It was a cloudless day and I could literally smell clean, very cold, air. While we were waiting for our backpacks to emerge from the bus, Laura introduced me to a guy who had come to pick her up.
‘Meet Robert, my boyfriend,’ she said with a straight face.
Hey Laura, what about the boyfriend you were visiting in Cape Town? I felt like asking, thinking to myself as I firmly shook Robert’s hand, I hope you are using a condom, my brother.
I had to wait for almost an hour for the bus to Swakopmund. We left Windhoek along one of the main streets – Sam Nujoma Drive – before heading through the northern industrial area, stopping at Okahanja only three-quarters of an hour later. It was strange that we should be stopping so soon after leaving Windhoek, but the hostess explained that this was our first and last opportunity to buy something to eat as we would stop only to pick up and drop passengers from now on. Although I was hungry, I could not buy anything because I had not yet had the opportunity to change currency.
In no time we turned in a westerly direction, heading for the sea through a featureless landscape.
After 48 hours of non-stop bus travel since leaving Durban, I found myself in the very clean and compact town of Swakopmund with its bright old-world German architecture. The bus dropped us off in one of the small streets running parallel to Sam Nujoma Drive, by way of which we had entered town.
As to be expected, Swakopmund’s skyline is dominated by its lighthouse; despite the town’s popularity, no skyscrapers have as yet been erected. Swakopmund was built at the end of the 19th century as Deutsch-Südwestafrika’s main harbour, after the discovery of uranium 70 kilometres away made a harbour a necessity. Three-quarters of the town, with its grid-like layout, is surrounded by desert; the fourth quarter borders on the Atlantic. Most restaurants are on the beachfront, and most of the buildings that line the streets are painted unusual colours – bright yellow, orange, blue – the general impression a brilliant mix of colours.
For me it was love at first sight.
North of the town, the Skeleton Coast stretches all the way to the mouth of the Kunene River and, beyond it, Angola. The skeletons commemorated in the name were what remained of those who were shipwrecked off the coast in the dense Atlantic fog and on offshore rocks and then died of exposure, hunger and thirst in the desert.
Later that afternoon I spent a good two hours in the town’s museum trying to put Namibia’s history into perspective, especially the remnants of the German era. Before venturing into the museum, however, hunger and thirst forced me to go to a bureau de change. At a small office, next to a bank, a stunning fair-haired, blue-eyed girl said to me in a strong German accent, ‘There is no need to change your South African rands because the Namibian dollar is fixed to the rand. Therefore, paying with Namibian dollars or South African rands is the same thing.’
I was dumbfounded. I could not help but wonder what would have happened if the Zimbabwean dollar were also linked to the rand.
Another thing I did not know was that you can ‘hibernate’ for an hour longer in winter in Namibia – according to one local ‘people do not have to wake up early’. A little confused, I turned my watch back one hour. Later, someone else told me that Namibia’s standard time is, in fact, GMT+1 and that in summer they have daylight-saving time. Hence they move to GMT+2 on the first Sunday in April each year, and back to GMT+1 in September.
I could not believe that Namibia has a daylight-saving programme. It was on that note that I decided that once my trip was over I would spearhead the introduction of such a programme in South Africa. Just imagine trying to explain to a 60-year-old rural Zulu man (a generation well known to get heavily confused at the slightest change in the environment) that time must be changed forwards or backwards on a specific day. It should be great fun. However, it was not so serious a decision as to make it Resolution No. 2.
One of the advantages of travelling alone is that you can do almost anything without worrying too much about other people judging you because, quite frankly, they do not really know you. It’s mostly people that know you, or think they know you, who are judgemental.
With that in mind, I decided to get myself a hairstyle that I had always wanted but had not gone for because of corporate culture, as well as the what-are-people-going-to-say mentality. I decided to have my hair plaited. Since I did not know any reputable hair salons in Swakop, I decided to use the very first one I spotted, two blocks from the beachfront. I was drawn by the ad that made it clear that my request would not be out of the ordinary.
The lady (there were three) who was plaiting my hair had never heard of customer service. While working on my hair, she would happily abandon me to chat to her two friends or other girls passing by, or to sell braids to other customers. During the intervals, when she did plait my hair, we chatted about her ambition to come to South Africa because to her it seemed to offer more opportunities. We also talked about what music she and her friends listened to. Besides their local artists, whom I had never heard of, they loved our Brenda Fassie and Yvonne Chaka Chaka. Of course we also discussed soccer. When I asked her which was the coolest night spot around, her response was: ‘Ek weet nie, ek is van die lokasie af’ – I don’t know, I’m from the township.
Later that night, sporting my new hairdo, I had to find my own way through Swakop’s nightlife. The first place that caught my eye was the Rafter Action Pub. Within minutes of my walking into the bar, a man who must have been in his early fifties came up to me and volunteered to buy me a shot of whisky. Although I was a little anxious, I thought what the hell. We started chatting about music and he quickly invited me to his car to listen to his new Meatloaf CD.
His bakkie was parked right outside the bar. He got in behind the steering wheel and I sat in the passenger seat. Both front doors were open. I told him that the only Meatloaf song I knew was ‘I could do anything for love but I will not do that’.
At that he turned around. ‘What is it that you will not do for love?’
I was speechless.
After listening to bits of his Meatloaf CD, we went back into the bar and he bought another round of double whiskies. By this time I was feeling really uncomfortable. My mind was already in overdrive. I was thinking along gay lines. I could not understand how a white man who had just met me could offer to pay for my drinks without looking for anything in return.
After another round, he said he was about to leave. When I volunteered to pay for my drinks, his response was: ‘I’m a pissed old man with loads of cash.’ Those were his parting words as he staggered towards the door.
After a final round on my own, just after midnight, I walked – none too steady myself – back to my budget hotel. It had two dormitories on the first floor – one for males, the other for females. The bathroom was a bit grubby. No one told me so, but I was sure that if I did not wear slip-slops in the shower I would walk away with athlete’s foot.
With its relaxed atmosphere, Swakopmund has maintained its reputation as Namibia’s premier beach resort. But it is also its adventure capital. Naturally, the three adventurous activities that it is renowned for – quadbiking, skydiving and sandboarding – have to do with the Namib desert. The previous day, within an hour of being in town, I had booked myself on a quadbiking trip. As I am addicted to adventure, I didn’t really have a choice.
Four years earlier, as part of my 26th birthday celebrations, I did some parachuting at Oribi airport in Pietermaritzburg. Although I had already done more than ten parachute jumps (all on static line), I had not progressed to the free-fall level because I was not jumping regularly enough. Unlike many of my white co-adventurers, who enjoyed sponsorships and could jump as often as the weather permitted, I had to pay for my jumps out of my own pocket – the reason why my parachuting adventures came to an abrupt end.
Back in Swakopmund, my lack of expertise meant that if I wanted to parachute jump I had to do the tandem jump – jumping while attached to a qualified tandem master. Jumping with another
man on my back was not really my idea of fun, so I decided against skydiving altogether. And, owing to my leg injury, sandboarding was out of the question.
When I awoke in the morning in the male dormitory of my budget hotel, I discovered I had a dormitory mate, Steve, who told me that he had just resigned from his job as a lawyer in Windhoek. His father, he said, was a well-known advocate in Windhoek and, as firstborn, he had been manipulated into following the legal profession so that he could take over from his dad one day. He hated law with all his heart. So, after three years of ‘selling my soul’, he had decided to quit. Obviously, Steve’s father was not impressed and Steve was in Swakop to gather his thoughts and decide what he was going to do next. He had started working as a barman in one of the local bars ‘just to kill time’.
After listening to Steve’s story, it was time to go quadbiking. Along with a German couple, I was picked up from the adventure company’s offices and driven to the launch site about a kilometre outside the town. Our instructor, Willie, a tall, thin, clean-shaven black Namibian, explained everything in great detail, from starting, accelerating, turning and stopping to the signs he was going to use while leading us on a 50-kilometre trip through the most ancient (at least 80 million years old) desert in the world.
Thank goodness the bikes were automatic and, although the first few seconds were jittery, I was soon cruising and feeding the German couple loads of dust. Willie was really showing off on his manual quadbike – revving and changing gears and standing up, sometimes riding on the rear wheels only or, even more impressive, on only the two left wheels. After a few minutes, I tried copying Willie by standing while the quad was in motion. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. Although I could not ride the bike on its rear wheels, I was really surprised at my natural bike-handling skills.
Meanwhile, the German woman was struggling to keep pace with the three of us. Now and then we would stop and wait for her. I could see that her husband was not impressed. The entire trip basically consisted of driving up and down the dunes. I discovered that the dunes were getting bigger and more thrilling (read ‘dangerous’ if you’re a woman).
Twice we took a break just to enjoy looking around and to take photographs. The views of the desert were amazing: countless rolling sand dunes on one side and the desert running straight into the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Before going on that quadbike trip, I had never thought that the Namib desert was so immense. In fact, if Willie had decided to leave us behind we might still be looking for our way back to Swakop.
We drove back to the launch site along the Swakop–Walvis Bay road. Overall, the trip took about two hours. As I disembarked from the quadbike I resolved (Resolution No. 2) that one day, when I own a farm in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands Meander area, I will get myself a quadbike, or two just to ride around the lush rolling lawns. It was awesome stuff. I made a note on my writing pad: Do it again sometime soon.
Because the harbour built at Swakopmund in 1892 was too shallow and too unprotected, most of its activities were transferred within a quarter of a century to Walvis Bay, which is only 30 kilometres to the south. After Willie dropped us off in town, it was time to hitch there. I was eager to see the over-the-border territory that had been part of South Africa for almost 200 years – from when the British flag was first hoisted there in 1795 to 28 February 1994, when the small enclave was handed back to Namibia by South Africa.
Within five minutes I was in a minibus to Walvis Bay on a road that runs right on the edge of the desert, with the sea on your right. Midway, I noticed beautiful penthouses being built at Long Beach, which has to be one of the most sought-after places on the Namibian coast. A year later I learned that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie – Brangelina – would spend a few weeks there while waiting for the birth of their child, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. The couple did go there and, being the celebrities that they are, helped to put Namibia on the world map.
To my amazement, the minibus dropped passengers right in front of their houses. We started off in a small township called Narraville and as we went down the main street – Sam Nujoma Drive – people would give directions to their houses. After all the Narravillers were safely deposited at their front doors, it was time to go to Kuisebmond, another township, and down its main street – Sam Nujoma Drive. And that is as far as the minibus taxi went. From Kuisebmond I had to take a cab to the town itself.
My main aim in Walvis Bay was to visit the waterfront. The problem was the cab driver did not understand any English and, being the product of Bantu Education, my Afrikaans is almost non-existent. There are only two things I can say in Afrikaans: groete (greetings) and Die hout word deur die man gekap, which is the lydende vorm (passive form) of Die man kap die hout – The man chops the wood. I was therefore ill equipped to explain where I wanted to go. Somehow I remembered, though, that the beach is a strand. So I said confidently to the taxi driver, ‘Ek gaan na die strand af.’
He looked at me and frowned and dropped me in front of the restaurant on the main road (yes, you guessed it, Sam Nujoma Drive), right in the middle of town. After asking a few locals, I gathered that there was no waterfront, so I had lunch at the Fish & Chipper restaurant.
Walvis Bay’s deep-water port is its economic hub; everything revolves around the harbour. I had worked in a port all my life. In fact, the reason I stayed in Durban for such a long time was because every time I felt the corporate bullshit was getting too much – especially the people from Head Office who constantly wanted their egos stroked – I would leave the office to be soothed by a beautiful view of Africa’s biggest and busiest port, literally within a few steps from the entrance to the building where I worked. Water tends to have a calming effect on me.
It was natural, therefore, that I wanted to visit the port at Walvis. The security guards at the main gate did not think that that was a good idea, however. They would not allow me in.
Legend has it that Walvis Bay was named ‘Whale Bay’ because of its abundance of whales and other marine creatures way back when Bartholomeu Diaz, the Portuguese navigator who was looking for a sea route to the East, entered the bay in 1487. Smaller fish must have been abundant then too since the Portuguese named the coast Praia dos Sardinha – Coast of Sardines.
After about three hours of not spotting any whales – obviously because I was not allowed on the waterside – it was time to head back to Swakop.
Back in Swakop, I decided to go for a sunset stroll on the beach. The beach reminded me of Durban’s ‘golden mile’, except that in Swakop they should consider calling it ‘rocky half mile’. I wondered how people could swim in such rock-infested waters. Needless to say, there were no surfers. There were quite a few couples, however, sauntering hand in hand and enjoying the sunset.
After a 20-minute walk, I decided to sit on one of the benches and just feast my eyes on the ocean view. I noticed an attractive woman walking on the sand right at the water’s edge. She looked as if her man had disappointed her. She would walk, stop and stare at the sea for a moment and then continue walking very slowly. Although she was not beautiful, she had curves in all the right places. I saw that she could do with some comforting.
So I decided to join her for a walk. I took off my shoes, rolled up the legs of my trousers and headed for the water. After I had introduced myself, she, ironically, was the one who was full of pity.
‘Oh you poor thing. You are travelling alone,’ she said. I was surprised since she had looked like the lonely one.
‘So, what are your plans for tonight?’
‘Nothing in particular,’ I replied, honestly.
‘Why don’t we go out for a drink or two?’ she suggested as she jumped back from a big wave.
I have always been attracted by women who know what they want and are not shy of going out and getting it. It seemed and looked as if my trip was going to start with a very big bang.
She jotted down her number for me and we agreed that I would phone her in about two hours’ time. We continued wal
king on the sand, chatting about this and that. As she bent down to put on her shoes I naturally had to check out her backside. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. In a flash I knew that my diagnosis that she had been disappointed by her man was right. This realisation came from the fact that she was wearing full panties. It was a real turn-off. At her age, she should have been wearing a G-string. I decided that I was not going to call her later.
As we said goodbye to each other she suggested a few good places that we could visit that night. By then it was getting dark and I headed towards my backpackers past people having drinks on the terraces of the wonderful cafés that line Swakopmund’s clean streets. Right next to the backpackers was the Cape to Cairo restaurant where, since I was doing the Cape to Cairo trip, I thought it would be fitting to have dinner. After all, as its motto suggested, I could let my ‘tongue to do the travelling’ ahead of my feet.
I had mussels for starters and a Somali spiced-lamb stew as a main course, all the while sipping Windhoek lager. The stew was slightly pungent but very tender and delicious. I had never thought Somalis could come up with such a scrumptious dish.
After dinner, I went upstairs to the Cool Bananas bar for more beers. After about five beers, despite my earlier resolution, I thought it would not be a bad idea to call the curvaceous lady I had met earlier on the beachfront.
There was a small problem, however. I had torn up the piece of paper with her phone number and thrown the pieces into a dustbin just outside the restaurant. I set about looking for it. However, rather than having to explain to everyone entering the restaurant that I was not a drunk hobo but had thrown a small yet very important piece of paper in the bin, I decided to go to bed.
The following day, I had a good breakfast in one of the attractive little restaurants in Swakop. This time a typical English breakfast in a small restaurant overlooking the sea. I loved the easy lifestyle and brightly coloured colonial buildings in Swakop, not to mention the adrenalin-raising activities in the dunes, but it was time to head north to Livingstone in Zambia – another 26-hour trip.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 3