No country better embodies the sad reality of post imperial Africa than Angola. Think of Angola as the Brazil of Africa, an extraordinary, huge, and also unknown nation to someone like me from the UK. Angola has a vast wealth in minerals, farm land, gem stones, natural resources in many forms including oil and all sorts of rare earth minerals. A nation with all the essential components for warfare and for high technology, just lying around waiting to be extracted. To be endowed with resources deemed as ‘strategically important’ is a curse unless you are already a superpower able to defend your borders, unfortuneatley Angola was not.
𝟮𝟭 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗼𝗹𝗮:
1. Angola is home to some of the largest diamond mines in the world, producing high-quality gemstones that are sought after internationally.
2. The official language of Angola is Portuguese, which is a legacy of its colonial past as a Portuguese colony.
3. Angola gained independence from Portugal on November 11, 1975, after a long struggle for liberation.
4. Luanda, the capital and largest city of Angola, is one of the most populous cities in Africa and serves as the country's political, economic, and cultural center.
5. Angola is rich in natural resources, including oil, diamonds, gold, iron ore, and copper. Oil production is a major contributor to the country's economy.
6. The currency of Angola is the Angolan kwanza (AOA).
7. Angola has a diverse population consisting of numerous ethnic groups, including the Ovimbundu, Mbundu, Bakongo, and Lunda.
8. The Angolan Civil War, 1975 to 2002, was one of the longest and deadliest conflicts in Africa's history, resulting in widespread destruction and loss of life.
9. Angola is home to a rich cultural heritage, with traditional music, dance, and art playing a significant role in the lives of its people.
10. The Kalandula Falls, located in the Malanje Province of Angola, is one of the largest waterfalls in Africa, with a height of over 100 meters (330 feet).
11. Angola's climate varies from tropical in the north to arid in the south, with a rainy season from October to April and a dry season from May to September.
12. The Angolan Highlands, also known as the Planalto, are a mountainous region in the central part of the country, characterized by rugged terrain and deep river valleys.
13. Angola has a rich biodiversity, with diverse ecosystems ranging from dense rainforests in the north to savannas and semi-arid deserts in the south.
14. The Tchitundu-Hulu Rock Engravings, located in the Namibe Province of Angola, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest concentrations of rock art in Africa.
15. Angola's coastline stretches for over 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) along the Atlantic Ocean, providing ample opportunities for fishing, surfing, and beachcombing.
16. The Quicama National Park, located near Luanda, is Angola's largest national park and is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including elephants, giraffes, lions, and antelopes.
17. The Angolan cuisine is influenced by Portuguese, African, and indigenous culinary traditions, with dishes such as funje (a type of porridge), muamba de galinha (chicken stew), and calulu (fish stew) being popular.
18. Angola has made significant progress in recent years in terms of economic development and infrastructure, but it still faces challenges such as poverty, inequality, and political instability.
19. The Angola Railway, also known as the Benguela Railway, is a historic railway line that runs from the port city of Lobito to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, providing an important transportation link for the country.
20. Angola is known for its vibrant music scene, with genres such as semba, kizomba, and kuduro gaining popularity both within the country and internationally.
21. The Palmeirinhas, a group of ancient baobab trees located in the Namibe Province of Angola, are estimated to be over 6,000 years old and are considered sacred by the local communities.
On with our story - How we met Karen
Having been left at the roadside by our newfound friends from the Nambian drugs squad we are confronted with a dilemma; It was way too late to have any chance of hitching a ride now, so we crossed the road to the other said and took the bus back into town. As we bumped along the highway back towards the city, we started searching through our meagre contacts list to see if there someone who we could stay with. Ah of course Karen, let’s call her.
I must provide a bit of context here to explain who Karen is and to weave her into the story. We did not know many Namibians, but she was pretty much the first one we were to befriend.
Back peddling to Victoria falls, and a month before the incident with the police and when this whole adventure began; a key component in our being able to come here in Namibia at all was a bunch of Swiss UN workers, who had been here working as observers of the first free and fair elections in Namibia.
They were on now on a trip, safari style in a huge Chevrolet estate car they had bought in South Africa. Why anyone would buy a big gas guzzling Chevy as a ‘let’s drive across Africa vehicle’ I have no idea? I guess that alone should have made me feel much more wary about agreeing to travel with them. However, seeing as they had already driven up through Botswana, they seemed to know what they were doing, and were planning to head all the way back to Windhoek from the falls... and they had a couple of places in the Chevy. This was too good an opportunity to turn down.
This was an amazing trip for me… going through a part of the world I had read and heard so much about and had really wanted to go to for many years. When I was a student studying development, I had specialised in African development in my third year and had ended up writing a dissertation about foreign interference in Africa, specifically Angola. I was developing a proposal that the barriers to Africa’s development were much more a factor of the colonial legacy than some quality they were lacking themselves. The fact that Europe and the developed world still sees Africa as a big pile of real estate waiting to be carved up was a continuation from the colonial era into the post-war Bretton woods era. My take home from my studies was that the last thing the Western world wanted is properly functioning African nations, asserting their economic muscle across the global market, we want them bankrupt and broken so we can sweep in when we like to access the raw resources our greedy consumer economies need so much of.
The Caprivi strip links Namibia to the Zambezi
The journey from Victoria falls to Windhoek takes you down the Caprivi strip. This is possibly the oddest bit of political geography the world. Caprivi is a strip of land that is only a few KM wide and stretches for nearly 450km East-West. It forms the border between Botswana and Namibia in the south and Angola to the north, it also borders Zambia but more importantly it all goes all the way to a place called Katima Mulilo which is on the Zambezi River. It is basically a line drawn on the map by German negotiators at the European conference for the partition of Africa in 1884. Its only purpose was to give the German colony of Southwest Africa potential access to the Zambezi and possible a trade route east. This absurdity was created over a hundred years ago and stands today. Anyway, as someone who had studied the Angolan and Namibian wars of independence, I was aware of its key strategic importance to the area and of some of the chapters in those struggles had taken place in the region. It is also the closest I was to get to Angola; I have still not been there, and it still really holds a fascination for me. The western part of the strip runs along the Cubango River, and from there you can see for miles into the flat lands of Southern Angola.
The country of Angola gained its independence on 11 November 1975 following its war for independence. The leftist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, came to power. The MPLA offered SWAPO bases in Angola to launch attacks against the South African military in March 1976.
DJEFF Afrozilla is a contemporary DJ from Luanda, Angola
I remember gazing across the Cubango river, making the mental connection with this land across the divide that I had read and heard so much about, the mysterious, wonderous, yet wounded place Angola. A vast complex land with a terrible history of 500 years of plundering, enslavement, the colonisation followed by a post imperialist proxy war that seemingly went on for ever. Set with the potential to be one of the richest nations in Africa, only in the first days of its infancy was torn apart on the altar of global politics.
I am yet to set foot in the nation of Angola, and to do so one day would be an honour. The very first time I set foot on the continent of Africa it was in Morocco. And there I made a chance meeting with two Portuguese travellers, who I had met at the station in the city of Fes. Jorge and Jose, Jorge had grown up in Angola and was a product of that particilar era of history and it was through meeting him that first even really become aware of nation’s existence.
Take a chance
Many aspects of our lives turn on a moment of chance, here is a moment from 1983 when chance sent me in a particular direction.
Picture a dusty, overstuffed university library, in an educational faculty of a minor British univeristy. Its approximately 2.40 pm on a yawny, tuesday essay-writing afternoon, 1983. Two bored under graduates are challenging each other, one is clutching a large World atlas and thumbing the index pages.
“ok, so where ever my finger is pointing when you say stop, that is where we are going to travel to this summer. ok, promise, dare double dare. etc.”
the atlas is thumbed…. drum roll of anticipation…
its somewhere in Oxfordshire, not 45 miles from here in the Reading sub-urbs. disappointment all round
“Come on, let’s do it once more and wherever it lands, this time,
we have to go there this summer…. “
Steven Jones and Andrew Horne make a pledge in Bulmershe library 1983
We agreed to roll the die once again, this time it hit home, I felt a bell ring inside, Casablanca, Morocco.
That sounded so cool, everyone knows the movie, and it is of course in Africa. I had signed up for African development models as a component of my degree and I needed to find a dissertation topic, and I had never even set foot on the continent of Africa, so to even begin to understand this topic it made absolute sense that I must go there. My heart jumped, I resolved to myself, whether my friend was to honour our little oath or not, I was going to try my hardest to fulfil the pledge. I was going to visit Morocco.
A meeting with Portugal
It is all chance really, but amazing how it unfolds if you follow the threads. I worked all summer making biscuit and tea tins by day, and in a local bingo parlour by night to save up enough for an inter-rail card that got me free pass all the way to Casablanca. We literally took the Marrakesh express; I had no idea really want to expect,
It is only in writing this now that recollected that was also the occasion of another marijuana related brush with authority. Anyone who has ever travelled independently around Morocco on public transit will know that there are many people who turn a dollar guiding slightly confused tourists into campsites, hotels, carpet shops and the like, on a strictly commission basis. It can be hard to walk into any establishment and not be accompanied by a persistent young man who is trying hard to persuade you to try out a different hostelry, that is infinitely better quality and that his cousin/ uncle/ brother who runs it will give you a good price.
“I give you good quality and cheap price”
On this occasion we were wrestling our way of the station,
“I take you to good hotel, you want camping, change money, hashish?” Etc. etc.
to be joined by two red faced Portuguese gentlemen who seemed to have completely run out of patience and were determined to navigate their own way to the campsite of their choice without the advice, guidance, or assistance of any of the touts, agents and bus boys. We fell in with them and tramped across town, with heavy bags and maps at the ready, with a gaggle of boys just in front giggling and pointing left or right... it is this way… negating our map reading efforts. Anyway, to great relief we eventually pitched tents cooked up stew and were chatting and sharing stories and enjoying the warm night air. I knew nothing about Portugal then, or Africa come to that. I was 19 then and wet behind the ears but with wide open eyes, drinking in every experience.
Vasco da Gama, the initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans. This is widely considered a milestone in world history, as it marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of global multiculturalism. Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire along the way from Africa to Asia. Wikipedia
Jorge was from Angola, his family had been there for generations. Angola was one the first colonies or rather the coastal strip was I guess… but it was an important staging post for Portuguese trading ships going right back to 15th Century. Over 500 hundred years ago. Angola became a land of slavery, and a great many crossed the Atlantic on that one-way trip to the Americas. Angola broke free of its prolonged and complicated colonial relationship with Portugal in 1975. They had been fighting a bush war since the early 60’s and it had progressively escalated over those years.
One of the first things I learned about Portugal from my new friends was that it had radically changed in 1974. The military dictatorship of Salazar was suddenly overthrown by left learning junior army officers who were sick and tired of fighting never ending and increasingly ugly colonial wars in both Angola and Mozambique, that other vast Portuguese territory on the other side of the continent to Angola. This took place at exactly the time that Jorge had been doing his national service, so he had got off lightly as the troops began coming home and new juniors such as Jorge were less trusted as part of the conspiracy against the regime, and were left on the side-lines. In 1983 every wall, kerbstone, pillar box in Lisbon still bore political slogans, posters, paintings; it was a riot of demands and statements in every direction. the echol of the coup an regime overthrow seemed omnipresent. I remember feeling the surge of passion and fervour that must have come forth from a million mouths as the regime of old came crashing down and suddenly a new dawn of unlimited new possibilities had opened before the people.
A friendship was born on that warm night in Fez. Jorge, Jose, Myself, and my companion the Beautiful Belinda, were chatting and laughing whilst smoking some lovely Moroccan hashish when suddenly two uniformed officers appear on the scene, looming out of the night, swooping in like owls, snatching up all the evidence lying about us on the camp site. As I said, I was inexperienced back then, on my first trip to Morocco and only 20, wet behind the ears, and in the safety of the campsite we had let all our guard down, openly enjoying the produce of the land with little thought for how obvious we must have been. Like shooting fish in a barrel for a uniform out for an easy score. The officers take the contraband and one of our party, Jose aside for interrogation. The three of us sit in silence, one moment we had been feeling about as stoned, happy, and carefree as possible, certainly since I had first set foot on African soil and suddenly, our laxness had exposed us to no end of potential hassle. Moments pass, José returns... Smiling broadly... as he had walked away with the uniforms and they had demanded to see his passport, in which was stuffed a bundle of Escudo notes, money the guards didn’t recognise or value, when they threw the notes on the ground in disgust we all had thought our chips were fried, if they were not open to a bribe, then what? After a long and heated conversation, many threats, and scare tactics suddenly one guard asks for 100 Dirhams… Jose run back to where we are sitting “they want 100 Dirhams”.
“£10, that is £2.50 each! Not bad, sold” says Jorge, reaching for his wallet,.
We pay with rising relief, and they return the cigarettes, lighters, papers and hash, bargain, I don’t think I have ever laughed a s much as I laughed that night... mainly out of relief really but also remember Jorge’s face confidently puffing away on a huge spliff, saying they can’t bust us now, we have paid for the privilege!
From that moment onwards we forged a wonderful friendship with Jorge and José, and I get drawn in to the huge and twisted story that is Angola. We are invited to visit after the trials and tribulations of Morocco and we find ourselves pulling into Lisbon Santa Apolonia Station only a couple of weeks later, for what turned out to be a wonderful crazy and fun visit to the Portuguese capital.
After that first summer hanging out in Lisbon, I vow to myself that I must learn Portuguese, and am instantly fascinated by this place. The first time I smoked genuine African weed was in Lisbon, sat in a room full of Angolans, all keen to share the story of their country.
‘In many villages there are only women and children...
all the men gone, all gone... too much fighting… too much trouble…’
Words from an Angolan refugee, Lisbon
My curiosity had been ignited, I had loved Morocco but Africa proper, South of the Sahara, that was where I wanted to go, what I wanted to know so much more about this vast place, where so much had happened, so much of our European history is tied up with and yet we seem to know so little about it. Sometime in that summer a seed was sown in my imagination and one that was to germinate and blossom some years later.
Back to the Caprivi strip, and a jump of some 7 years and I am looking out across what was a pretty desolate place... but one that I had got to know so well via, books, poetry, stories, music, history and first-hand account. The Angolan war was a proxy war... it was a product of the cold war... post-Vietnam. You do not have to win wars, you just destabilise the country enough so it becomes dysfunctional, this was the America way... that way the Russians can’t get at its resources, that way we halt the spread of communism and keep open the opportunity for American primacy and global domination.
From the outset it was a three-horse race. The MPLA a left-leaning African socialist party led by the warrior -poet who was to become President Agostino Neto. Of course, the possibility of a communist regime in a former western capitalist colony was not well received by the US and CIA, playing the global chess game. Lead operatives flew direct from Saigon as it fell to the Viet Cong to the South of Angola near the Cunene river to join the UNITA rebels of Jonas Savimbi. The huge majority Ovimbundu nation dominated the south of Angola and mistrusted their northern rivals. Sandwiched between the two in the middle lands is the FNLA, with a different outlook, different tribal constructs, and different international allies, namely China.
All of their military build-up had snowballed since the 1960’s and the anti-Portuguese, anti-colonial wave grew fiercer right across Africa, Angola included.
The Angolan war was between Russia and America, playing a global chess game it was fought by Cuban troops, with Chinese weapons against a rebel force trained and equipped by the CIA and South Africa. The most senior CIA operative to turn informant is a guy called John Stockwell, he was head of CIA covert overseas operations in the Mid 70’s and was part of that task force that switched attention from Saigon to Luanda without missing a step. With US public feeling at an all-time high against any further foreign adventures, after the unmitigated disaster of Vietnam it was time for a new plan. Gerald Ford, Nixon’s stand in was defeated in the congress over the possibility of arming-up against the communist threat in southern Africa so the proxy war was begun, facilitated by the CIA.
In Search of Enemies
They say the first victim of war is the truth and the CIA went into overdrive circulating rumours and stories about the possible threat level of this Cuban backed regime in a potentially strategic location. Stockwell wrote a book, In Search Of Enemies as part of his expose of the multiple levels of illegal and unsanctioned activities undertaken by the CIA. They are answerable to no one. And their brief of protecting American interests is about as broad as it gets. So post-Vietnam a new era of the cold war had begun, one that happened under the radar and without government direct approval. The CIA had its own resources and Stockwell would go on to say that they funded themselves via arms trading and drug smuggling among many other things. Nothing was sacred in the war against the Russians and protecting the American way of life.
The CIA recruited me at the end of the Kennedy era, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. thinking I was educated, when in fact I was not, I thought going into the CIA was bettering mankind, making a world free for democracy, it just took me 13 years and 3 secret wars to realise just how absolutely false that was.
My basic ideas remain, basic humanism, basic sympathy for the people of the world.
We are drifting away from the values we teach ourselves in school of democracy and freedom, allowing ourselves to be dominated a very small police organisation, with a continuing policy of killing around the world, like currently in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
John Stockwell
“We are drifting from the values of democracy and freedom” John Stockwell 1984
“In Search of Enemies is much more than the story of the only war to be found when the CIA sought to recoup its prestige after the Vietnam debacle. Though no American troops were committed to Angola, only "advisors," many millions were spent, many thousands died, and many lies were told to the American people, in waging a war without purpose to American vital interests and without hope of victory.”
Back on the road
Our journey with the Swiss UN started to take some bizarre turns. They were practicing for a bigger trip across central Africa, but we really could not understand their choice of vehicle, they seem to have thought more about some car nostalgia than any thoughts about the realities of crossing such difficult terrain. Still there was plenty of room on board and they seemed happy enough on their trip. A little gas-powered fridge in the boot, or should that be trunk, kept the drinks cold and they had stocks of all sorts of Swiss goodies, chocolate and the likes of which Sue-Ellen and I had not seen in Months.
On the Caprivi strip somewhere we stopped, there had been a road accident and at least one individual was badly hurt. One of the UN crew was a nurse and leapt into action, hooking up the crash victim to a saline drip and checking their pulse. A crowd gathered. Its amazing in Africa how you can be seemingly in the middle of nowhere... and then if something happens a crowd gathers, defying all rationale of where they might have come from. The crowd is tetchy and restless, the victim is not responding to treatment. A nervous conversation breaks out between the Swiss UN crew, internal bleeding most likely, administering a drip is maybe not the right recourse, it may even make things worse, the individual may die, giving them roadside treatment means you are taking responsibility for the person, what if they die? The crowd is restless and impatient. The UN Swiss saviours lose their confidence, this is not a good situation... potentially and maybe they are acting inappropriately... suddenly they cease treatment to the victim, we pack up, board the magic bus and zoom off... “there was not much we could have done,”
“They will probably die anyway” they reassure themselves as we speed off.
Sue Ellen and I sit in the back of the car in silence.
Tensions have built up in the car over the last few days as we bump through this difficult terrain, it is a remote and featureless road that rolls on and on. The occasional town now... not what I expected at all... it reminds me of Arizona or somewhere with clusters of sub-urban houses with watered green lawns surrounded by desert, little segments of suburbia that seemed so out of place. The only visible part of Namibia to someone travelling through like us is the privileged white world of air conditioning and suburbs and roads. Although the whites are such a small part of the population, they are the visible part. The population otherwise is stashed away on farms and mining encampments, or in their townships and allocated places of residence. Invisible in their own country; It feels like a microcosm of African history or rather that part that covers the relationship with Europe.
Several days into the trip and still a day’s drive from Windhoek the capital city we stop for petrol. The car is fitted with a huge coffin-sized extra fuel tank that sits inside the car behind the rear seats. With the main tank full the secondary tank must be filled from within the car... leaning over the back seat with nozzle feeding directly into the internal tank. This all takes some time, and we are idly standing around the car outside in the shade of the cover of the gas station. Suddenly there is a huge orange flash within the car... fumes have built up in the enclosed space and have ignited off the pilot light on the gas powered fridge... fire in a gas station…..
RUN>>>>>
my brain kicks in, the survival instinct is suddenly fully engaged… I run, am wearing flip flops as I recall, not the best gear for impromptu athletics... but none the less had Usain Bolt been stood next to me I reckon I would have given him at least an equal race. Adrenaline is an amazing thing... Impossible feats become common place... I can honestly say I have never run so fast in my entire life... nor anyone else as I recall... as beating a hasty retreat suddenly became an overriding imperative.
Happily, the flash of fumes igniting within the car was the extent of the drama, the pilot light in the fridge was extinguished, as it should have been first off and the tank filled. I can’t remember what the bill came to, but it was astronomical. Quick calculations were made, and we were presented with our share of the bill. Hmm.. not exactly the rules of hitch hiking, we had intimated at the outset that we would contribute as best we could, but this was way outside our budget. The Chevy does 7 miles to the gallon... 7 miles and we had just crossed a huge distance without filling up once and without our fully realising the extent to which the meter was ticking or that we would be expected to divvy up our full share.
We politely explain our predicament. This is way over our budget, and we don’t feel we can share an equal share of the burden of fuelling this beast of a truck. We make an offer, $40 or something. It feels like a lot to us but scarcely puts a dent in the fuel bill. We sit in the back in silence. All the Swiss are in the front on the big bench seat… a ‘them and us’ atmosphere locks into place and suddenly we feel very unwelcome.
A further thought creeps into our minds as we head towards this unknown city, where to stay? Who do we know? How the hell will we get to this national stadium, will they let us in, do we need tickets? We really had not thought this through, beyond the heat of the moment. Our guidebook, Africa on a shoestring… a well battered and well-thumbed edition, partly eaten by a rat on the Lake Tanganyika steamer, yields little information. Windhoek in 1991 really isn’t much of a tourist town. No back packer lodges, cool hippy hang outs or cheap hostels.
The atmosphere in the car couldn’t be worse, they have lost all interest in us now and have nothing to offer in terms of helping our predicament, they are certainly not about to invite us to hang with them in their UN compound or wherever it is they are staying, we are realising we are very much on our own with our problems. Let me make one thing clear here, on a prolonged, open-ended trip such as this, the whole idea is to make every penny count. Throwing cash around on hotel overnights etc. eats into your budget very rapidly indeed, a month’s worth of road money can be spent that way in a night or two. It is not an option for us. Plus, once in the world of hotels you tend to get stuck in it a you don’t meet other people trying to eke out a passage on a pittance, you fail to make the connections you need to make to be able to carry on.
Our only option really is to bail out and to do it before we hit the outer suburbs of the city. It does take some steel to eject yourself from the comfortable bosom of the Chevy that has been your speeding home for several days, but the prospect of getting dumped in the city centre in the encroaching darkness does not appeal and we ask for them to stop. They seem only too happy to get rid of us and a moment later we are stood on the road side, a distant forecourt of a filling station the only visible refuge, wand with a pile of bags at our feet under a rapidly darkening sky. Tomorrow is the 21st of March and officially Namibia’s day of independence, the sky darkens further and turns angry, thunderclaps and a torrential downpour ensues. The only refuge is the filling station, the traffic on the road stops as the storms passes over and feelings of uncertainly grips us both. Long way from home, not sure what to expect here... our only allies have decided they did not like us, and we them and all we have now is this remote filling station in the darkening stormy night.
When you have none other but perhaps one rather disparate option, then that becomes the option to take. It is too late, dark and rainy to attempt a hitch, and with no idea where to go, we realise our next option is to find somewhere for the night, this is no location for putting up the tent, on the shoulder of a big highway, with the weather quickening. We head into the toilets of the service station to check out if there was any overnight potential. A degree of luck, there is a shower room, which we could just about both stretch on the floor of. Only just, by lying on top of bags etc. it feels like an option. We ask the pump attendant, a black guy and obviously not high up the management chain, as he is the overnight shift, and is extremely nervous about what his boss might think were we to be discovered there in the morning. He is not unreasonable and can see we have no other real options and again seeing as tourists are a rare breed in this part of the world, he allows us to stay to the solem promise that we will be gone by 6.00 AM, well before any danger of the more senior management being there to witness his generosity.
A fitful night, the floor is hard and uncomfortable, and I am cramped but none the less we sleep and wake early to a bright new dawn... heavy metaphor after heavy metaphor. The torrential storm has cleansed the landscape, and the generosity of the pump attendant has provided us shelter and here we are in the new day refilled with optimism and a determination to connect with this amazing party and celebration.
A bright blue sky greets us, the empry road snakes over the undulating horizon, it is still early and the new day is full of promise.
I am always looking for the sign that things are turning, frustratingly as generally it all happens too slowly... but could this finally be a leverage point for Africa to begin to assert itself and define its own objectives, will Namibia be the stepping stone to freedom for South Africa that so many of us are are hoping for, with these questions yet to be answered it does feel like a momentous day and we are renewed with optimism as we take up our places at the road side, thumbs at the ready.
This is how we met Karen, who later turned out to be a saviour on the day we were busted leaving Windhoek some weeks later. Literally the first vehicle along the road that day was what they call a baccie, a pickup with a bench seat up front and an open or covered back for carrying goods, people whatever. It is the standard African all-purpose vehicle, I guess. In response to our exposed thumbs it stops, we delightedly hop-in, having not even finished the breakfast pastries we had bought at the service station and we wave goodbye to the night attendant who had offered us shelter from the storm.
“Where are you going?” asks the blonde, middle aged lady with a thick Afrikaans accent.
“Well, we were hoping to get to the national stadium for the celebrations… do you know anything about that?”
“Ha-ha, well you are in luck, I am on my way there now... I work for Windhoek breweries, we brew lager the German way to Bavarian standards… and I am running a concession at the celebrations all week, maybe you want to help me out”.
Jackpot. I must call in at work first she explains and turns off the highway and into a large industrial estate, next thing we know we are being given a tour of the brewery and being offered tastes of beautifully cold and refreshing lagers and being asked our opinion. We don’t get many tourists here explains the head brewer offering me a small case of bottles to take with me for the trip.
It is that sudden turn of fortune that you can get when you are on the road. You are open to chance, it is an incredible act of faith really, to stand at the roadside with your thumb out, an interaction with providence, with chance, a roll of the dice. It is that randomness, it is what this kind of travelling and adventuring is all about.
We head straight to the stadium from the brewery. Her baccie is loaded up with soft drinks and juices and such, the event itself is dry, but she has the only drinks concession – for staff etc. She is happy for us to camp behind her trailer so we can keep an eye on it when she is not there, she has kids and will be home evenings, suddenly we have a perfect base and encampment, set-up for the week of celebrations.
On the second day there, Karen introduces us to a larger-than-life South African guy, big in every way... tall, rotund, a bon viveur for sure, booming voice, firm handshake, big ambitions and ideas, face reddened from wine and sunshine. Pieter has the T shirt concession. 1000’s of shirts, beanie hats, buttons and flags all with the new Namibian flag emblazoned on them, and the date of 21st March 1990. He had teamed up with a local artist who had produced the designs and had them printed up, she was the creative and Pieter is sales and marketing. He recruits us to his team; we get access all area passes and ice cream trays laden with product and sent out there to sell on commission. Hey Namibia welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism! It is surreal, to say the least, people in tribal dresses, mixture of all the nations of Namibia, Herero women in their huge frock dresses, Nama tribespeople, Ovimbundu folks from the North, mixed with white farmers in their Khaki shirts and shorts, socks pulled up their knees often with a hair comb tucked in the top of the sock.
The atmosphere is jubilant, mixed with slight confusion, and strange unfamiliarity of people of all backgrounds mixing. Some of the black Africans want to come and hug a white person, show to their children maybe that we are not all frightening after all... I get in numerous such moments, holding kids aloft, being hand shook, fist bumped and hugged by a broad cross section of the mixed audience.