Ape Rifle

People in Namibia seem on the whole to be warm, friendly and quite laidback, in marked contrast to the low trust environment of urban South Africa. However, I must say that the people form only a minor portion of the memories I’ve kept from my ten days in the country- it’s not due to the fact that they weren’t memorable, but rather that there just aren’t very many of them. Within its vast landmass, Namibia accommodates a scant few million inhabitants. Windhoek, its capital, barely scrapes by as a small city, bolstered as it is by the few blocks of modernist concrete blocks afforded to it by its administrative status. Visit the place on Easter weekend, as I did, and it is a full-blown ghost town, with empty boulevards and shuttered streets. A simple morning routine like finding a newspaper and a coffee can unwillingly be transformed into a drawn-out adventure of urban exploration.

What it lacks in urban flair, however, Namibia more than makes up for through its vast and striking landscapes. From the moment I stepped off the airplane, I was swallowed whole by the sky and the breadth of its clouds. The ride into town from the airport offered a view on a stunning red sunset burning the hills surrounding Windhoek- an experience comically bolstered by Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” blaring out of the van speakers, a perennial favourite in southern Africa it would seem. This was to be to first of many hours spent staring out the window at the stark and arid beauty of the country. Having opted for a camping tour highlighting northern Namibia’s natural splendour, scenery thus took the central stage of my impressions.

In Etosha National Park, this consisted of a plethora of animals keeping cameras busy as they went about their business against a surreal backdrop of harsh brush landscapes, picturesquely lonely trees and an immense salt pan so flat that it was slightly unsettling. As we gradually headed southwest towards the Atlantic coast, this still somewhat green landscape gave way to the full-blown harshness of arid desolation, with sun-baked red rocky hills and rough open space. This inland scenery was occasionally broken up by a small cluster of rusty tin shacks and livestock, and even less frequently by small dusty towns where the action seemed to center on the gas station. As we moved further west away the main road between Windhoek and Etosha, these places took on a veritable frontier feel, complete with battered pickup trucks, cowboy hats and general store-like supermarkets. In one such place, a massive lorry with ventilated openings on its side was attracting a fair amount of attention; inside, the quietly heaving (and thankfully sedated) hulk of a white rhino eyed its curious onlookers with nervous glances. All the while, older women dressed in their Victorian-era best (a relic of colonial times, I suppose) strolled about.

In true African fashion, almost every exit from the vehicle and stroll about town elicited a minor rush of bored-looking young men trying to peddle their wares, some asking for your name so they could quickly carve it into a trinket and then demand you buy it. In one particular town not too far north of Windhoek, an expansive but largely empty wood carving market offered an unsettling experience where the usual good-natured pleasantries exchanged in such situations were replaced by the aggressive approaches of dozens of vendors trying to sell to a scant few visitors. While this globally popular approach to sales continues to baffle me (it quickly replaces any genuine interest in making a purchase with an overwhelming desire to extricate yourself from the market), it is nevertheless also tinged with sadness when one considers the deeper desperation that underlies such aggressive behaviour in many situations.

This onslaught of vendors, however, was surprisingly absent as we reached the Atlantic near Swakopmund, a coastal ground zero for Namibia’s tourist industry and holiday destination of many a South African 4WD. Billed as the country’s combined beach and desert leisure centre, it was easily the strangest destination on offer. The scenery here does an excellent job of dispelling any tropical expectations based on latitude; the landscape is cold and harsh, almost brutal. This is the tail end of the Skeleton Coast, famed for its desolation. Nondescript desert vastness crashed into a coastline of sand dunes, rocks, rough Atlantic surf and a foggy chill. Given the weather was not exactly conducive to beach holidaying (nor was the temperature of the water!), Swakopmund conveyed that strange battered emptiness typical of off-season beach towns. Combined with this was the cultural unattached pre-fab garishness which seems common to hyper-developing desert towns (think Las Vegas or Dubai)- I guess taste and design matter little when there isn’t much of a landscape to ruin. Highlighted for being a Little Germany of sorts and purported to be a bastion of colonial architecture, I instead got the impression of a rapidly built suburb of bungalows and strip mall-like main streets, thrown up quickly to cater to the accommodation needs of people who like to ride around the desert on dune buggies or go fishing with drinking buddies. I’ve never been to Germany, but I have some trouble imagining it is anything like this. It was yet another example that tourism can rarely be accused of being a torchbearer for good taste in our time.

However, in its foggy pseudo-theme park weirdness, Swakopmund was nevertheless quite enjoyable. Just a short walk south of the town, one can find vast sand dunes and a lonely coastline ripe for pensive walks at the edge of the icy surf. A decent drive to the north can take you to the Cape Cross seal colony, with its amusing possibilities of observing the belching, whelping and flopping of a massive amount of the blubbery sea animals. I would be at great pains to describe this area as beautiful in any common usage of the term, and yet there is much impressive to be found in the sheer sense of desolation it provided. After many months in the sultry swimming pool that is the Indian Ocean in northern Mozambique, it was an almost welcome return to a more unforgiving and powerful Atlantic.

Despite its vast, rugged landscapes and sense of quiet remoteness, the Namibia I experienced was nevertheless not wild. At almost every turn, fences subtly marked the boundaries of huge private farming ranches. Campsites, offering beautiful vistas in their isolation, nevertheless provided water taps, hot showers, clean sit-down toilets and sometimes even electrical outlets. In Etosha National Park, the authorized campsites (undergoing significant renovation) were more like small cities in their own right, complete with bars, swimming pools, post offices and supposedly even an internet café in one of them. In these places, one could sit with a drink in hand and watch rhinos jostle with each other in the night at a floodlight waterhole on the perimeter of the area. Perhaps this strange brew of touristed remoteness is best summed up by the instance where I was enjoying a stunning sunset over the arid beauty of Brandberg Mountain and the massive emptiness surrounding it - accompanied by the Teutonic chatter of some fat German children splashing around in an adjacent pool while their sister bombed around noisily on a dune buggy.

Of course, there is only so much human management that can be imposed on such a land and its non-human inhabitants. Despite the best efforts of Park authorities and their fences, camping in Etosha can also be quite an interactive experience. Jackals are everywhere, fearlessly approaching cooking fires, going through the garbage at night and even jumping over walls into a startled nighttime crowd at one of the waterholes. One morning, we were treated to a veritable invasion of mongooses, scurrying about and chirping with delight as they tumbled into garbage bins. There was a rumour that a lion had recently been a surprise visitor to one of the campsites not too long ago, but somehow that just seems slightly less comical. But our inherent human desire to sanitize our environment into oblivion isn’t necessarily all doom and gloom: Namibia hosts some of the cleanest public toilets on earth. Even decrepit gas stations in remote dusty towns sported shining, scrubbed porcelain accompanied by rolls of fresh toilet paper(!). I commended several Namibians on this state of affairs, and they seemed surprised that I was questioning the normalcy of their immaculate restrooms, as if it were possible for them to be any other way. Apparently, they are unaware of the worldwide trend that is the putrid stinkhole public restroom, with gas stations being particularly notorious leaders in this category. Let’s hope they stay woefully out of fashion in this regard.

And so I heartily recommend a visit to Namibia, particularly if you are keen to soak in some truly spectacular African landscapes while still being able to plug in your electric shaver in the bush. It’s a fascinating place, a sparsely populated frontier country still showing signs of its years of administration by apartheid South Africa (think Afrikaans as a common language, white people with money and good infrastructure, lots of black people in shacks). I’ve made a poor attempt to describe some of the vistas on offer here, but I think I will stop wasting screen space and just say that Namibia is the sort of place that really has to be seen rather than read about. My poorly chosen words will hardly do justice to the majesty of its skies, the vastness of its land, or the searing oven heat of its deserts. Namibia truly impresses through its quietness and space.

Oh yeah, and the people too. From the great guide who wore a big Canadian flag furry hat to keep the sun at bay, to the Mozambican-born shuttle bus driver who gave a lift to an airport immigration officer stranded on the side of the road, they were a very welcome addition to the amazing scenery. There may not be very many of them, but they tried their best to make up for that.