Chronicles of Namibia--Part 3

Note: You may want to read "Chronicles of Namibia--Part 1" and "Chronicles of Namibia--Part 2" before reading this one.


Rob and Karen got up first. Well, technically, everyone else staying in Okahuejo got up first. The large sought-after African mammals are most active at dawn when the sun isn't forcing them into the shade for midday siestas. The four of us understood this, but we were very tired, so we slept in until about 8:30 AM. After the brai, Carl's mom had given us a bag of slender tomatoes. Now most were smushed or spoiled from the turmoil of being in the car (when a bird hits your windshield the natural reflex is to step on the food at your feet), but I managed to salvage a few for breakfast. I rolled up the tent while the others repacked the car and gooped up with sunblock. Rob drove us back through the deep puddles and out of the campground area. At the exit gate, where the paved road became gravel, Rob and I did a Chinese firedrill, and I was the driver. I pushed it into first, gave it some gas, let up the clutch, and we inched forward where the wild things are.

The gravel road was smooth, flat, and straight; I had no problem getting the Hilux up to a nice touring speed. For miles on both sides there was little vegetation to block our visibility. The savanna was wide open for our wandering eyes to see. As we came upon a group of grazing zebras Nick reached over the back of my seat, put headphones over my ears, and played the opening number from Lion King.

"There's far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the sun rolling high
Through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round
It's the circle of life
And it moves us all..."

It was cheesy and magical, and it moved me. It really set the tone for the rest of the day. A typical sequence would go like this: see an animal, stop the car near the animal, ogle the animal, photograph the animal, try to identify the animal. Rob bought a comprehensive animal guide at the visitor center which was just a few pages long and therefore, very user-friendly. When we pulled up next to a group of storks, we turned to the bird page. That's when we pinned a name to the dimwitted kamikazi bird-scoundrel that met our car glass the day prior: Guineafowl. But we refrain from uttering their name. They seek to instill fear in others. They are terrorists.

At one point we turned off the main road onto Rhino Drive with the hope of seeing a rhinocerous. It was a skinny bumpy road with a puddle at every trough. Since the bushes were thick and we weren't seeing much wildlife, I decided to drive a little more playfully. Driving near edge of the road thorny branches would scrape the sides of the car and sometimes poke inside the windows. That pissed Nick off a little. When I plunged into puddles the muddy water would douse the cracked windshield and spray inside the car. Karen, specifically, got wet and she was a good sport about it. Sadly, we did not see a rhino. Later, after pulling into a rest area, we got out of the car. It was brown. It used to be white. Huge globs of mud were caked on the flaps behind each tyre. I kicked a flap and a fat mudcake thudded on the pavement. I thought this was awesome so I did it a few more times. We got out the PB & jam for lunch and tapped our bag of oranges before getting back on the road.

On his previous visit to Etosha, Nick recalled having some safari success along dik-dik drive, a small tucked-away road just before the park exit. So that's where we went next. Moments after turning on the drive we saw a pair of warthogs trotting in a rocky field. The warthogs may have been my favorite sighting of the day. Then we entered a green forested stretch populated with countless giraffes and zebras. They were in the road, beside the road, standing up, laying down, eating, watching, natural and candid. We took a zillion pictures. Next we saw a pair of the drive's namesake munching on some already half-eaten plants. Dik-diks are basically dwarved deer, reminiscent of Bambi, very cute and very rare. Thus it is quite appropriate that hunting dik-dik is illegal in Namibia. It was a real privilege to see them. A while back, Nick had the privilege of eating one. His ride accidentally flattened the poor thing and, in general, it's encouraged to retrieve, dress, and eat the roadkill you create so that's what they did. (No, we did not fetch the carcass of our bird-scoundrel)

It was getting late in the afternoon, but instead of leaving the park, we all agreed to make a pass around the Fischer Pan. The pan was far from the car, but with the aid of binoculars we could see scores of game sipping by the edge. I was amused by the lonesome anomaly of the "twee palms"; a handful of palm trees drooping over a small savanna pond. There was a jeep of euro-machomen parked near the palms, hogging all the tranquility, defying the park rule to stay inside your vehicle at all times. I mean, Etosha's a dangerous place for a relatively welterweight homo erectus animal to be strolling about. Hell, for extra safety people in fence-protected Okahuejo erected their tents on their car roofs! Anyway, we didn't care to be associated with the meaty manprey or to witness a wildebeest mauling, so we drove back to the main road and continued right on out of the park towards the town of Tsumeb.

Tsumeb is nestled next to mountains in such a way that all the water in the sky has no choice but to pour down on it. In the wet season, it rains there almost every day. Conveniently, the rainfall en route to Tsumeb provided a free wash for our muddy car. As we neared the town Nick pointed out a cavernous pit carved in the side of a mountain. It was a recently abandoned copper mine. Apparently, a notable portion of Tsumeb's economy relies on it's copper mining industry. In town we met Dave, another Peace Corps volunteer and friend of Nick's, at a supermarket. For dinner, we bought some pasta and some much needed green vegetables to balance out our carnivorous diet from the past few days. We drove out of the town center, into a neighborhood, and through a retractable gate to the home where Dave's host family lives. The driveway was like a swamp made from baseball dirt, but the house was very nice. It had a large back porch and a yard filled with green grass, lemon trees, and guava trees. Inside there was a spacious kitchen which connected to a spacious living room which connected to a spacious TV room. There were at least three extra bedrooms available for us to sleep in. The house was, by Namibian standards, royalty.

In the kitchen, we chatted and prepared dinner. I helped slice veggies, including a humongous fungus of a mushroom I found lounging on the counter. The stalk of this mushroom had the girth of a small tree and a top the size of the upper third of an NBA basketball. Turns out about a quarter of this mushroom was enough to feed 8+ people. Dave handled the meat. At first we could not identify it, but eventually decided it couldn't possibly be goat or donkey, and elected to call it beef, which was fine with us. Nick, in prime Italian fashion, cooked us delicious pasta and garlic bread. While the food was cooking, I went in the backyard barefooted in the rain with Dave. Together we picked ripe guavas (firmness as an indicator) and ripe lemons (color as an indicator) from the trees. For a plump yellow lemon dangling in the high reaches of the tree I jumped, extended, grabbed it, and came crashing splashing down through wet branches. Man, I was soaked.

After some garlic bread appetizers, we had dinner, and again, the meat was fantastic! Not to discredit the tenderness of Nick's pasta or the healthfulness of the mutant mushroom/verdant vegetables, but against this meat they did not stand a chance. It's interesting though because Dave only added seasoning salt, cooked it in a pan on a hot plate and the results were beyond divine. This leads me to believe that it's more about the quality of the cut of beef than the care it takes to prepare it. All hail the beeves of Namibia!

Dave was kind to wash most of the dishes and get blankets for our beds. When we asked about showers Dave said, "Sure! Go ahead, but make sure you mop up when you're done...I prefer baths." I found out later what he meant. There was no showerhead. Instead, there was a hose with a faulty nozzle on the end of it. It was like a permanent thumb pressed over the end of a garden hose, and, as a result, water sprayed wherever it wanted to. After two minutes, I'd had enough. I spent the next ten mopping up the floor and wringing out the mop in the tub. My shower was not an efficient one, but it was better than none at all.

In the living room, Rob was fading fast on the couch while I talked with Dave. Nick and Karen went to bed. I asked Dave the same kind of tough questions I asked Ginny hoping to strengthen my grasp of what it's like to serve in the Peace Corps. I learned Dave is 30 years old, originally from Arizona (when his plane landed and he saw the dry land of Namibia he said,"Darn, I'm still in Arizona."). He was married for a while, but divorced. He waited tables for 12 years, and aspires to be a counselor like his father some day. Though his work for the Corps can be tedious and disheartening, he plans on serving for an additional third year. He told me, "I'm not here to change the world, I'm here to share my culture and to learn about their culture. But maybe while I'm here I can also have a positive impact on some people." Then Dave told me about his tomato garden project. Volunteers from around town had pitched in and by January (Namibia's summer) some juicy red produce was going to be had. At Christmastime, Dave flew back to Arizona to see his family. But before he left, he asked his faithful volunteers to watch over and water the garden while he was gone. When Dave returned the garden was a wilted mass of desiccated plant matter. Dave asked the volunteers why they hadn't taken care of the garden. But they insisted that they had taken care of the garden and showed not a hint of remorse about letting Dave down, much less each other. I asked how he dealt with it. "I laughed a lot," he said.

We needed a recharge, and we had nice beds, so we slept in. By late morning we went walking around town on a mango search. After no luck at the marketplace vendors on main street, we followed some trails lined with tall plants, crossed a couple footbridges, and made our way to a dirt clearing inhabited by a little community of shacks made from metal scraps. I've never felt so white and like I didn't belong as I did during the five minutes we spent circling the shacks. Because of this feeling I walked with my head down and didn't make any eye contact. Meanwhile, Rob took a few pictures and a few movies, discreetly and not so discreetly. No mangos, so we left, and I was happy. On the way back to the car we bought a bottle of clear nail polish. Supposedly nail polish can prevent glass cracks from creeping, and we thought we'd try it out.

For lunch we ate at Hungry Lion, Namibia's McDonald's. Their reputation is "slow fast food." I recall that Karen's chicken sandwich had too much mayonnaise. Back in the car, Rob and I applied the nail polish to the glass with concise brushstrokes. The polish wasn't entirely transparent, but if it stopped the cracks from getting worse, then we saw it as a valid sacrifice. We pulled up to the diesel pump and, without warning, an attendant slammed his squeegee brush on our windshield. And boy we had a hell of a time getting him to stop. Our windshield was a fragile creature glued together like Frankenstein--we had to defend it.

In an hour or two, we neared the large town of Grootfontein, but turned off instead to see the Hoba meteorite. It was a 50+ km diversion on an unpaved road. But to see the largest known meteorite on earth, hell yes it was worth it! When we arrived, it was just us and the gift shop cashier. On our ticket, meteorite was spelled "meteoriet". As we walked to the space rock we heeded the advice of an important sign: Beware of Falling Meteorites. Then, of course, it began to rain. The Hoba weighs 60 tons and rests at the bottom of a small amphitheater. It is partially submerged in the ground and about the size of a car. It's box-shaped. We did our thing, surfed the meteorite, took pictures, and got back out to the highway. On the way, Nick chugged a carton of some kind of chunky yogurt and cottage cheese hybrid.

We cruised upland a bit before stopping at a road checkpoint. This was called the "red line." It divides south Namibia from the north. My understanding is that it's primary purpose is to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease from the north to the south. They ask all cars to pass over a sterilizing rug. I suppose the assumption is that we've rolled over some cowpies during our haul, and they don't want us to transfer the waste-dwelling germs to the other region. At the checkpoint they also checked Rob's American driver's license. It makes you wonder how they'd ever be able to detect a fake. Even if they could, what would they do about it?

The north was very different from the south. It was more primitive and wild. There were lots of roadside villages comprised mostly of huts made from mud and thatch. Beside the road there were dirt trails frequented by a good many people, and some people would wander in the middle of the road. I suspect they were transporting trade items or visiting friends in the adjacent villages. During the drive we saw a lone teenage boy driving a large herd of brown cattle. The cows looked sleek, muscular and beautiful in the African sun. Some of the bulls had a deadly set of horns. We went through some patches of blue rain and saw rainbows. For fun we would toot the Hilux's pathetic constipated horn, then cease our tooting when we passed civilization as to not disturb anyone. We saw some donkeys porting goods on their backs. We saw naked children bathing and playing in road ditch puddles. We saw goats and stopped to let them cross the road. So, you see, there was a lot to look at along the way.

By late afternoon we came into Divundu, which is no more than a dirt parking lot, supermarket, and petrol station. We turned onto a gravel road and drove 7 km until we reached a gate to some kind of youth center. One of Nick's Peace Corps friends lived there, and he offered to put us up for the night.

"We're here to visit Christopher Kramer," I said to the gatekeeper, who was squinting in the evening sun. She appeared puzzled, and did not respond.
"He's Asian..." I said.
No answer. She peered in the car at the others who had begun to spit out alternate descriptors.
"He's oriental."
"He teaches in the computer lab."
"His name is: Chris. Kramer."
Still no recognition. Then we said a word she knew.
"He's Chinese."
"Oh, Chris," she said with a smile. She pulled open the gate and let us through.

The Divundu youth center is a sprinkling of small buildings along the Okavango river. The buildings are interconnected by footpaths. It has the look and feel of a summer camp. Chris lives in the last building where the road ends. He has a back porch hammock and his backyard quickly becomes the riverbank. I watched the sun reflect off the water and listened to pretty singing coming from the neighboring building. Chris came out serenely and greeted us with his voice. Among Peace Corps volunteers, he earned the nickname "the voice" because his smooth velvet baritone could make just about anybody's heart skip a beat. He had a deep jagged scar on his forehead. A few months earlier, he went to Windhoek to meet his parents (from New Jersey) who had flown over for a visit. The night before the flight arrived, Chris got in a taxi with a man. After a few blocks, the man stabbed him in the head with a screwdriver. Chris bled all over and was put out on the street. His money was stolen, his head was bleeding. Somehow he got to a hospital where he was stitched up. In the morning he met his jet-lagged parents, with a bandaged head, wearing bloody clothes. What a badass.

Chris took us for a tour around the place. We saw the computer lab (also a home to termites) where he teaches fundamentals to students who, he claims, actually want to learn, and thus his work is fulfilling. He took us upstream to a section of river with a rocky island in the center. Nick, Chris, and I hopped like ninjas from stone to stone out to the island and climbed to the top. The views up and down the flowing river were pleasant, and we waited there for the sun to set. Rob started to come out to meet us but lost his footing and fell in. He hugged a rock to avoid being swept away by the current. When we helped him up, his lower half was all wet, and his phone, waterlogged. Afterwards, Nick and Chris made a point to tell Rob that the Okavango is swarming with alligators. Rob was frazzled. Walking back, we saw a tree with juvenile monkey fruits. These fruits, named for the animal that eats them the most, supposedly taste alright when ripe and the sphere of outer skin can be used to make souvenirs or musical instruments. Then Chris took us to the "bunny farm." A dozen or two rabbits were fenced in a pen, hiding and hopping. I asked Chris what they were for. His reply was: "Probably the same thing most animals in Africa are used for, to eat."

We chilled inside Chris's place for the rest of the night. He had several spare rooms, a futon, and a cot to accommodate us. For dinner, Chris was kind to cook us a stir-fry. It had spiced vegetarian meat (though not real meat it was tasty all the same), green peppers, and Chakalaka (Africa's own delicious blend of sweet chopped veggies and curry). Chris cooked the rice with some tea-colored water he poured from a pre-boiled jug. Here, in Divundu, the tap water wasn't fit to drink. We ate on the futon in front of Chris's laptop, which reeled off six consecutive episodes of Futurama. The simple activity of laughing at cartoons with friends really hit the spot. Especially for Chris, who had long been deprived of people familiar with his favorite shows, the sort who could appreciate the jokes with him; I think he enjoyed our company that night. Soon we called it quits because we had an Intercape bus to catch around 5 AM the next morning. I took the cot next to the back window and fell asleep to the rush of the Okavango.