A Drink of Dry Land

by Chris Marais

  Chapter 15: Mondesa Township, Swakopmund

  “I am an Afrikaner”

  One day in Swakopmund, we travelled beyond the Black Forest Curtain to a township called Mondesa, where 11 000 people lived in sand and fog.

  Our guide was the amiable Beetle (aka Wilfred Gertze), who worked for the Hata ≠Angu (“Let’s get to know each other”) Cultural Tours company. He picked us up at the Schweizerhaus, where we were ensconced in a gaudy world of budgies in the trees, a Babel of foreign accents in the nearby craft market and the sweet aromas of the morning’s fresh pastries and cappuccinos on the double.

  In his blue minibus, Beetle drove us out to another world, the “backstage” area of Swakopmund that so few tourists ever see. Accompanying us was Vivian, a young Dutch tour guide on holiday. Vivian, who came from Amsterdam, was feeling a little claustrophobic after spending too much time in Swakop.

  “To me, Namibia means open spaces,” she said. “I’m missing my tour groups and our tents under the stars out in the desert. All these people in Swakop, they fluster me.”

  Beetle, who’s a plumber for this area out of the tourist season, gave us a quick historical rundown on his neighbourhood:

  “Mondesa was created in the 1960s by the South African apartheid government, who moved all the black people out of town. They also separated the different tribes within the township, and gave them different privileges. The Damara, with generally paler skin than the other blacks, had the biggest houses. Then came the Hereros, who must have won the South African government’s respect for the way they stood up to the German colonialists. At the bottom of the pile were the Owambos.” Ironically, the Owambos are the majority tribe of modern-day Namibia.

  “It was a stupid time,” said Beetle as he drove through the sandy streets, where the wind was just starting to pick up. “Now we all live as one, and there is more peace. People mix with whomever they choose.”

  He parked outside the Back of the Moon shebeen, and we took a walk down the street, trailing a small, instant fan club of laughing children who were very keen on being photographed.

  The front yards of the houses were swept clean, and their porches displayed pot plants and various flea market adornments. There was very little litter about. Most of the homes were painted pink, yellow, purple and blue.

  “After independence in 1990,” said Beetle, “people were given the houses. They were allowed to own and eventually sell them.”

  Just as in Soweto, Alexandra and various other South African townships, many houses had shacks at the back, which were rented out for about N$200 a month.

  “Some of the shacks don’t have electricity,” said Beetle. “They use candles or paraffin lamps and Primus stoves. This is often dangerous. Recently, two men died in a shack fire out here. There is a fire station over in Swakopmund, but the fire has usually done the damage by the time the volunteers arrive.

  “In the DRC [Democratic Resettlement Community], a kind of waiting area containing another 4 000 people hoping eventually to find space in Mondesa] there is a fire truck. They had a fire in the DRC some time ago, but the battery of the truck had gone flat. Now, the guys take the truck out regularly to keep its battery charged.”

  It was a custom among the residents of the township to put up a white flag outside a house where a soon-to-be-married person lived. They would leave it fluttering there long after the wedding, until there was nothing left of it. If there were a death in the family, a black flag with a white cross would be displayed outside the house and removed after two weeks.

  We walked past the Club Funky Inn, one of the many drinking establishments of Mondesa. A midday patron staggered about on the other side of the road, too busy concentrating on staying upright to worry about the arrival of curious outsiders.

  Beetle took us to his home, a shack in the back yard of his late parents’ house, where his brothers and sisters lived. We found his girlfriend and two sisters braiding one another’s hair and watching a quiz show on national TV. Beetle’s spot was a two-roomed space, consisting of a kitchen (with microwave) and a bedroom filled with a double bed. His bedroom walls were covered in photographs of himself and various tour groups. Why didn’t he live in the house with the rest of his family, we wanted to know.

  “My girlfriend and I live together but we’re not married yet,” he smiled. “It would be frowned on for us to stay in the big house.”

  The residents of Mondesa seemed to have a coherent moral code. There was little crime in the township itself.

  “That’s because we all know each other out here,” said Beetle. “Of course, in Swakopmund, where people don’t know us, that’s where the housebreakings and robberies happen.”

  Which is the case with just about every town in southern Africa, where you have an affluent, formerly “whites-only” business and residential area existing next to a relatively poor labour dormitory called a township. Most people in countries like Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe live in the townships (although you won’t see them in the publicity brochures), where life is a lot more marginal than in the suburbs.

  “Our biggest problems here stem from alcohol abuse,” said Beetle. “Booze is cheaper in Mondesa than in Swakopmund. Truckers coming in from the east bring drugs like dagga (marijuana) and Mandrax, but nothing harder than that.”

  We asked about tourist safety in Mondesa.

  “When the company started running cultural tours into the township, the operators were worried their clients might be in danger,” said Beetle. “But in four years, there have been no incidents. Even if you walked around here on your own, you’d be OK. The people like seeing tourists in their township.”

  Beetle took us to meet an extraordinary Herero woman called Naftaline Mauha, who wore a voluminous, leopard-print bustle and a traditional “horns of the cow” headdress. Jules and I had first seen these unusually formal outfits in the Botswana frontier town of Maun, gateway to the Okavango Delta. You’d expect desert-dwellers to wear something lighter.

  “Well,” smiled Naftaline, “we didn’t always wear these outfits. We used to dress like this.” And she pointed at a little doll, skimpily dressed in ochred animal skins.

  “The Himba,” said Jules.

  “The Hereros and the Himba, we are one and the same,” said Naftaline. “When we lived in the country, it was fine to dress in skins. But there were always problems when we came to town back in the old colonial days. So we began dressing like the missionaries’ wives, with eight layers of skirts, and they approved.”

  The Herero people, said Naftaline, wanted to preserve something of their own culture. Their cattle were central to their lives, so they devised a cowhorn-shaped headdress. The women, in their generous dresses, were also encouraged to walk slowly when in public.

  “With the grace of a cow,” said Naftaline.

  I have my own thoughts about the missionaries and the Hereros. Having met the Hereros’ clan-counterparts in a more natural state up in the Kaokoveld, I know that under those tent-like dresses are probably some of the most athletic forms in the country. I can just picture a missionary’s wife, probably super-sized according to the European custom of the day, going into shock as a troop of long-limbed ladies walked into the village clad only in skins, exposing breasts and other parts that might attract the wandering eye of the pastor. I can envisage her scheming furiously, preparing to encourage the fashion crime of the century by insisting that these great bodies be wrapped in yards and yards of hot material. With bustles.

  Naftaline’s people came from across the Kunene River in Angola, migrating south in search of better grazing. Some stayed in the Kaokoveld and are known today as OvaHimba. The rest of the Herero nation moved into central Namibia and south as far as the Swakop River.

  The warrior-chief most revered by the Hereros was Samuel Maherero. He led them in battles against the Nama, who were headed up by Hendrik Witbooi. These were the two giants of the 1870s, and the central parts of the country were often the hectic scenes o
f cattle raids, ambushes and abductions between the two nations.

  Samuel Maherero sided with the new German occupiers in the 1890s against Witbooi, but in 1904 he declared war on the colonialists, massacring more than 120 farmers, traders and their families. Germany laid on men and machine guns, bringing the Hereros to their knees by the end of the year. The most notorious German in this part of the world was General von Trotha, who took six divisions of his soldiers into the east and chased the Hereros into the deserts of Bechuanaland (now Botswana) after the decisive Battle of the Waterberg. Which is why our first Herero encounter was not in Namibia, but in Maun, Botswana.

  The Hereros lost all their lands to the Germans and were forbidden to keep cattle. All they could do was work for the whites on their farms or in the towns. After 1920, however, the South African government (now with a mandate to rule South West Africa) set aside special Herero areas, allowing them to return to their pastoral way of life.

  Although she dressed like a missionary’s wife from a century before, Naftaline was deeply involved in current issues. Working as an AIDS counsellor, she travelled around the township giving home-based care to the sick, supplying clothing to struggling families and bandages to those with open wounds.

  “The government is starting to administer anti-retroviral treatments,” she said. “But only in certain areas like Windhoek and Walvis Bay. People have to travel far each day for the treatment.”

  Naftaline was also involved in an OVC (Orphans and Vulnerable Children) project, to which we made a small contribution before leaving her and heading into the DRC.

  This sprawling settlement in the dunes was the “reception area” where people applied for formal housing and then waited their turn. Pit latrines, “smart” cards for water and a N$5 taxi ride to town – it was a hard life out in the desert. The only officially supplied electricity came in the form of streetlights, and a soup kitchen visited on Saturdays.

  We stopped over at the house of Ernst and Elsie Taniseb. Ernst was an “opportunist artist”, the only breed of creative person that could really survive out here in a world of sand, wind and dramatically reduced circumstances. We wandered around his amazingly higgledy-piggledy dwelling, full of objects he’d discovered and initiative he’d shown.

  “About 70% of this house is recycled materials,” he said, lurching a little to the left.

  “Where does it all come from?” asked Jules.

  “From the DRC Hardware Store,” Ernst laughed, with a touch of bitterness. “That’s the local rubbish dump.”

  Plants were happily growing in old tyres. The fence and walls of the house were made from scraps of wood, with the occasional strong plank for support. There was an old generator under cover.

  “Whenever I’ve collected enough money for a bit of petrol, we run the generator and watch some TV,” he said. Ernst painted T-shirts and sold crystals for a living. But he was probably the most environmentally aware man we’d met in Namibia so far, and his pride and joy was the “grey water” flush toilet he’d recently built for the women in the family.

  The Taniseb house sported images of Jesus, reggae stars Lucky Dube and Bob Marley, and a glaze-eyed trophy of a red hartebeest that Ernst had found out at the “hardware store”. He took out his battered old guitar and began playing as the mist rolled in over the DRC, and I went out to where Elsie and her mother, Francisca, were sewing a duvet cover. Mother Francisca was a fine-boned lady in large spectacles. I asked her whether she preferred me to address her in English or Afrikaans.

  “Meneer, I am an Afrikaner,” she announced proudly, and continued sewing. Who said Afrikaans was dead? There’s a whole bunch of Damaras and Namas out there in the wilds of Namibia who would disagree wholeheartedly.

  Our next stop was the home of Stanley Witbooi, descendant of Hendrik Witbooi. Hendrik’s nemesis back in the 1890s was a German officer called Curt von Francois, who was never a very good guerrilla fighter. On 12 April 1893 Von Francois and his troops attacked the Witbooi encampment at a place called Hoornkrans, killing mostly women and children. He made off with a number of Witbooi’s Nama followers, whom he planned to enslave. And so Hendrik Witbooi wrote to him, on 24 July of that year:

  “[I]f you intend to go on fighting me, I beg you again, dear Friend, to send me two cases of Martini-Henry cartridges so that I can fight back. So far I have not attacked, for you have stopped my supply of arms and then attacked me. Therefore give me arms, as is customary among great and courteous nations, so that you may conquer an armed enemy: only thus can your great nation claim an honest victory.”

  Our host, Hendrik’s descendant Stanley, was born “with the caul” and, in the Nama tradition, was raised to be a healer. He showed us bottle after bottle of seeds, pieces of bark, roots and even seal oil. He took out an old brass cigarette lighter, which worked with flint and dried grass.

  “This belonged to Hendrik,” he said. Stanley told us about Nama “bush tucker (food)”, traditional medicines and how sticking to the “old culture” gave you long life.

  “We had a Nama woman around here who died recently, at the age of 126,” he said. “She would still be alive if only she hadn’t smoked so much.”

  We returned to the Back of the Moon where, over a couple of Tafel Lagers, Beetle whipped my ass in a friendly game of pool while someone played a CD of Angolan love songs and our little fan club of kids gathered meekly at the threshold of the bar. Then we all washed our hands and sat down for an Owambo-style supper. We ate millet pancakes, wild spinach, soft beans and the finest, crispiest mopane worms this side of the Limpopo River. It was a good day to remember.

  Chapter 16: Cape Cross

  Belly Safari

  With two cameras slung about my neck and a greedy eye on the lichen fields north of Swakopmund, you couldn’t blame me for what happened next.

  The exquisite otherworld of the fabled lichen fields had been sensibly fenced off to prevent visiting 4x4 heroes from driving onto them and making almost indelible tracks that would remain there for many years to come. I know. I saw them in 2004 – the same tracks I’d seen a decade earlier.

  I parked our bakkie at the roadside and clambered over the barrier to find myself a metre of lichen to photograph up close and personal with a 105-mm macro lens. Only to be snared on a cable coated with a thick layer of black, tarry grease that rapidly adhered to all parts of me. I looked across at Jules and laughed, because she, too, had turned into a tar baby. Shit, and we were due to check in to a smart lodge shortly. What would they think?

  “Well, we’re here now,” I told my wife. “And we’re already dirty. We may as well stay and make the best of it.”

  Which we did. In the billowing mist, the orange Teloschistes capensis – a fluffy, strange and rare kind of lichen that can grow as high as ten cm, which makes it a giant among its peers – was as bright as a cartoon lawn. And there was even some good news lurking in those dreaded old 4x4 tracks: the Teloschistes had begun to colonise the hollows left by the tyres of some crazed brandy-drinker of the 1960s, using their slight depressions for protection against the elements.

  “They’re probably getting a lot more moisture down there,” said a jubilant Jules. “They’re living on fog drops.”

  Down in Lichen World, I saw a tiny fishmoth wiggle its way out of sight. A beauteous black-and-white beetle acted like a little Damara drama queen by sprinting across an open space and diving into the nearest clump of lichen as if pursued by something fast and very fierce.

  Lichen is an astounding substance, and we’ve found no better place to appreciate it than Namibia. It is an “extremophile”, living in the most desperately inhospitable environment, enduring for millennia until favourable conditions allow it a brief window to grow or reproduce. Talk about lean patches in your sex life. The noble lichen has to be respected just for that. When a clump of lichen sidles up to you and says, “I haven’t had sex for centuries,” you’d better believe him.

  We photographed some of the long-suffering lich
en and then returned to the vehicle by contorting ourselves to crawl under the greasy cable. Driving north on the Salt Road, we came upon a peculiar settlement in the middle of the coastal sands. There was no sign to identify this place, but it looked like a deserted weekend-fisherman’s paradise. Intrigued, we drove around past prefab houses eccentrically painted in Fanta Grape, Cream Soda, Chocolate Brick and Chez Guava.

  One house was built out of three shipping containers. Another sported a European Union flag. A sign saying Bennie se Rooi Lorrie lay in the sand, alongside a lot of empty beer bottles. We later found out this place is called Wlotzkasbaken and is a much-coveted holiday resort. Plots are handed down from father to son; don’t even try buying something here. All right, then. We won’t.

  On the road north, a long cloud stretching from across the ocean arched over us like a wave about to break. Within an hour, we were chugging along in thick mist, the constant companion of the Skeleton Coast. Flocks of seagulls flew across the grey dunes from the sea with mussels firmly clasped in their beaks. Hovering briefly about six metres above the road, they’d drop their cargo on the hardened surface in the hope that the mussel shells would crack open on impact. The lucky ones then swooped down and devoured the contents.

  We explored the town of Hentie’s Bay, named after Major Hentie van der Merwe, who was the founder of recreational fishing in the area in 1929. Afrikaners who liked to fish, it seemed, also liked to make a pun. Their holiday homes carried names like Verrweg, El Retro, Nog ’n Skof, Ja Môre and Hollidy Ien. The roads were, obviously, named after fish: Kabeljou, Kolstert, Klipvis and Galjoen.

  The town icon seemed to be a large dead tree from which hung a rope noose. The inscription beneath it read: “The Gallows. Erected in 1978 to keep the town and beach clean, initiated by Frank Atkinson and Willie Cilliers, who respectively settled here in 1969 and 1971 as the first two residents of Hentie’s Bay.”