Namibia weblog
November 8th 2004
"The thought of spending a weekend in our stifling house - with the only chance of a brief moment of cool offered by having lunch and a swim in the next town's lodge - was too daunting. We had heard talk of a place to camp up on the Angolan border, by the river, in the shade - We couldn’t afford it but it was a compelling thought. After our Thursday volley ball we sat and plotted and agonised about the car hire charges. we gathered eight willing participants but just one car and decided to squeeze and share: three plus kit and five pressed bodies in a hire car - a valiant little Toyota Tazz with fully functioning air conditioning and hardly any petrol thirst. We were heading North. The road says Oshikuku and Angola and it's straight and good. We drove through the huge empty flat plain which will flood soon if the rains come. Everywhere you look there is paleness, beiges, a blur of mirage, a palm or thorn tree here and there, and the fierce glare of the sun. Boys were driving small herds of thin horned cattle, donkey carts were carrying water, women slowly carrying large loads on their heads, and the usual groups of two or three in tattered trousers or full and gaudy frocks were flagging down any car to insist on a lift. On and on, nothing changing for two or more hours. Through a straggling town with a baobab tree. Past the half finished and ridiculously ostentatious Ministry of Finance building. Why here? why at all? what for? All the way we drove alongside the storm drain or canal which carries water from Angola to the northern region of Namibia. People use it in slightly different ways from canals back in Europe: no boats, no inviting pubs and no lock keepers; instead washing parties with magnificent multicoloured and multishaped drying displays on the fence or thorn bushes; boys' swimming parties with lots of showing off; herds slaking their thirst; some men fishing. Everyone waves, creating an infectious sense of gaiety. Right at the border we entered a short no-man's-land and parked the car to get out and gawp. We were at a massive rock-face with crags and jagged outcrops and a truly enormous drop of some hundreds of metres. It is Ruacana Falls and it was dust dry, save for a few green, festering pools at the base. This mighty beast becomes a falls as large as Victoria Falls, but for only as long as the water lasts. It was extraordinary to see it hungry and dry. The heat blazed and there was hardly a sound but a few birds and crickets. The silence was enormous and we were very small. Two Himba tribesmen appeared out of nowhere carrying their hunting cudgels. They were dressed in their casual dress, which is a compromise from their traditional red ochre dyed apron of leather into something a bit more contemporary. These two had a thick hide belt with shells and decorations and a cloth worn as a shawl and a blue spotted handkerchief and a cloth tied to the belt to act as covering front and back. They were hunting and said they lived nearby. They complained that the lack of water was making their cattle suffer, but they beamed at our compliments about their beautiful country. We drove on to a campsite at a bend in the Kunene River, called Hippo Pool. This would have been pleasure enough to stop at, quiet riverside calm, with a fish eagle swooping, a pied kingfisher, darting bright green birds and the lazy hum of insects. Definitely a place to come back to - just two hours away. We started on the more adventurous leg of the journey, on the dust and gravel road. We had been warned by other travellers' tales of disaster on this road: the floods made it impassable, it was boulders and rifts. Others said it had recently been regraded and was fine even in a little car. The first thing was to crawl up a considerable hill, but just as we were nearly at the top Michael our driver saw a view of the river below and stopped for a better look. Disaster. No way would the car get under way again on the slippery grit. We had several attempts and in the end rolled down the hill again for a second attempt. Over the brow of the hill the whole expanse of a new country opened out in front of us - Angola, green, forested, mountainous, endless, with the river that formed the boundary down below. We were so excited -it was so different. The down slopes were taken at an alarming rate and the drive from then on became a bit of a boy-racer rally drive, with all passengers offering advice about imminent sand swamps or holes or boulders. The road seemed indeed to have been newly surfaced or bulldozed, as there were ridges of stuff at each side. At times an old pathway could be seen, rutted and destroyed by the water course. We gradually realized that the strange terrain we were driving through might once had been a riverbed, gigantic, maybe an ocean, but with smoothed stones and a long low flattish bottom. We got glimpses of the sedate Kunene river as we passed, little vistas of sage green water shining beyond the tall trees, flashes of serenity, cool, inviting.
The Himba villages were different: their huts made of wattle and daub, the roof squared, sometimes huts were clad in cloth, red ochre coloured, with many little shelters for shading goats. I was longing to photograph these, but the communities were so peaceful and busy with chatting and sitting about that to stop would have been to intrude. We drove on, thrilled to have seen these people in their wilful rejection of modern living, happy to continue as their ancestors had done. The government wants to school them and dress them, but they resist, for now. They want to prevent a large hydro electric plant from flooding the valley, worried that their lifestyle will be threatened in many ways by this.
We played all the next day, starting with yoga on the riverbank and then quickly collapsing into mad romping in the pool. We drove home, repeating all the scary fun of the drive, with that complete feeling of days well spent in holiday, skin stretched with sea or pool, hot with sunburn, totally content."
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And then the campsite! Imagine the pleasure of finding a lush green Eden on the edge of the river, shaded by high luxurious trees and underplanted with bananas and lilies. We were alone there and pitched camp with views of the river in dappled shade. There was a wooden decking platform out over the river with tables to sit at; we parked ourselves to watch for crocodiles and birds and drink cold beers. We swam in a little murky swimming pool, sat and gazed some more, snoozed and gossiped. We made such a feast to cook on the braai: fillet steak and spiced sausages and then plenty of foil-wrapped parcels: potato, stuffed peppers, sweet potato, onion pieces and oil and garlic. Few troublesome mosquitos and lots of red wine and then the stars shone wildly on us as we sat in total darkness on the platform. It was heaven. I could only identify Orion upside down, and so was content just to be sparkled on.