Namibia: Desert Life

Deserts amaze me.  They always have.  I am always astounded by how much life they sustain.  It's all around you -- if you take the time to look and listen.
On my trip through the Namib desert with Max and Judy, we saw baboons, ostriches, oryx, springbok, mountain zebras, jackals, and guinea fowl. 

At the sand dunes, we saw Tok Tokkie beetles, named for the sound they make.  They have extra long legs that keep their bellies from the hot sand, and allow them to do a headstand to catch and channel morning dew, that then trickles down their bodies into their mouths.

We also saw signs of human life, past and present.

We saw 2,000-4,000 year old San cave paintings at Bushman's Paradise, Spitzkopp Mountains, and we visited the small settlement of Solitaire, where they serve the best apple strudel, this side of Germany.

Our Namibia tour guide, Ronny, and our guide at the Bushman's Paradise were both from the Damara tribe in the area, and spoke a wonderful language of clicks.

Tok Tokkie beetle.

Graceful oryx.

Cactus flower.

 

This is a poisonous cactus !

Quiver Tree (Aloe Dichotoma)

Our guide explains the significance of this rhino painting.  The horn is pointing to a water source.

Can you see the stripes of the zebra ?

There are people in this one, moving west.

Driving through the Spitkzkopp Mountains.

We have time for a little hike.

Welcome to Solitaire, home to a service station, lodge, and yummy baking !

Solitaire is named after this lone tree.

Annual and monthly rainfall, Solitaire, Namibia.  It looks like 2011 was a good year (relatively speaking) !

Namibia: Sand and More Sand

Max, Judy and I had a couple of days to take in the vast expanse of the Namib Desert.  Did you know the Namib Desert is the oldest desert in the world ?

While there, we visited Sossusvlei, a salt and clay pan surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world, in the Namib-Naukluft National Park.  We climbed Dune 45, the highest dune at 250 metres.  We also visited Deadvlei, the sight of a flood 300 years ago that suffocated a forest of trees.

Ghostly trees of Deadvlei.

We hiked the 5km from Dune 45 to Deadvlei.

We took an other worldly flight-seeing tour over the desert.

Judy, on top of Dune 45.

The trucks on the lower right corner give some perspective to the height of this dune.

My foot, descending the giant dune.  It took days to get the last grains of sand out of my shoes.

Namibia: Ships and Seals

The Skeleton Coast is named after the beached whale and seal bones which covered the shore when the whaling industry was still active, as well as the skeletal shipwrecks caused by rocks offshore in the fog. It is reported that more than a thousand vessels of various sizes litter the coast.

 We stopped to visit a colony of Cape Fur Seals.

Namibia: Salt and Stones

Salt
 

Salt road - Yes, it is actually paved with salt !

 

Salt pan

  

Salt stand:  these blocks of salt were sold at unmanned roadside stands, on the honour system.

I bought a $10N block of salt (about $1.50 CDN).  You can always use some extra salt.

Stones

Namibia is known for its gemstones (especially diamonds).  On a hike, our guide Ronny bent down and picked up some garnet stones for Judy.  We would have mistaken them for mouse droppings !

Max and Judy bought some beautiful gemstones from local miners.

"The place we do not want to live" and other township tales

"The place we do not want to live"

Katutura, Otjiherero for "The place where we do not want to live", is a township outside Windoek, Namibia.  Katutura was created in the late 1950's following the forced removal of Windhoek's black population under the South African colonial administration.

For many reasons, the residents did not want to move.  They owned their own plots in the old location and had buried their loved ones there.  In the new location, they had to pay rent to the municipality, their small plots didn't allow space for gardens, and they needed to pay for public transit to reach their places of work in town. 

Following protests and a boycott of municipal services, the police opened fire on the protesters on 10 December 1959, killing 11 and wounding 44 others. This event is known as the Old Location uprising, and it is the reason for the declaration of December 10, Human Rights Day, as a Namibian national holiday.

I took a tour of Katutura while in Windhoek, waiting to meet up with my Australian cousins.  My guide, Patrick, was from the Herero tribe and lived in Katutura.  We stopped by his house to pick up his lunch.  His mother came out of the yard to meet him in her traditional Herero Victorian style dress with a long pointy hat, designed to resemble the horns of a cow. 

Herero women. (Not Patrick's mom.  This is from the internet.)

Patrick explained how class structures had been enforced in townships.  The coloured township was closer to Windhoek and had small houses with indoor plumbing.  In the black township of Katutura, families were further segregated into tribal areas, and lived in even smaller houses, marked by plot numbers and letters indicating which tribe they belong to:  O for Ovambo; H for Herero; D for Damara; and N for Nama.  There was no indoor plumbing in the black township, and people could not leave their houses after 9:30 pm, even to go to their outhouse.  The ruling regime was afraid that they might gather and revolt.  The remains of a police post, from which the police made their nightly patrols of the townships, can be seen just outside Windhoek proper.

Katutura

In Katutura, Patrick dropped me off at a community TB and HIV centre.  Given the work I do in Botswana, it was a treat to see how another civil society organization provides treatment and support for TB and HIV clients.  Like BOCAIP, they have community TB workers who provide Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) to help ensure the clients take their medication regularly and on time. The community workers bring fresh produce, grown from a garden run by the TB clients, themselves, to ensure everyone has the proper nutrients required to absorb the medication. The centre also provides training and income generation projects for the patients.  They have two classrooms, where volunteers from a local college provide classes in finance, computing, and business. They also have workshops, where the TB and HIV clients produce beaded jewelery, batik table linens, and olive oil soap.  The soaps and batik linens are sold to safari lodges, and the other goods are sold in a shop on site.  The centre keeps 25% of the sales for purchase of materials, and gives the remaining 75% to the clients who made the goods, upon completion of their cycle of treatment.  I thought this was an innovative model.

TB Centre

Making soap

 Funky Town

Gotta make a move to a town

That's right for me

Town to keep me movin'

Keep me groovin' with some energy

Well, I talk about it, talk about it

Talk about it, talk about it

Talk about, talk about

Talk about movin'

Gotta move on

Gotta move on

Gotta move on

Won't you take me to

Funkytown

Won't you take me to

Funkytown....

Yes, there really is a place called Funky Town !  After Independence (1990), Windhoek tried to erase the divide between Windhoek proper and the townships with new housing developments.  Funky Town is in the area that used to separate the coloured township from Katutura.  The houses and stores are painted in bright colours.  I didn't get any pictures of Funky Town (this photo of the sign is from the internet), as I kept asking Patrick to repeat the name of the town. 

"Did you say, Funky Town ?" 

"Yes, Funky Town." 

"Funky Town, like the song?" 

"Yes, Funky Town." 

By the time we established that it really was called Funky Town, we had already passed through.  

Don't you think it would be cool to say you live in Funky Town ?

Downtown Swapokmund

We had some time to kill before our afternoon sight-seeing flight over the sand dunes, so our guide Ronny, said,

"Let me show you downtown Swapokmund."  

"Aren't we already in downtown Swapokmund ?"  

"No, I am going to show you the real downtown Swapokmund."

Ronny took us to Mondesa, a sandy township outside Swapokmund.  We went for a Sunday morning walk, to the beat of drumming and singing from a tin shack church service.  We chatted with the residents, who were going about their Sunday morning activities: gathering water from the communal pump; salvaging nails from discarded building materials; a kid taking a spin on a much too big bike. 

My cousin Judy made a friend in a fellow kindergarten teacher, and promised to send some much needed supplies via Ronny. 

A boy wearing one sock and no shoes drew a map in the sand to the home of an artist who paints whimisical pictures on t-shirts, and everything else. Judy promised to send some white t-shirts for him in her parcel to Ronny.

Everywhere we turned, we were struck by the resourcefulness and ingenuity of the residents in building their homes and businesses, and the pride they took in the upkeep.

Nests

This weaver nest fell out of the tree in my yard.  I put it in the crook of the tree in case the weaver birds want to use it for parts.  These city weavers are always working to perfect their nests. They are works of art !

Weaver bird at work.

The weaver bird nests we found outside Kasane were much more organic and less precise (i.e., messier) than those of their city cousins.

This nest, we found in Namibia, was built by Sociable Weavers (that's really their name!).  Dozens of birds live together in one nest.

I've lived in a few different nests, lately.  My first place in Gaborone would have been more akin to the Sociable Weavers' nest, where I lived with several people, commune style.  My new place is more like the weaver nests in the tree in my yard.  We each have our self-contained units in the same tree (i.e., house).  In Edmonton,  I have a cozy little nest of my own that I will return to when I am finished my contract here.

It's comforting to know that wherever you live, for whatever length of time, it doesn't take long to feather a nest that you can call home.

Photos of nests 2 and 3 are brought to you by LD