Namibia weblog 2006

18th October 2006

Rosanne writes....

Last night we rode our bikes in the fading evening light to quickly collect some papers. We took the whole trip through sand tracks, pedalling fast through the deep loose sand. The trick is not to fall off when the sand swims under you. We sped past the Bush Bar, lit up and already pusling kwaito music with a strong bass beat. Some students were laughing and jostling with each other and making the night seem carefree. A couple of lorries thundered past on some suicide mission of high speed and sucked us towards them in their slipstream. But on the way back the rush had passed, and we lingered in the warm wind and pink and mauve skies. Already a tiny slip of moon was showing and this has been our marker, counting our months here. Our first night in hot hot Namibia was with such a tiny sickle moon early in the evening, and tonight’s was Number Twenty Six. So I suddenly had pang of needing to savour and cherish some of the things which are going to be just fading memories soon.

Every morning we sit and stare out of the minibus window at the morning world. I love to see the roads so full of activity. The gangs of school kids on their way to school, all in cornflower blue shirts and grey trousers or skirts, with fat grey socks up to the knee in the winter and tiny pert little white socks in the summer. The boys have shaved heads, the girls have astonishing creations of braiding and complex hair extensions. There are always a few smart guys in fancy jackets with the designer label firmly stitched on the cuff and immaculate trousers. These men wear Shoes. The coolest African fashion is slightly upturned winkle pickers in glossy crocodile skin or beige patent leather plus gilt buckles. A few women will be in power clothes too, tight skirts in bold African prints and then a tunic top with gigantic embroidered shoulder pads or sleeves. The prints and colours are wild. We have seen dresses with portraits of Nelson Mandela, the Virgin Mary; prints featuring saucepans, chess pieces, standpipes and taps, mobile phones, sandals; and in colour mixes to make your heart miss a beat with shock: yellow and maroon, orange and green, blue orange and black….. Most of the women are sensibly wearing their everyday costume of a large billowing child’s frock, often with numerous petticoats and a fancy headdress tied and knotted in a thousand different ways.

A few cyclists wobble past. Most of the traffic is taxis driving in a particular learned style, with no driving test and a preferred need to shoot red lights, skid round corners, duck and dive through traffic, cram seven or eight passengers into the poor wrecked body of an old Toyota Corolla, and when anyone wants to get out, screech to a halt off the road, in a cloud of dust. Looking at the accidents is a pastime we all enjoy. We go past the gathered crowd slowly and all comment on what must have happened.

People are doing delicious things. The old lady under a canopy of dustbin liners is selling fat cakes, the local doughnut. Eager boys are coming away from her stand with their cake wrapped in newspaper. A stately woman is walking with an enormous box on her head and she sways slightly. A man is fast asleep in a wheelbarrow, under a tree. A ragged young man is looking at his woman and their child with utter delight.

I still get a thrill from the crazy shop names and sign writing. Today we passed a guy putting immaculate finishing touches to a picture of a glistening sausage. And every day we drive past a pinker than pink shop called Dave Touching and then the bars called Let’s Push, Sorry Bar, and Get A Life No 2. So every day I am full of silly smiles for all of that.

I have identified five smells I want to keep saved. The bush plant that is scorned by all creatures and has a sharp sage-like smell in the wind is delicious to me. It is elusive, only wafting by at unexpected moments, or can be caught on a walk out in the wild places on a dry scorched evening as I brush past. Then there is the fabulous rich and meaty stew of a smell that is the after rain smell. It is pungent and refreshing and manages to be both earthy and sandy; and in the morning air, breathing this in is like champagne.

Then there is the smell of the Oshana when it is growing time. I think it is grasses, but could be some small shy plants, but it has a beautiful smell of fertility, and the baskets when they are freshly woven have an echo of this smell. Next, neighbourhood gardens. As we walk through the suburban neighbourhood, dusty paths, lolling dogs, kids in the street making mud pies, there are frangipani, gardenia and other heavily fragrant scents wafting. Lastly, a smell that can be found anywhere and at any time: woodsmoke. It is there in the early morning, in the market, in the villages, on the students’ clothes. Glorious.

And I want to savour my random mornings when I do not leave for work when it is still cool and the sun is just rising. The weekends are for such mornings out on our plant-strewn terrace, with sun and a warm breeze and a big jug of coffee and papaya or pineapple or mango and the whole day ahead. And every night is a night for stargazing, watching the whole lunar cycle, watching the constellations slowly edging by.

We will go to Etosha this weekend, possibly for the last time. Maybe we will see a leopard, the last chance for that elusive dream. We will drive slowly along the whiter than white pan’s edge and park and gaze out into the mirage and the hundreds of kilometres of emptiness. Maybe a wind will blow.

I will savour the heat which is intensifying every day. When I venture out into the campus, to the little garden where some roses are in flower and nurses and grass proliferate, the heat smacks me and beats down on me and it feels wonderful.

One more blog to follow...

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