gone up 2 months ago from R2,50 to R4,50 / litre – still cheap but our budget didn’t cover all the sommetjies . 
The newspapers up here all report heavy rainfalls further north – rivers flooding their banks and the gravel roads sound treacherous.  Since we’re heading in that direction we should be in for some excitement.  I must be honest, I’m a bit dubious about mud roads and malaria mossies. We are in two minds as to whether to take Malaria tablets or not since we met many people who proclaim the tablets give worse side effects that you’d like.  In fact Riaan, The Angolan fishing tour operator said he’s seen people go a bit bossies from taking the stuff and run around naked in the desert.  I didn’t tell him that Theo does that anyway without a dose of quinine.      
We’re not leaving Henties with a freezer full of fish since it’s not the best time of the year to catch fish, being January, but I do have a nice pair of handmade seal leather hiking boots for R450 and a bottle of seal oil for R45 containing polyunsaturated amino acids which is supposedly very good for you.  All I know is it smells and tastes like the insides of old vrot fish.  I hope those oomies at Doringbaai knew what they were talking about.

Henties Bay, fish, Weg magazine, hengel, 4x4 bakkie, seal shoes, Malaria
Hengel- and excuse to drink with a fishing rod at the sea
Toeka se dae – since the beginning of time
manne met die kanna – men holding drinks
somer – just because
Spyker se Gat- Someone nicknamed Nail’s house
Die Skubbebar – The Fishscale Bar
Die Vleisfreters – The Meat Eaters
Viswas, Karwas, Keelwas, Aas – Wash your fish, your car, your throat and buy bait
Maatjie – small mat
Kanaal 7, “Inspirasie vir die Nasie”- Channel 7 “Inspiration for the Nation
Moerse - massive
Bakkies – pick up truck used by 99% of Namibians
Padstal – roadside farmstal
Braaied – barbeque
Sommetjies – maths sums
Soutie – English person
klem in die kaak - lockjaw
bossies- crazy
vrot – rotten
oomies – old timers