Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  The five-million-year-old sand changed colour from orange peel to burnt sienna under their feet as they climbed. The dune’s ridge had looked as thin and sharp as paper from below, but was just about fat and wide enough to keep their feet stable when they got to it. What they hadn’t allowed for was the sand grabbing your ankles at each step.

  It took an hour of tough walking to reach the top, Selima cursing the long piece of cardboard she’d tucked under her arms, on which to ride the descent. By then, their hamstrings were on fire. The ridge, with its hundreds of ‘evenly-spaced’, indentations, from feet trampling on each side, now looked for all the world like a dinosaur’s spine. This strange anatomy continued as hundreds of dunes curved and weaved as far as the eye could see. Some of them looked like bodies turned on their side. The low-hanging sun cast its magic like a lantern, sharp ridges dividing light from shadow.

  Freddie, Hannah, Selima and Joe hugged each other with the thrill of arriving at the summit. The view was unforgettable.

  ‘Now you can understand why they call it the “dune sea”,’ Selima proudly declared, bursting with a love of her country. Surely, however far and wide her new-found friends had travelled, they could never have encountered anything to match this. They might be citizens of the world, but now it was their turn to be humble in her world.

  Down below them, at the base of Big Daddy, were the 1,000-year-old, mummified trees of Dead Vlei. Stripped of the veins and arteries of leaves and twigs, the dead camelthorn trees looked like iron: architectural forms twisted into black question-marks against the iridescent blue of the sky. The desolation of the vlei made them shiver, even in the heat of mid-day. These were trees that had died in the eleventh century as William the Conqueror had claimed an exhausted England. Yet they were still standing. Salt killed and salt preserved. Salt didn’t forgive. Lot from the Bible stole into Freddie’s mind.

  The salt pan shimmered with a heat haze as they gazed down at it, giving the illusion of a very shallow lake. Yet there was no water, only hot air shimmering.

  ‘It’s like a graveyard for trees!’ Hannah exclaimed.

  ‘This is how the whole world will look if global warming can’t be stopped,’ Freddie added.

  They contemplated the fate of their planet in silence.

  ‘Why are you carrying that large piece of cardboard?’ Joe asked Selima.

  ‘I am using it to ride the dune.’

  ‘So, it has some hidden aerodynamic properties?’ Joe giggled.

  ‘Aerodynamic?’ Freddie exclaimed. ‘It’s about as aerodynamic as a front door!’

  ‘Depends how it’s used and who uses it,’ said Selima.

  They watched a group of their fellow students suddenly release themselves down the steep slopes of the dune as if fired from a gun. Some leaped down, shifting weight from one leg to the other, as if hopping on hot coals. Others jumped with both feet at the same time, enjoying the depth to which their feet sank and the reverberations back up their spines as they landed. Some ran straight down, others went diagonal. Their shadows raced, licking the sand.

  ‘It’s a tradition at Dead Vlei,’ Selima said, ‘to run down as fast as you can, without falling.’

  ‘There’s no vlei you’re going to be beat me,’ Freddie announced, already planning his route with his eyes.

  A diagonal is going to be quickest, Joe thought to himself, careful not to divulge it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Hannah screamed.

  Her foot had slipped off the ridge and was sucked down by what felt like an opening mouth of sand, its lips and tongue rolling up her leg.

  Freddie and Joe didn’t notice. There were already locked in an alpha male exchange of bragging rights. They ran along the ridge trying to find the perfect start-point.

  Selima thankfully came to Hannah’s aid.

  ‘Here, grab my hand!’ Selima said. ‘Sand can be treacherous, like water. It envelops you sometimes.’

  Hannah felt secure again in the grip of Selima’s outstretched arm. Selima felt strong and Hannah blushed with pleasure. She looked into Selima’s eyes to see if she’d noticed. She was sure she had. They both smiled.

  The boys broke the magic with their shouts.

  ‘Hey. Bloody win-at-all costs cheat!’

  Joe had pushed Freddie backwards on to his bum to give himself a head start and was running full pelt down the slope at a diagonal, having calculated that the pull of gravity would be more controllable at an angle.

  Freddie bounced back up and decided the only way to beat Joe was to run as fast as he could straight downwards.

  Freddie knew that you should, when running downhill, just relax your body and let gravity pull you down. Yet, there was nothing rational about running down the largest sand dune on the planet. He felt the exhilaration of warm air rushing against his face. There was a thrill in his legs gaining their own momentum, rejecting his brain’s message to slow down. One moment he was fully aloft. The next came the pounding of feet sinking in sand. Then up again like an angel. Down like an earthling. He was just about staying upright and drawing closer to Joe every second, but the pace was too fast. He slipped, fell with full force on to his side and then span like tumbleweed to the bottom. Fortunately, he encountered no stones or tree roots and finally rolled to a halt with a dull thud pounding in the back of his head, but eyes lit by the sky and laughter.

  Hannah meanwhile had plumped for jumping with both feet simultaneously, in a series of double thuds, like a kangaroo. She counted the sand dunes ahead of her as she jumped. Each time she landed she called out a number.

  ‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven…’

  Fascinated, she looked ahead at how the horizon lowered and the dunes opposite rose with every jump. The sand felt like a warm trampoline as she rose up, free and happy. Until, that is, she almost landed on Freddie’s head, which, upside down, took on the look of a grisly Greek mask.

  ‘Yikes!’ she screamed, missing his head by a fraction by falling sideways and away from his outstretched form.

  After a moment, they rolled towards each other and laughed with the thrill of surviving the run.

  Selima chose that moment to glide past them in a gracious arc, body flat, stomach down, on her improvised front-door of a sandboard. Her muscular arms lifted the front of the board above the sand to avoid friction.

  ‘Well done you two,’ she beamed.

  Joe, meanwhile, having ended his diagonal run a distance from them, ran to join the happy horde.

  Gradually their breathing became less staccato, slowed as one.

  They were the last of their group to reach Dead Vlei. They could see the others walking towards the coach in the distance. They gazed around at the medieval trees.

  ‘What can you see?’ Selima asked.

  ‘Dead trees and sand?’ Joe retorted.

  ‘No, look more carefully,’ Selima urged. ‘What can you see in the shapes of the trees? I can see an impala, rising- up, on two legs. See, over there!’ She pointed.

  ‘I can see a ballerina, leaning forward,’ Hannah said, taking up the theme.

  ‘And I see a man walking in a high wind,’ Freddie added.

  ‘A serpent trying to bite the clouds,’ Selima announced.

  ‘I can see all the letters of a new alphabet, one per tree,’ Joe added, ‘like a giant pop-up book.’

  They searched for each other’s forms as they called them out. It was like scanning clouds for shapes, but standing upright.

  ‘Do you think this vlei is what a dead planet looks like?’ Hannah questioned.

  ‘Actually, something remarkable happens here,’ Selima said, ‘about once every ten years. My mum often talks about it to tour groups. I remember seeing it when I was about five.’

  The others turned to her, expectantly.

  ‘There’s torrential rain. It comes down so hard and lasts so long
it feels as if the end of the world has come… like Noah’s flood. Then the river behind us – the Tsauchab – floods and bursts its banks. It sweeps out towards the ocean over there.’

  She could see the river in her mind’s eye, surging like a madman through the desert.

  ‘This vlei fills with water and stays full,’ she continued, ‘sometimes for up to a year, long after the flood has gone.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine this place alive,’ Freddie said, casting his eye over the vast saltpan, cracked like crazy paving as far as the eye could see.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Joe asked, captivated by Selima’s shining eyes.

  ‘It’s like nothing you can imagine. The dunes are reflected in the water… as if they had doubles. There are swarms of dragonflies, hovering, held in a trance. There are waterlilies on the lake, and devil-thorn flowers all around edge. Even the birds come.’

  They all looked at the desiccated dryness in front of them and tried to imagine the scene in Selima’s head.

  ‘Selima, I’m so glad we’ve met you,’ Hannah said, slipping her arm through Selima’s. Namibia was coming alive for her.

  ‘Me too,’ Selima smiled ‘I feel as if I have known you all forever. You just…didn’t appear until now. But you’ve always been there.’

  ‘Let’s set up a group… on WhatsApp,’ Joe suggested. ‘Come on, I’m taking the cover photo for it right now. Selfie time!’

  ‘How are you going to get all of us in, with the sand dunes as well?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said Joe.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve got a selfie stick! My mum says they’re the tourist curse.’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ Joe responded indignantly.

  He opened his rucksack, with its multitude of pockets and sewn-in ‘I love Math’ and ‘Silicon Valley’ badges. He retrieved a small, neat, zipped-up bag and opened it. It contained every kind of computer lead, charging cable, and adapter imaginable, plus a series of neatly arranged specialist screwdrivers. He unzipped an inside pocket and pulled out a Stanley knife and some silver gaffer tape.

  ‘This is Joe’s version of a first aid kit. It’s for computers, not people,’ Freddie observed.

  ‘Sure, who cares about people? They only have a finite time left,’ Joe observed. ‘Can I borrow your sandboard?’ he asked Selima.

  Selima handed it over, an act of trust she had rarely bestowed.

  ‘You don’t mind if I just add an extra feature?’ he asked.

  Joe proceeded to cut the cardboard, fold and tape it, at one end of the sandboard, to make a kind of holder. He then strapped his mobile phone inside it. He picked up the sandboard with the mobile phone carefully taped to its far end. The six-foot distance between him and the phone allowed for the perfect, wide-angle photo.

  ‘This should give us the right field of vision. Right everyone come and stand at this end.’

  ‘There’s only one problem,’ Hannah observed. ‘How are you going to be able to reach as far as the phone to take the picture?’

  ‘Ah. I have a cunning alternative to extendable arms. It’s called a timer and it’s already set. OK everyone, smile!’

  As Joe and Freddie held the sandboard up, they all struck up the crazed poses that social media required. After a few shots, the sandboard started to droop at one end under the weight of Joe’s mobile.

  ‘Uh-oh. That last one’s a sky shot,’ Joe exclaimed, as the board wilted under the weight of his mobile, tilting it backwards.

  Photos complete, Joe gave the sandboard back to Selima and returned his mobile to his pocket. He felt accomplished.

  As they walked on through the blackened camelthorns, touching the bark for luck, they tried to agree a name for their WhatsApp Group.

  ‘The Augustineums?’ Freddie suggested.

  ‘No, that leaves Selima out,’ Joe said chivalrously. ‘Anyway, it sounds too pompous.’

  ‘Four Go Mad in Namibia?’ Freddie offered.

  ‘Likely to happen!’ Selima laughed.

  ‘Four Sides of One Rectangle!’ Joe suggested.

  ‘No, Joe!’

  ‘I’ve got it, Freddie said. ‘Just look around us…’

  ‘What?’ Selima asked.

  ‘The Four Teenagers of the Apocalypse!’ Freddie declared.

  Eight feet stopped as one. The name was settled.

  That evening, the air was like water: clear, clean, free of sand at last. The temperature was kind, no bite from either heat or cold. They tumbled out of their tents, limbs aching but minds alert.

  Selima had persuaded her mother to let her sleep in the same tent as Hannah and not, as was customary, with her. Any hurt Ilana felt was banished by the warmth she felt on seeing Selima find some soulmates. She always worried about her only child spending too much time on her own; or tagging along with Darius.

  She had shouted at the four straggling, giggling teenagers - the last to board the coach that afternoon - but it had been a happy shout, its anger just a pretence to please the driver.

  ‘Do you think the rest of us are happy to just sit here in the boiling heat waiting for you four to turn up?’

  She felt love for these three strangers who had taken her daughter instantly and instinctively into their world.

  The four of them spent early evening at the camp, half-exhausted and half-drunk on friendship; exchanging stories and fragmented notes on their lives; taking it in turns to play music from Spotify and share frustrations about their parents.

  Now, a path snaked into the distance in front of them, lit by flares on both sides. At the end of this ‘runway’, in the near distance, was an enclosure lit from within by fire.

  ‘That’s the Boma,’ Selima said.

  ‘Boma?’

  ‘They sometimes call it a Kraal as well. It’s an enclosure to keep the animals safe. They often use it for special meals.’

  ‘Ironic,’ Joe observed.

  Selima looked at him blankly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Building an enclosure to keep animals safe and then cooking them inside it,’ he explained.

  ‘Don’t you tell stories in a Boma?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘Sure do!’ Selima called back, dancing up the path in anticipation.

  As they drew closer, the Boma glowed ever stronger against a dark, moon-bereft sky. What was going on inside was hard to see. A wall of wooden stakes, interwoven skilfully, was built around the Boma’s perimeter, hiding its innards from view. They could hear well enough though…

  There were drums with a beat as steady as a Masaai warrior’s heart. There was clapping, its rhythms moving and shifting like sands in a storm. Overlaid on both were cries and whoops that seemed to call for the missing moon.

  They rounded the perimeter and entered the Boma via a spiral that opened out like a shell.

  In front of them as they entered, were ten Herero men and women singing and swaying like a gospel choir.

  ‘Welcome to you all.

  Welcome to you all.

  Welcome to you all,

  To the Boma.’

  It was a warm river of welcome. The sound reverberated off the inner walls, on which were hung a series of tribal masks for decoration.

  In the centre of the Boma was a firepit, its scaffolding of criss-crossed logs ablaze, inside a circle of heavy stones. Spiralling outwards from the fire were lights of other kinds: paper lanterns on the sandy floor; oil lamps on dining tables set in a semi-circle, and finally electric lights which shone upwards into the canopies of the surrounding trees. It was as if the firepit had lit its own solar system and now stood at the centre.

  The meal was delicious. There were ‘kapana’: strips of red meat sizzling on the grill and then dipped in a chilli, tomato and onion sauce. There were ‘fat cakes’: deep-fried balls of dough served straight from the pan.
r />   ‘Carnivore’s paradise,’ exclaimed Joe as he tore into the juicy meat to Selima’s amusement.

  ‘What is that?’ said Hannah poking at Joe’s plate.

  ‘Kudu steak,’ said Selima. ‘One of our specialities.’

  ‘What? Kudu as in those delicate little creatures that leap around with horns?’ Hannah replied incredulously.

  ‘Antelope yes. This is the best game meat you’ll ever taste,’ said Selima, plunging her fork in and enjoying Hannah’s squeamishness.

  ‘Not for Hannah it won’t be,’ Freddie interjected. ‘She’s vegetarian.’

  Selima spluttered.

  ‘You’re what? Vegetarian? But we only get vegetables five months of the year, and, even then, they’re tough as old boots!’

  ‘Welcome to Namibia,’ Joe said sarcastically.

  ‘Have some fat cakes,’ said Freddie, somewhat more helpfully.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Hannah, touched by his chivalry.

  ‘How about an ostrich egg?’ Selima asked, beckoning to one of the cooks. She knew them all by now.

  ‘If I must,’ Hannah cried.

  ‘Makes a big omelette,’ Freddie proffered in encouragement.

  Fortunately for Hannah they had ‘Koeksisters’ for dessert: small doughnuts dripping with honey and served with marula ice cream. The other three gave her extra portions.

  After dinner came the dancing. First the women danced, then the men. They danced with a short plank strapped to one foot. As their feet stamped the ground, the sound echoed hypnotically around the Boma.

  ‘They use their feet as drums,’ Freddie exclaimed to Hannah. ‘I love it!’

  As the dance continued, the rhythm rose up the length of their bodies. Their legs were covered in shakers, like miniature tambourines. Their torsos shuddered and their arms shivered with rattles. Soon their whole bodies were possessed, pounding on the Earth as if demanding answers from below.

  Their faces remained calm and poised though, as if they didn’t belong to their bodies.

  ‘It’s a kind of trance,’ Selima whispered to the others.