Sir Seretse Khama Airport

After one week in Gaborone I was ready to go. My guest this trip was Katherine Topolniski, a photographer from Canada, my graphic designer and a friend.

Katt arrived as scheduled and walked out through customs only to have to run back to fill in missing information of where she’d be staying while in Botswana. Nomad is the description which is apt but instead I advised the Mogoditshane Service Apartments (no-frills, but clean P50 per night and up).

Her gate pass already in hand I thought another ten minutes and we would be on the road to Kgalagadi as scheduled. But, this is Africa. Katt’s bags were suspected to be in Johannesburg. Within a few minutes of leaving we were called to say they would be on the next flight.

We went back at the appropriate time and Katt was shuffled back to look at all the bags. She was not the only one in this predicament. Seemingly there was a problem with the conveyor belt at Johannesburg or that the hot air would not allow the planes to run heavy so bags were regularly left or that the storage on the plane was very small, all or none of which may be true.

After further fiddling on a computer it was determined that the bags were actually in Paris which isn’t bad since they were only off by one continent.

We decided to push the next morning without the bags as they may again end up elsewhere than we wanted them to be. Strangely all you really need for sure here is clean underwear, especially if you are the type who prefers clean underwear. My toiletries consist mainly of a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and a bar of soap. I have one suitcase filled with clean underwear and another with beads, earring hooks and other paraphernalia demanded by the sorts of artisans that I consort with.

Kgalagadi

The Kgalagadi district is one of my favorite places. Having lost a day we decided to act as a whirlwind or dust devil might and spin through. My favorite friend in the area Pedris had been following my delays as they developed by the hour and faithfully waited even though it might be possible he was neglecting his job as a generator operator. The generators are required to produce electricity to provide power to boreholes which supply water to the inhabitants on the settlements in Kgalagadi.

I phoned Pedris from in front of the bar and he informed me he was behind the bar. It’s always nice to reunite. From Hukuntsi we discussed the plans. We passed through Zutshwa and flagged people down to let them know that tomorrow we would be back at 11:00 to buy.

As we approached the last house of the village we saw a hectic pandemonium. Three children a man and a woman were running circles around the hut. They were yelling in !Xo. It was quickly translated for us to English: “Snake in the House!”

I noticed sticks in the hands of the children and they were poking and thrashing at a small mamba which soon wound up dead.

We pushed for Ngwatle. It’s a peaceful place miles away from the annoyances that are inherent in places with electricity. Of course, that’s not exactly the view of the people and they commandeered my vehicle to blast some traditional music from the tape deck. Of course they also left the fan running and a drained battery as a result.

But there’s no need to panic. The worst case is that you are stuck in a great place. At Ngwatle that day the forestry department had arrived to deliver trees in an effort to reforest the area. Each resident was entitled to three small trees.

The forestry department was happy enough to give me a boost and off we went.

The quality of the beadwork at Ngwatle is incomparable and I was happy to buy everything available.

The next stop was again Zutshwa and by 12:30 we were arrived at the Kgotla. Of course, we were the only ones. Someone had spread the rumour that we were to be there at 2. Despite that as we arrived people started walking from all corners of the village.

Zutshwa is not a village where people live close together so it took a couple of hours to have the late stragglers arrive. In the meantime I bought all available and made it back by the end of the night to Hukuntsi for a beer and some rest.

I am now in Namibia and desperately behind in my blogging and what not but ahead in other areas so it has been a worthy trade. I will do my level best to catch up.


Karibib

The new places are always more interesting since you can’t know what’s around the corner. Turning left at Otjiwarongo leads to Karibib. I might actually have been here if you can count passing on a train. There was a choice of staying at a campsite or a backpackers. The backpackers was empty and there were two guests at the campsites. One of the guys looked like a goat-killer and upon further looking I concluded he was owing to the goat carcass hanging from a tree behind him.

The backpackers represented the first bed in a while and it was welcomed. Plans to go out for a beer were scuttled on account of already being asleep.

UsakosNamibia is famous for mineral wealth. Past Usakos at the turn off to a gravel road leading north was a row of small stalls filled with women behind tables full of minerals. Mostly Aquamarine, tourmalines, garnets, quartzes and more.

At the time the women were selling there were men off in mountains with tools for digging looking for more stones to bring to the road. If asking where a stone was from, the owner would just point in the direction of one of three mountains in the distance.

Arriving before ten it took a few hours to go through everything. The sun was hammering by the end of the day. My calves, neck and forearms were all casualties.

Erongo

Sometimes you are in places where your mind couldn’t imagine such beauty. Even to think that life can happen in such places is difficult but clearly it’s there. Signs of life appear whether it’s tree, shrub or grass jutting out between rocks. After that there are occasional huts and fences indicating the local Damara people and their livestock. From there we were lucky to get very close to spy kudus, springboks and baboons.

Pushing forward we arrived at a place called Khorixas and ate local gemsbok. Pretty good.

Kunene

Pushing from Khorixas we were bound for Opuwo. Reading a map and driving a road are two different things. We’d been advised there might be some cool stuff along the rocky roads going through Uis, Palmswag and Sesfontein.

Sesfontein especially seemed big on the map and clearly indicated were that there were some handy gas pumps there.

Pushing through the dessert was marvelous. Most of the rocks for kilometers were remnants of a forest long petrified. Marvellous sandstone sculptures were along the road and long weathered mountains contained colours of oranges, reds, blues and yellows. Not much green though.

At Palsmwag were stopped by a sputtering gate attendant who promptly carved our names into a makalani palm seed. I guess you shouldn’t tell them your names to avoid buying another one but even if you don’t they’ll carve out your license plate number to guilt you out of twenty or thirty bucks.

Our attention was distracted by the cool drinks available at this spot and indulged. A quick calculation indicated we had enough gas to comfortably make the remaining jaunt.

As we pushed towards Sesfontein we noticed we could go straight or into the village and decided to pop in. This must have been a miscalculation. As we approached we found a crew working on the building the bridge which was now out. We were directed to take our 4 X 4 around on a track and one of the crew jumped into help direct us. I hadn’t know, never having been there, that Sesfontein is one of the sandiest places on earth.

Immediately after leaving the road we caromed over a rut and the sand splashed up over the car, through the partly opened windows, through the ventilation system, into our lungs and over everything else.

Knowing one thing about this terrain I pushed for about 3 kms. Thankfully, the car is strong, something the crewman repeated a few times as we pressed forward.

Arriving at Sesfontein we went to the shops for cool drinks and looked for directions for diesel. No diesel was repeated a few times. The map had let us down.

Looking at a sign I felt regret as the main attraction of Sesfontein was desert elephants. I have never seen desert elephants but wanted to as soon as I knew they existed and that they were only 24 kms away. Unfortunately 24 X 2 is 48 and deep sand is not the friend of efficient fuel consumption. So it was off from Sesfontein towards Opuwo

Looking at the gas gauge I was slightly apprehensive noticing that it had declined a fair bit from where it felt comfortable.

We spotted three figures at the hiking spot leading to Opuwo. I thought with our empty back seat we could manage them and I pitied people who can wait at such places for days and days.

Well, our three Herrero friends were not traveling lightly and it took a few minutes to pack everything into the car. I noticed right away the car felt heavier. It wasn’t three people only that would weigh it down like that but nearly a full household worth of stuff.

We pushed and with worries on my mind I didn’t stop for the people who were flagging us down to give them water. I was worried myself about our litres as well.

As we climbed up and down mountain roads I noticed the temperature gauge edging upwards as the diesel engine worked hard. On the down hills things went back to normal. I thought of what first we could jettison to lighten the load and a couple of large Herrero carry bags sat at the front of my mind.

As we crested a deadly steep peak another more ominous appeared in front. I tried to gain speed to make it up as far to the next as we could. I tried to maintain RPM’s at less than 3000 and the Hilux struggled with the wait and the angle. The heat gauge started to spike about a third up and I just wanted to eek to the top before we stopped. Just before it touched red we crested again and I shut her down.

The rad boiled over and I popped the hood to let air on it and to look at it as one does in such a situation.
I wanted to calculate a new strategy and decided to look to the elder among us, the Herrero patriarch. He was more parrot than anything as he’d repeat any word I said right back. I should have just muttered the solution to our crisis so he could repeat it back to me.

The question was whether to go ahead to the unknown or back to Palmswag where there might or might not be gas. Even Sesfontein seemed better and there were elephants not so far away from there.

Nothing was going to happen until the car cooled down and it was seeming to when another car, the first we’d seen on this road during our time on it, appeared moving towards us.

The car was bound to stop seeing our car with the universal hood up signal indicating that we are cacced in some way or other. I hoped that the inhabitants of the car were not pirates or robbers. As it pulled up I noticed the sticker on the window indicating that they didn’t have guns as representatives of the Namibian Red Cross. Red Cross people are typically well prepared for emergencies, even situations that hadn’t become emergencies yet, such as ours, can be helped by their organization.

So we negotiated a jerry can full of the sweetest red-cross diesel ever poured in a tank and solved one of our potential problems.

We asked about the road ahead and were reliably informed that it was much better than the road behind. This put some wind in our sails as we enjoyed watching the landscape transform as we entered Kunene. We even passed a few Baobabs trees and indications that the rains had been here in the days before us.

All this was part of the journey to Opuwo which is where I sit now.