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 2nd 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.
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