Ch 1, part 4, Escape to Zimbabwe
Last days in Namibia
Get up - Stand up, independence for Nambia
In my memory these experiences blur into one big moment, blissful at times, with dark undertones as well and it is interesting to unpick and go through this again all these years later.
My memories of that crazy week-long party in the national stadium, is that it had the atmosphere and exuberance of true freedom, yet under the watchful eyes of South African Defence Forces and the UN peacekeepers; like most things in Africa, a paradox.
I was new to Southern African ways and naïve with it as well. I wanted to behave like I was at the Glastonbury festival or something, during this fantastic, colourful event but it was also clear to see that being in such a relaxed and mixed atmosphere was a most unfamiliar experience for a large section of the crowd, and although enjoying it, many were more distant and reserved.
One of the really enduring memories is one of the nights during the celebrations there was a massive firework display. You know the sort, one of those Disney World arial bombardment type shows. Some $70,000 worth I seem to remember someone saying, donated by the French embassy to the people of the newly born Africa state.
The fireworks draw the customary oohs and ah’s and cheers from the more Westernised component of the crowd, while there is more of a mix of bewilderment to something like sheer terror from the other half. Literally people were running for cover… there was look of genuine horror in some people’s eyes... shell shocked people, years of dispersed bush war, deeply ingrained fears, and trauma. PTSD suddenly feels real all around, we must recognize we are in the company of a shocked and traumatised people.
A series of successful South African raids made the SWAPO leadership believe spies existed in the movement. Hundreds of SWAPO cadres were imprisoned, tortured and interrogated.[13]
War is never nice, and it leaves permanent scars. The firework incident made me see the chasm in difference of experience between the two worlds of people within the crowd. Those of us that had grown up with security, the rule of law, education; certainty that the world was a good place and full of possibilities, and the other half who could take none of that for granted and had suffered a straight century long period of injustice within their own land.
I have never seen fireworks in the same way ever since that incident, a part of my naivety was chipped away at that moment. But don’t let me you bring anyone down, it was a real party, there were a few other travellers hanging around the stadium, most went home each night, but a few traders and hangers-on made the evening crew, we had our own trailer to hangout, a ready supply of wine and beers, despite the dry status of the event and even picked up a twist or two of weed to share with the crew. We met our first real Namibians, plus a couple of German travellers, and formed a tight little posse to look out for each other during the week-long event. The build-up was all about the final weekend and full 2-day program of Namibian, South African and World music stars. Meanwhile we sold our t-shirts and buttons, liaised with Pieter each day to get more product and bank the cash, it was great fun, it gave me something to do and a reason to interact with lots of people, selling the buttons and flags and generally chatting about the event and the place.
Being from the UK, and not connected to the place in any way seemed to make communication uncomplicated, people were thrilled to know the outside world knew of them and I enjoyed many great exchanges with the revellers. I got to stand within feet of Yasser Arafat in the diplomat’s area, sat in the lap of a huge bodyguard... as I recall… and had a couple of chances to get a good look at Mandela, but never quite near enough to catch his eye. After all those years, after the intensity of the anti-apartheid campaign, here he was, enjoying the adulation of the crowd, and the company of world leaders. Nearly every nation and sent the Prime minister, President, Britain only sent Douglas Hurd, foreign office minister, seemed a bit lame to me, but then again hadn’t Thatcher called Mandela a terrorist?
When the ANC people arrived… think it was on the day of the international athletics… it’s all blurred now. But busloads of South Africans arrived together… and snaked their way through the crowd to their seating area. Samba-ing, doing that crazy ANC dance, singing, and cheering. It was a jubilant air the filled with promise, I felt this irrepressible spirit of the people of south Africa through the music the energy of their movement, the palpable optimism and energy they gave off.
In South Africa they smoke their dagga in a bottle neck. You heat the neck of a soda bottle with a lighter, then cool it suddenly by plunging it in water and if you get it right it cracks off to yield a perfect cone of glass. You wad up the hole with a roll of card and now you have chillum type pipe you can stuff with ganja. As Marley hits the stage on the Saturday night the sky is suddenly ablaze of bottle neck pipes, trumpeting what felt like a truly historic moment.
Africa unite! For we are moving right out of Babylon
Get Up Stand Up, stand up for your rights!
Those lyrics, those sentiments, that pounding bass never resonated more for me than they did that night.
400 years (400 years, 400 years. Wo-o-o-o)
And it's the same -The same (wo-o-o-o) philosophy
Bob Marley and the Wailers
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The road to Keetmanskop
The day we were busted by the police the plan had been to hitch-hike South from Windhoek as far as a small town called Keetmanshoop, still on the main north-south highway and from there hopefully find someone who was planning to cross the Namib all the way to the coastal town of Luderitz. A total of some 683 Km, an ambitious day’s hitch hike to say the least. Instead, we had wound up back where we had started, and having to throw ourselves on the mercy of Karen, she who had rescued us from the remote petrol station we had found ourselves stranded in when the big storm had hit, the moment we stepped out of our UN sponsored ride.
We decided to try again, this time without the bag of weed, but as equally determined to feel the embrace of the eternal desert, to slip into the timeless vast landscape that surrounded us on all sides.
So after our police encounter and having being rescued by Karen, and after a night on the tiny balcony of her cramped and child filled flat, we find ourselves back in the same hitching spot, same as before except half an ounce of ganja lighter. We get lucky and a crowded truck squeezes us in and takes us a hundred miles South, dropping us at a remote petrol station. The long wait begins. We had made sure to set off good and early and we have made a strong start, but there it seems to end. We are travelling light, any surplus baggage we have left at Pieter’s place back in Windhoek, but even our reduced baggage situation doesn’t seem to make catching a lift any easier.
The hours drag on, and our stoic patience is wearing thin, it could be time to unleash the secret weapon. Maybe I haven’t fully explained this yet, but Sue-Ellen is one persuasive person, she has an innate sense of logic and fairness to a degree that most others don’t have, coupled with a persuasive power and deep determination that make her quite an asset in a tight situation. So, when a large Mercedes pulls into the station to fill its tank Sue is onto the driver like a leopard pulling down a lame antelope on the Serengeti plane. Jesus, the guy is going all the way to Lüderitz, that’s 600 km, across the desert and everything. Exactly what we hoped for and we were already resolved to the fact that we would not make it today. Thing is, he really does not want to take us. He is in a hurry, it is not his car, it is his boss’s, why did we want to go to Lüderitz anyway, who hitch hikes in the desert? He is not interested. Tank filled he goes off to pay. Sue-Ellen calls me over, with the prey between teeth, this is no time to relent.
As he returns to the parked vehicle, we remonstrate with him again, Sue-Ellen is determined;
“but his car is empty, who else is he going to take? Does not he want us to see his wonderful country?”
… eventually he relents as he can’t come up with enough words to counter Sue’s arguments. In we get and off we speed. He is not overly happy and floors the pedal, the tyres sctreech and spit gravel. We are going to Lüderitz, and we are going to get there in record time. Metaled road gives out to sand, but the speed doesn’t drop… 160 kph, the air-conditioned German made machine hurtles through a landscape that looks like a Roger Dean poster, a futuristic, sci fi landscape of bare rocks, jagged bare distant mountains. We are zooming over the Namib as the sun sets, the oranges, gold and flame red colours of the sky merge with the landscape, it is a sea of colour, of texture, of immensity and emptiness.
The driver warms up a bit and tells tales of the desert, how a German ship sank on the rocks of some desert edge and lost its cargo of horses, which had since naturalized and bred in the desert, some guy maintains a watering hole for them, otherwise they survive completely on their own.
Sometime back, was it 1904 almost 1/3 of the land area of Namibia was purchased for its mineral rights from a Nama chieftain, the story we are told is that he was paid in 2 donkeys, 26 rifles and crate of whiskey. And this treaty still stands. The road crosses the CDM holdings, Consolidated Diamond Mines, part of De Beers and if we were to set foot in this land then they have the right to shoot us. There is a shoulder to each side of the road where you are permitted to pull up, but beyond that lies private owned territory and where you have no rights at all. It sends a shiver through me, the idea of the absoluteness of ownership. There are gemstones and semi-precious stones just lying on the ground. Diamonds even. So old and eroded is the land that the rocks have warn away leaving their treasures exposed, yet it is owned and out of bounds.
A desert sight I had never seen before, a guy stood hitch hiking at the side of the road with a huge petrol can and a plane parked on the shoulder. “
“Terrible headwind” he explains getting into the car, “ran out of petrol, had to land on the road.”
“So where are you staying?” enquires our chauffer “I can’t think of any budget hotels in town. We don’t get backpackers normally” he adds.
“Well Karen gave us a list of names” I joyfully explain, “our friend has some old college friends who live out in Lüderitz, she said she had not seen them in years, but they would remember her.”
“Give me the list, I probably know a few of them” he demands.
“Hmmm. Not them, I wouldn’t suggest you visited these either,”
he quickly whittles the list down to one likely candidate; he seems to know them all and seems pretty confident most of them wouldn’t be too excited to see us turn up on their doorstep.
“How long is it since she last saw these people? he asks
“... ten years maybe more I guess, would be more than a decade since she was in Uni I would think.”
I would need to be a poet to be able to describe the serenity and stark beauty of the Namib, And the surreal nature of it add to that the strangeness of being inside this speeding bullet of a car and you might have sense of I might have felt when suddenly we hit the coast and entered the port town of Lüderitz in the hastening darkness.
He is keen to off-load us and suddenly we are disgorged onto the pavement outside a largish house and he presses the doorbell.
A large blonde woman comes to the door and before she has even spoken our driver is in his car and speeding off. She looks none too pleased to see us and asks who we are what we want,
“….. er, we are friends of Karen from Windhoek” we explain, examining her face for signs of recognition.
Silence,
“Oh Karen, it’s been an awfully long time” she explains.
The years have been cruel, our once care-free undergraduate friend of Karen’s is now married to a card-carrying South African white racist, with no sympathy whatsoever for our predicament and she is immersed in I guess the standard apartheid lifestyle, out in the boondocks somewhere in the ex-South African colony, living inside a bubble of privilege. These are people not happy about independence, or Sam Njoma or the prospects for the newly independent nation. I suddenly felt glad I wasn’t wearing my Nambian independence t-shirt.
We sit in the kitchen in silence, hearing muffled angry voices in a neighbouring room, doors slamming. Silence again. She returns,
“you can stay tonight” she says, “but will have to leave in the morning. Stay out of the way of my husband I suggest. Leave early maybe.”
Well, it is nice to know where you stand. Suddenly I feel a long way from home, and everything feels very unfamiliar. The mood lightens when the wine box of red comes out and we have several glasses with our hostess, who explains that the carefree student days feel a long way off and things are much more serious now. We get the impression that we were incredibly lucky to meet Karen who is much more open minded and liberal than her friends of yore. Still, we are offered the kids’ empty bedroom for the night and advice to make an early departure in the morning. We were trapped in this bedroom, scared to go outside in case of some late-night encounter with the exceedingly grumpy husband; I feel a tightening in my bladder. I am literally too scared to creep through the house in search of the toilet, and the situation is escalating in terms of its urgency. Many glasses have been had and now it is time to let a few out. Gingerly I open the window of the upstairs room and find a couple of plant pots with rather dried out plants in them and I rehydrate these both fully before they overflow and drip onto the patio below. Thankfully my crime goes unnoticed and it’s another night of fitful sleep for us both.
The morning is much brighter, Mr has harrumphed off to work early and she has let us sleep in a little, sure now that the coast is clear she is much more placatory, embarrassed for her husband and we get eggs and coffee and chatter for breakfast. Even better she has come up with an idea, just about the only person she can think of in town who might welcome us is a Brazilian lady, Maria, who works on some project on the top end of town. She is liberal, would probably be glad of some company and fully breakfasted we are delivered across town and deposited outside a large official, school like looking building.
Our luck has returned, we are made more than welcome, term time is out for the mission and we get a room with a sea view, company and to feel the first real warmth of heart we have since we arrived. I was pretty much appalled by what I saw in Lüderitz. It is stunningly beautiful, it looks like a little Bavarian village, and except it is perched top these bare rocks and overlooking a crashing Southern Ocean. Totally incongruous. It is German, very German, and many of the Germans have not got over the war, By that I mean the first world war, they are still loyal to the father land… card carrying Nazis amongst them, the bakery chimney is painted in white black and red colours. It is scenic, it is touristic, beautiful, but it is totally segregated. The coloured areas are cramped and overcrowded, no architectural value, the black area is a shanty town. Shocking conditions, really and truly shocking. Not just the conditions but the inhabitants were falling over drunk, violent and, abusive to each other in their litter strewn, un-serviced habitat. Imprisoned by economics, by racism, by geography, chattels of an economic system in which they were basically regarded as a raw material.
Maria’s outreach project involved engagement with this distressed community, art, culture, basic skills all that kind of thing. It was here I heard of the work of John Muafangejo. The Angolan artisan, resident in Katatura, the township of Windhoek and how he had almost single headedly created an artistic phenomenon with his lino cuts and prints. I am sure you know that floor covering, it’s a clay and linseed oil mix adhered to a tough canvas backing that makes that floor covering known world-wide. Isn’t the factory in Scotland, or wasn’t it.. ? they don’t make it anymore. But the strong yet soft material can be gauged with a sharp tool to create lines and textures that can then be inked and printed onto card or paper. It is a fantastically versatile art material and Muafangejo was a genius at it. Inspired by his work a print shop had opened at the project and we spent some happy days working alongside local aspiring artists working in this medium.
Lüderitz bay is where Vasco da Gama’s ship pulled in to take on water on the first European circumnavigation of the African coast way back in 1550. After a thousand miles or more of complete wilderness, what we now call the Skeleton coast this was the first chance to rest and take on supplies. That must have been a terrifying journey no maps, no compass and no idea of what lay ahead. The Portuguese navigators basically followed the coastline, going ever further South in search of a passage around the cape and in search of treasure, and lands to conquer.
Lüderitz is amazing, unlike anywhere else, I loved the time with Maria, I loved working on her project and finally meeting some real Namibians. She had a Spanish friend, who sneakily grew a bit of weed for himself on a window ledge and we enjoyed spliffs together with Atlantic views, on bare beaches, we had oysters and champagne for Easter breakfast in the clear bright sunlight and cold gusting oceanic air. Good times with great people, warm hearts and dreams of making a better world.
‘And then two travellers reached her, tired and forlorn,
come in she said I’ll give you, shelter from the storm’.
I remember writing that in the card we wrote to thanks her for her warmth and generosity on the day we left. We had listened to Dylan together, and I had sang some songs from my limited repertoire, hoping to entertain this special lady who had this a special time. The Germanic history of the place was both intriguing and frightening, strange mix of culture and landscape, She took us out into the desert one time to see an old German mining settlement, large square houses, slowly being reclaimed by the desert. Drifting sands swallowing up a whole settlement and whole chapter of Namibia’s unhappy 20th century history.
Lüderitz is the crayfish capital of the World, I was told, the freezing ocean is rich in oxygen and rich in plankton and whole food chain thrives out these in the wilderness. Even in that remote place was the spectre of foreign trawlers, sat just off the coastal limit, mining the sea of its riches the same way the landscape was being torn apart for its treasures.
Naturally we hadn’t tasted this beautiful treat, way out of my budget and our generous hostess. Its 700km back to Windhoek from Lüderitz, 700 km of desert, long straight and empty roads and not much else. A journey of 700km starts with the first ride, I guess and once again we stood at the exit ramp of the lonely desert road wondering what the day had in store. A racy little VW saloon car stops early with 2 coloured guys inside, they work out in the diamond fields and are headed home, to Windhoek. Wow, one ride the whole way, to this day this is the longest single hitch I have ever made. And we did it in style, comfy car, great people, excellent music as I recall. They stop for lunch somewhere at a remote outpost… and it’s a great little restaurant, for such a remote place, one thing stands out on the menu and it’s the crayfish, it’s like R50, a lot of money all the other items are more like R20 or so. I am asked if I have ever tried it and once I had said no I hadn’t they won’t hear of anything else other than I try it. Fresh from work, out in some remote desert mining post the guys have hard cash burning holes in their pockets. They insist. I relent and accept their generosity and hospitality.
“You cannot say you have been to Lüderitz and not eaten the crayfish”, ok I am sold.
Imagine the biggest lobster you might have seen, then double it, cut It in half and present it whole in its shell, grilled and dripping in cheesy buttery sauce. Add the first salad you have seen in weeks and complete with a few perfectly made fries and you have sex right there on the plate in front of you. Its peppery, fatty, fishy, so juicy and succulent. I remember those textures, flavours, scents and colours to this day. I guiltily clean my plate whilst the others toy with their burgers. My gratitude overflows across the table and fills the room.
Such normal people, it is such a relief, I think it was then I was realising how much this country had got into my head. Have been on guarded behaviour the whole time, hard to know how to relax fully. These guys are great, so genuine and warm and open. Lots of tales of crazy mid desert antics. Beers and braai’s out in the CDM areas... off limits to all but company employees. When they dig for uranium and find gold, the government does not get told, these mining companies have the power to choose what they declare, they operate outside of government or state control. Our hosts are technicians, they get sent wherever to fix things, and get to overhear and see glimpses into that other world, that of the corporate power and the supra state. Sat here in remote and so barren a place, hearing these tales and eating this sumptuous delight in front of me, I can feel the tremor of history, the presence of all that has happened in this strange, strange land.
We had left some of our gear at Piet’s house, in the Windhoek sub-urbs and 680km later we are even dropped to the door of his sprawling sub urban bungalow, and with a wave and toot our new friends and desert companions are gone. Piet’s desert equipped baccie and caravan are gone, the house is empty, the door open. There is a surprising emptiness about the place, all but the basic furnishings remain, the lodger is in her room, crying and packing her belongings into bin hags in anticipation of an impending maternal rescue visit to whisk her away as well. What could have happened?
“He’s done a flit. Vanished, loaded up everything into the car and caravan and gone. Back down South I guess. It’s all on credit, he hasn’t paid the mortgage on the house, but I have been paying him rent, the car, the telly, the lot, none of it is really his”.
Piet, it turns out is total fraudster. Paying one check against a deposit then moving the deposit to another account before the now authorised check had cleared. This is 1990, pre-digital banking, so I guess there was enough of time lag between transactions to nip in a move the cash, He had built a whole house of cards, a charade, moving money around numerous accounts, writing checks then moving the money before it was drawn against. Staying one step ahead of the collector, until now anyway. Maybe be had made enough cash out the t-shirt concession to warrant skipping town.
There is a knock at the door, in fact, there are several knocks at the door. A procession of people arrives enquiring as to Pieter’s whereabouts. The woman who had designed the t-shirts. This single mother, lovely artist woman had designed a concert souvenir t shirt, in Muafangejo style, lino-cut art work with all the international acts listed on the back, a celebration of Namibia’s birth, and all of her savings had gone into this, and Piet had had us sell the t shirts and skipped town with the bankroll. His desk is covered with returned checks, unpaid invoices. The restaurant, the hotel accounts, he had taken us out on the town and not paid for a single drink. The bastard. I can’t quite process the information; the sheer front of the guy is jaw dropping. I guess I know there are people out there like that, the con man, but I had never met one.
We leave, where now?
Back in Windhoek we are preparing to leave Pieter’s now deserted house and trying to think of positive things to say to the line of creditors forming in what was once regarded as his driveway. We had the address of this guy we had met in Luderitz, a performer, he had been there with his troupe doing a performance via Maria’s project and he had said hey if you are back in Windhoek and need a place to stay give me a shout, so shout we did.
It was immediately apparent when we turned up at a cramped flat in the coloured township that his German girlfriend hadn’t been fully consulted about our staying, coupled with the fact that our rucksacks and sleeping bags filled the only none bed/ bath/ cooking space, that our stay needed to be brief.
Actually, it was wonderful to visit this place, and to finally penetrate the veneer of white priviledge into what was really a totally different country to the one we had so far experienced. Staying within the township made it very apparent how much the suburban white experience was different from how the rest of the nation lived. It was a great stay, with two creative people who also excited by the possibilities of their fledgling democracy, and were wanting to communicate that through their art and music.
It was also an evening of phone calls, trying to find us an alternative place to stay and before too long we are hooked up with some distant friends, who they knew through their SWAPO representatives from this district. The lead party of resistance in Namibia was the South West African People’s Organisation, they were also the government elect and Sam Njoma was their leader having been sworn in as president only days before. Next day we were ferried across town to the house of some party officials and after a brief introduction were left with a room full of strangers. 30 years of bush war, and finally freedom, these were heady times, and the phone was ringing, the coffee pot was full and the wine was flowing, the air thick with cigarette smoke along with idealistic hopes and dreams.
What a buzz! People were dropping in and out, conversations crissed and crossed on all subjects but it was all about the prospects of the new nation, of African freedom, of the possibilities if the yoke of colonialism could be finally overthrown. It was about who was in and who was out, the ebb and flow of the moment. It was like an overdose on all the stuff we had wanted to talk about but hadn’t found an outlet the whole time we had been here. I wanted to hear tales of Agostino Neto, of SWAPO, MPLA and UNITA to get more of an insight into this insane and bellicose period of history and the extrication from the web of western hegemony.
“Where next?” our host politely inquired. Zimbabwe, the instinct had kicked in, we had heard all about this place called Chimanimani, almost a year back in Kenya. I will always remember the first time I heard the word Chimanimani because it was sung, by an incredibly seasoned yet youthful traveller, Petra. She painted a picture with words and song, of forest, and mountains, bubbling streams and crashing waterfalls, secret pools and deep mountain shadows. A quartzite mountain range that forms the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique, of piste, off road and off map, a mountain range to be explored and camped in, swam in and drunk deeply of. Everything that Namibia wasn’t, was promised to us in this tapestry portrait of a place. It was already mythical in proportion and potential in my imagination.
“That is a long way my friend.” Our new host commented, “you have far to travel.”
I try to share the story of our police encountrer, could we call that cop and get a lift to Gobabis, the desert border town with Botswana
‘That is one hell of a road. You must fly, you cannot drive it is not safe.’
Sue Ellen explains about our budget constraints, our ambition to make our fixed pot of cash last as long as possible, that we were looking for somewhere we could perhaps stay, get involved maybe sink some roots, see what happens. We need every penny. Suddenly the remoteness of our situation feels once again horribly apparent, what had we been thinking to just turn up uninvited in a place this. What had we thought would happen?
Moments of doubt sometimes wash over you, especially when you stick yourself out on a limb like that. I never had a plan, I never had an idea how I was going to get out of Namibia again... but I had and increasing feeling that I really wanted to somewhere else. I felt foolish.
“You can hitch a plane.”
“What, how do you do that.?” I say fighting back images of standing on a runway waiving my arms wildly at an accelerating 747.
“You phone up the hire companies” he explains, handing me the Namib yellow pages, “and see if they have any planes going, sometimes if they are picking someone up they fly there empty”.
I can’t remember now if it was the first or second call…
“Yes sure, we have a plane going to Victoria falls in the morning, to pick up four people, if you be there at 6.00 am the pilot will take you.”
A new day dawns, not many hours later we are injected with black coffee and thrust into a waiting cab. I am pretty hung over and having had about 4 hours sleep, it had been quite a night in SWAPO land, and we scuttle into an almost empty arrivals area feeling horribly out of place.
Our pilot is there, studying her maps.
“I can’t take you out of the country because of immigration” she explains.
I am suddenly not sure this is going to work out, it seemed improbable…
“but I can drop you off at Katima Mulilo, at the Zimbabwe end of the Caprivi strip, I am re-routing the flight”.
Words fail. This was special. The route crosses the Kalahari Desert and then re-enters Namib air space to set us down on the tip of the strip, right there on the banks of the Zambezi, back in lush green tropical Africa. But not only that, it crosses the Okavango delta. This is remarkable feature of geography, where an inland river, flowing south from tropical wetter climes snakes its way in the desert where it evaporates away with nowhere to go to flow back to the sea. At rainy season this barren desert edge floods and turns into one the most super abundant ecological systems anywhere on earth.
It $1000’s a day to go anywhere near the area on Safari, no cheap hitcher options or ways around it, just a real exclusive and well-healed tourist way in to see it, and here we are flying over it a 4-seat Cessna. Sunshine coupled with water and nature does amazing things.
Four or 5 breath-taking hours later and we are walking across a deserted landing strip back in central Africa and whole world away from Windhoek, yet strangely still in Namibia.
There is a single point of land, just downstream of Katima Mulilo where 4 different countries come together, a point also right on the border of Angola. It’s the midpoint of Southern Africa and it touches Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia and is also happens to be right on one of Africa greatest rivers, the Zambezi.
I remember the surprise on the face of two uniformed police on a road check point, when Sue and I walked past.. having seemingly appeared out of nowhere as we leave the air strip. Not a single vehicle had passed them all day. For it’s a powerfully central and symbolic location Katima Mulilo is a sleepy place on a beautifully warm and enveloping late afternoon.
I remember the floating bar, out in the Zambezi itself. Sipping cold beers on platform of oil barrels with a lovely shady impromptu bar top built on top. Crocodiles lazily gliding past and you sip on your beer. I remember the huge African sun sinking into the river in an explosion of oranges and deepest reads in an almost PhotoShopped overkill of a biscuit tin depiction of Africa. I remember being told a tale of how the village postman had unfortunately been lost to a crocodile. Postmen finish work early and he had headed down the riverbank with his fishing pole to catch a few fish. He ended up being dinner himself. I guess one of the drawbacks of such a place, but it felt like a kind of heaven on the sleepy late afternoon. The harshness of the desert and society of Namibia was suddenly along way behind us and here we were floating on this great river and this amazing junction point, a jumping off point to adventure in every compass direction.
By then the pull of Zimbabwe was fierce. We had to go east next, just like the Zambezi. No doubts. Chimanimani was calling. I will always remember the first time anyone said the word Chimanimani to me because they sang it. It is a beautiful word, and it falls off your tongue like the waters of mountain stream. Chimanimani is a place of mountains, streams, forests. Burbling brooks, crashing waterfalls, high forest, wild country and right on the ridge of mountains this forms the spine of Africa. From the great rift valley to the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa. It is a region of mountains and high plateau. In many ways the very best of Africa are here, in the sense of being at altitude and in the tropics can give you the best of both worlds. Plenty of sun, but cooler clear air. Plenty of water but without the stupefying humidity of the coast. You can pretty much grow everything but there is no malaria or the worst of the tropical diseases. Its Goldilocks country. Especially for the European settlers, I guess. Colonialists always loved the hills, as you could enjoy the best of the host country and still pretend you were in Europe and maintain those sensibilities.
This story is not intended as a travelogue. But I cannot really take you past Victoria falls, one the true wonders of the natural World without mentioning it. But actually, I passed by three time I think in all, and it was the third time that the place really took hold of me. The occasion that I gained glimpse of it that most moved me, so it will come up again in this story. If I may, I will take you past there and straight to Harare.
Africa is multiple layers of irony and paradox. Example: whilst in Katima Mulilo we were picked up hitching around town by a white South African doctor. He was nice and friendly, young and open minded and fun to be with. We stayed a couple of nights at his house and made us fully welcome. I can honestly say I was soaking in every moment of the experience of being there and was really fascinated to see more beneath the surface about the place, the people and what it was like being there.
Another Afica paradox is that our doctor friend has a plane. Like the one we had hitched over on, it takes a day to fly to Windhoek and back, so if he has a patient, he cannot treat in this remote clinic then he is faced with a terrible dilemma. Not only is he the only doctor in the town, but he is also the only pilot. If he is away for a day or more with one patient, possibly in a more advanced or hazardous condition, then patients in his own community might die for his lack of being there. Bearing in mind the remoteness of the location, and the range of neighbouring countries, sometime patients arriving at the clinic have walked or travelled for days and are already in need of urgent attention. So of course, if it were his wife, he would fly her there. His kids, other white neighbours (very few) but yes, he would feel obligated to make the trip for them, for a rural local person, then maybe not.
‘Does that make me a racist?’ he asks, ‘What would you do…? These are exceedingly difficult choices. I appreciate his candour and at once can see how this kind of challenge feeds into the twisted complex relationship you have with race, class, and ethnicity in this extraordinary continent.
Wow so great to read and see the pics. Thank you