I'm an Idiot

Correction: in my most recent blog on Namibia I said Presient Nujoma was still in power way past his second 5 year term limit. I was dead wrong, although Nujoma had altered the constitution to stay on for 3 terms. In November 2004 a new man, President Pohamba was democratically elected. Pohamba too is a Swapo veteran, as the party dominates the majority of the country. Perhaps it is similar to the ANC in S Africa.

My apologies. Always check your facts.

Under Cover of Namib Desert Dust

Unscratched Tracks
Windhoek, Namibia
It was no short ride out of the fickle weather of Cape Town, heading north to cross the Namibian border near sunset. Stopping only for petrol in a northern South African town called Springbok, Anand and I exhausted our music supply. We've resorted to relying primarily on those cd's that remain largely unscratched and therefore continue to play when the road turns bumby. I'm getting a little sick of Coldplay, but have been turned on to Postal Service.

Security in this part of the world has been surprisingly thorough. At the South African border we were held up for at least an hour while they unloaded our vehicle. We ended up chatting with border guards about their living conditions and previous encounters with border smuggling operations. Nice guys really.

The border is naturally drawn by the Orange River, supposedly a wonderful 4 day trip in itself. When you cross over as we did around 6pm the change in topography is dramatic. You can almost hear the wind whistling and the tumbleweeds begin to blow by as moving north, you stare out the passenger side window at a setting sun over arching mountains and plateus in the distance. Some towns have no vehicles, only carriages driven by horse or mule. Residents look like black cowboys from the old days of the American west! During the daytime sun, a man's eyes play funny tricks on him in such a "day after tomorrow" scenario. The desert heat creates a blurry haze above the paved major highway leaving you wondering what strange images are coming up ahead, and whether that oncoming 18 wheeler is just around the bend or even exists at all. What strikes me about this landscape is how close it comes to what I imagined, the browns and reds of the desert dunes and mountains, the lack of visible animal life save for a few springbok or monkeys, the utter desolation, heat and swirling dust clouds.

Off road, where the real Namibia exists, you learn what it is to be coated with sand and dirt. For long stretches of time you witness no life, be it human, animal, or plant. Only mountains and dry brush. Yet out of nowhere a man will be sitting on the side of the road, perhaps in decent clothing, and you wonder where in the world he came from and where he plans to go! Hitch hiking is a funny thing. In some parts of the world, like Namibia, it is THE way to get around. Men here make a living gioving rides. And yet we are raised that it is dangerous to offer rides in the states (it used to be ok for our parents I guess). We've had trouble passing, in good conscience, a woman unquestionably far and alone on the side of a road with her infant child. I think there are exceptions. Breathing in the desert's stale air, our throats are permanently parched. I don't know how they do it.

We stayed our first night in Keetmanshoop, a very large town of 15,000 that essentially acts as a petrol oasis halfway to Windhoek. At Bernice's Beds we overpaid for a double room from an aging Afrikans speaking man who gratiously offered us a pot in which to cook our 3.50 rand pasta (50 cents).

The Dunes

We made for Sesrium the next morning, gateway to Sessusvlei and the awe inspiring 300 meter high red dunes of the Namib Desert, world reknowned. The majority of tourists here by the way are German and Italian, strange? Arriving late at night after getting lost on terrible back roads in our two wheel drive Ford, we barely made it to the front gate of the closed park. Just before sunset we popped a tire in a beautiful mountain pass. I'm proud of our ability to change it in under half an hour, but embarrassed that it was the first time for both of us. Ahhh, AAA. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to stay by the park except the Sessusvlei Lodge at $250 American per night. Being the fine, upstanding gentleman Anand and I are, we splurged on dinner at the lodge - $20 per person - and slept in the car on the road in front of the park, freezing in sleeping bags! Oh, but the food! Every night this lodge has an all you can eat buffet complete with chef's cooking up game meat or fish, Mongolian style stir fry, and pastas and salads and deserts. In one meal I ate crocodile, salmon, zebra, springbok, eland, lamb, and vegetable stirfry. After lounging in the resort tv room to watch the news - mostly about the long overdue Gaza withdrawal from Palestinian territories - and observe filthy rich tourists play cards and chess, we retired to our car seats.

The dunes really were amazing, and I have wonderful pictures. We went in at 6:30 and made our way to dune #45, 45km from the entrance and the 45th dune, which they allow you to climb. Then we drove into Sessusvlei and hitched the final 5km into Death Vlei, a other-worldly lanscape I can only compare in oddity to Cappadocia in Turkey. It looks really like somethig in a Dr. Seuss book, like Joshua Tree in a sea of red dunes. Hiking across dunes is no small feat, by the way. It is extremely tiring to walk on an unstable surface for the 5km hike back.

Once in Windhoek, after another long day along back roads, we had a lovely experience cleaning the car at a gas station. A team of 8 women were assigned to our car, and I've never witnessed such hard work and thoroughness in detail with the air and water guns, scrubbing inside and out of every nook and cranny of the crappy automobile. It felt damn good to leave a hundred percent tip.

Namibia is a very large country. Formerly South West Africa, it was administered by South Africa under a UN Mandate following WWII and has only been independent for maybe 15 years. Their history therefore involves much of the same apartheid experiences, but the population is miniscule. 1.8 million people are scattered across a desolate, yet pretty, landscape dotted with small towns and vast national parks; Fish River Canyon, Etosha Game Park, the Skeleton Coast, etc. There are also several diamond mining regions completely sealed off to the public. Rich minerals and resources have been extracted for decades, with much of the profits actually leaving the country. Although the government boasts a democratic constitution (rare in these parts) and a system of checks and balances, President Nujoma (leader of the Swapo Party) has stayed on years past his two-year term limit. It is fun to drive around Windhoek, the capital from which I am this day writing, and observe the street names: Mandela, Mugabe, Bach, Beethoven, Castro, and of course Nujoma. The international airport is small and nearly 50km from this city of 250,000. We took long showers at our fabulous hostel here. There is little to do really except dine out, organize safari trips, rest, and blog! Next stop is Etosha.

Round and Round We Go...

Durban, South Africa
It's ambitious. It's also more expensive than I thought. Roughly 3000 miles in 3-4 weeks, across Southern Africa and up through Namibia, into parts of Zambia and Zimbabwe (Victoria Falls), and back down through Botswana. A final road trip to end my whirlwind tour of the world in 6 months. Our mode of transport, Anand and I, is an aging Ford Escort with failing lights, windows that won't roll down, a trunk that currently won't open, and a bad leak somewhere under the glove compartment that leaves me navigating lately in an inch of water through rainy Cape Town. But we have nice new tires and are doing well; I'll soon hone my stick shift skills to ease the burden of driving across the continent. Murray and Rosemary, Anand's friends and landlords, graciously outfitted us with everything we need to survive in the wild or the desert dunes - sleeping bags, water tank, cooking stove, extra tires, etc.

So after a delay that kept me in Durban almost two weeks - which I loved, by the way - we made for Coffee Bay in the Transkei on the Wild Coast. Before leaving Durban I sat in on one more surgeory all by myself, a C-section. Actually the father was present as well, and I got to shake his hand and say congratulations. It was a flawless operation. Amazing, watching a half hour procedure in which a newborn is extracted from a relatively small incision down through the young Indian woman's abdomen and uterus, and then she is simply stitched back together. Voila.

One of my last days in Durban was actually the most interesting. I toured Cato Manor, an informal settlement of about 95,000 residents, toured the Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in southern Africa, and wandered the city's botanical gardens with a new friend from the hospital, Hillary.

In an African township or informal settlement, it is an eye-opening experience to simply see how the average, disadvantaged black South African is living, usually in poverty and makeshift housing, hopefully in line for proper new housing plans supported by the government and outside money from places like the EU. What strikes you is how kind and friendly residents are to foreigners, and how they invite you into their world to help you understand. We toured a beautiful new community library and had a homebrewed beer with some locals after wandering the streets and meeting some friends of the young man taking us around.

The mosque was a somewhat disappointing experience. After a brief explanation of the layout of the house of worship, Hillary and I sat on a carpeted floor next to praying worshipers with a leader of the community discussing the religion. Conversation quickly deteriorated into argumentative religious comparisons and an argument about September 11th that Hillary probably should not have provoked, to my dismay, as our host layed out the "facts" that "prove" no Muslims were involved in the attacks. In fact it was all orchestrated by the American government. I tried to maintain repect for the guy, but it saddens me to think what must be taught to the community and children there about our country. Ultimately, and in my opinion, we live in a world of appalling miscommunication among races and religions the world over. That night we unwinded at a local jazz club in a seedier part of town that reminded me of a scene from the old American south - like an all African American club in Birmingham, Alabama or something where locals gathered for cheap beer, fine food, and to hear passionate musicians sing and dance. Throw in the African dress, dance and singing style, and you get a lively crowd.
And so Anand and I set out early, westward along the southern coast.

Coffee Bay is a jewel. Unadulterated, unblemished coastline and blue water among rolling hills, cliffside drops and dirt roads dotted with aqua green or pink rounded and rectangular houses. Children call out in Zulu or Xhosa as you tumble through waving, avoiding the potholes or sudden twists in topography. Essentially it is a backpacker's paradise; hammocks, fireside chats and hippies playing bongos and guitars while rolling blunts. We came to support Nupe and Anya (two medical student friends of Anand's) in their HIV educational presentation for the community, which went very well, and then lost ourselves for three days hiking along the coast to sacred waters or fantastic geological formations (Hole in the Wall).

Lunch in Umtata nearby was my finest meal so far, a small city with a Mandela museum - he spent much of his childhood there. We were then off along the coast to Port Alfred, where we stayed in Rosemary's sister's beautiful home in the Marina complex on the water. Our host Shane opened up to us about his views on life in S Africa post-Apartheid while sparing no expense teaching us the subtle differences between his fine brandys and whiskeys in an all-night taste test! after a wonderful homecooked mutton meal. We were spoiled and lay around watching Desperate Housewives and this country's version of American Idol tryouts until 3pm the next day. Next through Grahmstown, home to the prestigious Rhodes University where Anand knew a friend and we stayed in a damp, disgusting and dirty jail that had been converted to a backpackers (an excuse not to provide clean and comfortable accomodation).

After a brief stop in Mossel Bay where we wasted money at the casino, we crashed in Stellendam at the foot of a mountain range and near hot springs to chat with an older, slower!, more mature crowd about the travelling life. And now we find ourselves in Capetown after a night in the yuppie marina town of Knysna and a brief stop in Hermanus to watch the Right Whales that come in amazingly close to shore while you eat lunch or peer out through binoculars. (Originally they were thought of as the "right" whales to hunt!) I have fantastic pictures but the coast does start to look the same after a while. We skipped Storm's River, home to the highest bungee jump in the world.

Through it all I've observed a little more the severe economic disparities that linger across the country. Unemployment and poor services for the average rich taxpayer or village resident alike are deplorable. But many white communities here are still able to live as if it were the south of France, even finding themselves in towns with little crime or exposure to the large scale problems of the rest of the country (the Garden Route is a special place in this way). And yet all you hear from the average white South African in these areas is how his lot has suffered since the fall of apartheid, as if they are somehow entitled to preserve their superiority or excessive wealth without working hard for it on an equal playing field. It is an awkward conversation to hear whites exclaim that they see no future for their children in a country that actively discriminates against them in an effort to undue the injustices of apartheid. Black economic empowerment is very scary to these people, who so far see social services worsening and a deteriorating national education system. Political conversations here are fascinating in their sheer range of hopefulness versus despair. There are those that call the current South Africa a great "experiment" and talk optimistically, and still others who point to an aging Nelson Mandela and a fear of chaos within the country while the government mismanages its money (virtually none of the millions allocated for HIV grants in the Eastern Cape has been spent) and offers nearbye Zimbabwe millions to bail out their own economic collapse. I continue to absorb what I can and lengthen my reading list.

Cape Town has been lovely, but rainy. Table Mountain and Chapman's Peak our first day was my favorite. Since then we have been meeting friends for drinks, attending a house party at Molly Blank's (BCC alum who knows my brother), and touring museums. The Robben Island and Jewish Mueseums are fantastic, and the District Six Museum is also very good, laying out the forced evacuations and clearances of land in the city that destroyed the lives of tens of thousands - similar government programs occurred all over the country in and around city centers. The great thing is that the people running these museums and telling the stories are the residents and survivors. It was all so recent that new exhibitons are still being introduced.

My only reservation with Cape Town is that, unlike Durban, I am not feeling a pulse to this city, something that draws me in and excites me as some cities do. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cities I have seen. It never ceases to amaze me to turn around and see Table Mountain hovering above, or to gaze out along the coastline or cruise through the vineyards. I am beginning to see more culture and nightlife, but I am still waiting to see that unique energy. Perhaps it is just the change in weather. I have been doting a raincoat and winter hat. Next week we will be back in 80 degree weather, crusing through the flowered dunes of Namibia as we move north. I can't wait.

For now it is expensive meals, political conversations, and sightseeing in a georgeous, if touristy, little city near the Cape of Good Hope. Hope all is well with everyone. Enjoy the last few weeks of summer. Oh, and a special happy birthday to #4.