Another Good Day

The weather in the national newspaper on may 8^th said:

“In the north hot.

In the Namib very hot.”

In Tsumeb it took me only a half an hour to hitch a ride. I jumped straight in the back of a ute where two other people were nestled in amongst bags, bedding and baskets of goods, I fell asleep within minutes. I don’t know how long I was asleep for, but maybe half way to my destination the driver woke me up. He told me he wanted me to sit in the cabin with him. I was comfortable in the back and didn’t want to move, I wondered why he wanted me and not one of the others up front, though maybe I could guess.

I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, so I was probably lucky that he wanted to do all the talking, but he talked so fast I only caught half of what he was saying.

He told me he was a criminal prosecutor, went to university in Wales and has travelled extensively. It surprised me then that he was carting a car full of passengers for extra dollars, but maybe that is why he let me on board for N$50, when initially he had asked for N$120. He said black people can’t be trusted, it wasn’t the first time a black person had said that to me about their own people. It always confused and worried me, just that morning I had been told that not so long ago Sunday school was teaching kids that God created them just to serve white people, and now I figured that those lessons were still engrained in people today.  He said that because black people, especially black men, can’t be trusted he wouldn’t feel right not taking me all the way to Grootfontein. Interesting still that a black man who picked me up hitch-hiking couldn’t stand the thought of a black man picking me up hitch-hiking.

Once again carrying my 22kilo pack I walked from place to place searching for a room in my price range. A young guy said hello to me outside a supermarket, as young guys always did, only that time I stopped to talk and ask him if he knew where a cheap bed was. He made a phone-call to someone who did know and he yelled into the phone “fuck you! Tell me where it is!” After some more yelling back and forth the person on the other end finally gave him directions. That whole interaction made me a little nervous.  

He walked me to my room for the night and on the way there he told me he was a hustler. “So how exactly do you make your money? What sort of things do you do?” He refused to tell me but kept saying “it’s nothing too dirty”.

He was 25 years old, and oddly for Africa we never introduced ourselves so I never did get his name. I ended up enjoying his company, and when we arrived at the back of the house I was staying in I bought us both an Apletiser and we sat together drinking them under a lemon tree.

He was quite a deep thinker, and very switched on. He told me how he doesn’t trust preachers, that he thinks alcohol ruins people, that black people breed too much even when they can’t afford to have children and that the world is obsessed with consumerism, brands and the new ‘this and that’. His big dream is to make lots of money, but not for himself, he wants to use it to buy truck-loads of food and go in to the slums and feed people. I ended up walking him back into town and not once did he ask for my details, money or a date.

My accommodation was a room at the back of someone’s house. It was very basic but cheap enough. The man of the house was sitting on the front porch drinking beer with his friends. His wife and her sister were so beautiful they could be models. They both had two scars under each eye, about an inch long. I asked them where it had come from and one of them explained to me that as baby’s they had vision problems so their parents cut them and rubbed the blood in their eyes to heal them. I wondered how both of them managed to get eye problems and if this was the same reason given for the numerous locals I had seen with the exact same scars.

They asked me if I would go to the shops with them, they had a bar in the house which was open to locals and they needed to stock it for the night. I agreed and ended up spending the afternoon lugging boxes of beer for them. They gave me a shot of caramel vodka as thanks.

I took myself out to dinner that night, at the only open eatery I could find. To entertain myself I imagined someone telling me I had to spend the rest of my life in that town and enjoyed the feeling of dread at the mere thought of it. It really didn’t seem like Grootfontein had much going for it.

When I got back to my room the dozen men drinking at the bar were already loud and drunk. I thought that if my hustler friend from early that day was there I’d have a drink with him, the slurred invites from the older men weren’t all that appealing. The door to my room was right next to the bar and it didn’t even close properly let alone lock. I lay awake until the early hours of the morning when the party finally dissipated.

The next morning I left early to get a bus that was going to take me all the way to Livingstone (in Zambia to see the Victoria Falls), which I thought was departing at 10am. At the station I was told by the attendee that it wasn’t actually leaving until 10pm. I didn’t want to take out anymore Namibian dollars as I’d be leaving the country soon, so I didn’t have any cash on me, but I did have some bread and biscuits and figured it wouldn’t be much fun but it also wouldn’t kill me.

I sat on the side of the road to read my book for the next ten hours… it’s not like I had anything else to do.

In the afternoon a woman named Daonetta walked over to me. Naturally she was curious why this young white woman was sitting in the sun alone on the side of the road. We chatted for a while and she invited me to her sister’s house to wait out of the sun and off the side of the road.

At her sister’s house there was her sister, her brother-in-law, their son, and both of her parents. I felt intrusive but they seemed happy I was there and were very welcoming. Her mother wanted to show me the hospital where she worked as a nurse in the children’s ward. So Daonetta and both her parents and I went for a drive around the town, Daonetta and I lying side by side in the back of the ute. We stopped in the wealthy streets to scrutinize the mansions (owned by the white people), followed by a guided tour of the hospital. It was much cleaner and better equipped than the other two hospitals I had visited in Africa so far.

Daonetta’s sister’s house was a quaint one-bedroom brick home, with no running water system, in a neighbourhood where only black people lived. Whilst we were gone her sister had cooked some rice and fish and insisted I eat with them. I knew it was rude not to, but they gave the two men and myself a whole fish each, while the three women and the child shared just one. I didn’t want a whole one to myself, especially when it meant that the others had to share, but I knew that it would be rude to refuse. Their generosity melted my heart.

The conversation was very pleasant, they asked a lot about my family at home, about Australia, about my opinions of Namibia. And then Africa’s Big Brother was on and the conversation ended. Africa’s Big Brother is surely the world’s most boring TV viewing. I had actually already seen an episode in Ghana a few months earlier and it definitely had not gotten any better since then. I pretended to be interested while they explained each character to me, the love triangles and the bitch fights and each one told me their favourite person and begged me to pick a favourite of my own.

After Big brother it was time to be dropped back at the station to get my bus. Danonetta’s sister asked me to take a group photo on my camera and upload it to their laptop (I was a little surprised they had a lap top actually). She said:

“We must have a photo of you here with us to show our friends, or else no one will believe that a white woman was at our house eating with us.”

In the car on the way to the station Daonetta got a text message from her sister. It said:

‘We miss Kai already’.

I am such a softy I wanted to cry.

When the bus pulled up we shared long hugs goodbye and I watched them through the window waving until the shape of them faded from sight.

The hospitality and friendliness of the locals from the last three nights in a row had been a saving grace for my spirit. In the North of Namibia I had begun feeling resentment and defeat, the people had been rude, and hostile and were either demanding money or falling down drunk. I couldn’t get out of Namibia fast enough.

But the experiences of my last few days in Namibia had rejuvenated me and renewed my hope. The night I had slept at the Megameno family’s house and ate birthday cake with them in the morning, the hustler and his wise view of the world and then Daonetta, her family and the fish.

worst photo of me ever! But decided to suck it up and post it anyway

Hitch-hiking Away

On May 5^th my diary entry began:

“Once again I am about to do something potentially very dangerous. Once again, I am about to do something potentially very stupid”.

I am surprised I hadn’t written more. I still remember the worry and the fear welling up inside me. I remember the lectures I was giving myself, telling myself that it wasn’t worth the risk. I was imagining what my partner, my mother and father, all of my friends would think if they knew what I was about to do.

It was the afternoon of the morning where Chris and I had said goodbye on the side of the road and I was going to hitch-hike alone, in Namibia, heading in the direction of Victoria Falls.

I waited in the scolding sun for about an hour before a truck pulled over and I hoisted myself in. I hate to say it, but because he was a local I assumed I’d have to pay for the ride, I managed to bargain him down to something reasonable, seeing as it was a work truck he wasn’t paying for the petrol. He was a gentle guy. He asked me if there was such a thing as AIDS in Australia. I told him that there was, but it is not as common in Australia as it was in Africa. He said that his 27 year old sister recently died from AIDS.

He insisted that it was dangerous for me to hitch-hike alone, and for a few extra dollars he’ll take me all the way to Oshakati. There he dropped me at the ‘cheapest’ hotel. They wanted N$380, my budget was N$100. I walked to the next place, they wanted N$500, and the next one after that wanted $450. My pack was heavy, the day was hot and it had seemed long, it was getting close to sunset and I was over it.

I was walking circles following vague directions to an advertised lodge when I asked a man if he knew where it was. He just happened to be heading there anyway for a ‘meeting’ but it turned out that lodge was even more expensive than all the rest.

I was about to heave the pack on my back once again when the man he was meeting offered me a bed in his house for the night. I thought it through for an awkward 20 seconds before saying that yes, I would take up his kind, though frightening offer.

I waited in the bar while the two men had their meeting, and that is where I wrote those simple two lines.

 I wondered:

‘How do you tell if someone is capable of rape and murder? You probably can’t. But travelling is full of risks. Risks you have to take. But is staying at the house of a man I know nothing about pushing it a bit too far? I wanted to trust people. I believed it was important to trust people. I had had a lot of luck up until that moment, was it a wave of luck I could continue to ride, or was my luck about to run out? Should I message someone from home and tell them what I am doing in case they don’t hear from me again? But I couldn’t do that, it would just worry them too much.’

But my luck didn’t run out, not at that point anyway.

The man who took me to his house, whose first name I shamefully and regrettably cannot remember (and I never wrote it down, but I later found out his surname is Megameno), drove me to his very nice house, in a very quiet suburb on the edge of Oshakati. He had a beautiful wife and four adorable and extremely polite children. He left not long after I arrived, I assumed he was going to a bar to drink.

His wife offered me food, I was hungry, but too polite to say yes. I already felt intrusive. He had invited me there, she had no idea I was coming to stay, and yet it was her who was left behind to deal with me and her four energetic children.

The eldest daughter was turning 16 the next day, she told me that when she grows up she wants to be a doctor or scientist. The 7 year old girl talked way too much, and was a bit of a know-it-all, but she was so sweet she insisted on carrying my bags to my room for the night and making my bed up for me. The 6 year old girl was very shy, and wanted to read her books mostly, and the 4 year old boy was cute but quite naughty. The kids were hanging off my every move and my every word, and were literally physically hanging off me all night too. They showed me their school report cards, and they took photos with my camera and asked non-stop questions about Australia. The woman was a school principal, she was telling me that children generally struggle to pass exams because they are all in English, but at home and out in the streets they don’t speak English. I remember thinking the same in Ghana, the school system doesn’t make sense and surely it slows students down?

At 6am the next morning there was a knock at the door. The woman was asking what time I had planned to leave. I thought maybe they were wanting me out in a hurry so I said in an hour. I packed my bags and  went to the kitchen to fill up my water bottle. The man was already up, he said  he wanted to drive me to a good spot to hitch hike but first I had to eat breakfast with them.

I found it a little cruel that on her 16^th birthday he made his daughter Albertina make everyone tea and eggs for breakfast. She had already spent the morning tidying up and sweeping the floor. Each of the kids took it in turn to ask how I had slept. Too adorable!

He took me out the front of the house and pointed to the university. It was expanding, he told me, and soon it would be the second biggest university in the country. He went on to talk about education today and in the past during the apartheid era. He talked about when he was at school and all he learnt about were frogs and lizards, while the white kids learnt maths and history. He said that as a kid the white kids in his neighbourhood would call him a monkey. In Sunday school the priest would tell all the black children that white people are made in the image of God and black people were created just to serve them.

His eyes were filled with a mix of sadness and hate and I didn’t know what to say, I felt guilty, I felt that by the colour of my skin I was one of those people teaching his young-self that he was created to serve me.

Our conversation was broken when we were called back inside. The younger children were sitting quietly at a small table taking it in turns to read each other stories. Those children amazed me; so intelligent, so respectful, and they absolutely adored each other and their parents. The younger three had told me the night before that their mother was beautiful like a queen, their father handsome like a king and their big sister was the best sister in the whole world.

After breakfast Albertina proudly pulled her birthday cake out of the fridge. They usually share cake in the afternoon, they told me, but because they have a special guest they were doing it at 8am. Cake was the last thing I felt like, but I ate the huge slab placed in my hands. No candles, or singing, and I wondered if anyone in Namibia does anything like that?

As soon as I swallowed the last bite the man stood up and asked if I was ready to go. I said my thanks and goodbyes and got in the car with Albertina and her dad. I was only in the car for a minute when I had an idea. I had bought a pair of earrings in Ghana which I was saving as a souvenir for someone, why had I not thought earlier to give them to Albertina as a birthday present? I wished my bag was in the seat beside me? Where the hell in my huge pack are they anyway? Could I ask them to wait while I search my bag for them? Is that tacky? When we pulled up I didn’t feel like I could ask them to wait, so I got out of the car and gave her nothing. Still to this day I wish I had given her those earrings.

The family asked me for nothing in return for their hospitality and kindness. The whole time I almost expected them to ask me for money, I actually waited for them to do so. I later felt guilty that I had thought the generosity was loaded. Then I felt even more guilty for not offering them anything. I would have, and probably should have given them some money for everything, but I really was expecting that they would soon enough they would mention a price.

In my experiences in the five African countries I had already been to, you rarely, if ever, get something for nothing from locals. This made my experience with the Megameno family that much more special, they helped me, took a genuine interest in me and wanted nothing in return. But still I wish I had given them something to show my appreciation.

My last nigth with Chris

Another perfect sunset, silhouettes and a haze of dust across the sky, it felt like we were walking in a dream. I don’t know why that afternoon was so different, but for some unexplained reason Chris and I walked for a whole hour before we were asked for money, and in the second hour only two people had asked us. It was a relief and we both felt a sense of peace just in being left alone for once.

Our walk led us to the hospital, and we walked straight in without seeing a single guard. The hospital was quite small, though a little decrepit it was clean, we only saw one nurse the whole time we were there. I assumed that visiting hours were over, but it was early enough for the patients to still be awake. It was not like the hospital in Ghana, reeking of desperation and disorder, it was calm there and quiet. The corridors were lined with glass windows and we could stare right in to the bed rooms. We only saw two people who seemed to be in pretty bad shape, one hooked up to a drip and the other so thin it brought flashes of David Edem to mind. Most of the patients were Himba people; it was quite a sight to see them in their cow-skin and heavy steal adornments, their thick clay coating and their matted dread locks, lying on crisp white sheets in hard cold rooms. Many of the Himba people had pulled their sheets to the floor and were lying beside the bed, perhaps a soft mattress takes as much getting used to as the hard floor did for us?

Afterward Chris and I sat and had a beer and a piece of BBQ-ed steak. We talked about travel and love and our hopes and dreams. I really like Chris. He is gentle and sentimental, passionate and brave and has a thirst for knowledge and people that is almost child-like. Even though we had only spent a week together, we had become very close. Travelling does that. When you have no one else but each other to rely on, when no one else understands you except each other, when you have to trust that person to protect you and keep you safe. I was feeling sentimental and sad. I had a feeling that it was going to be my last night with Chris. We had achieved what we had gone north to do – to see the Himba people. Chris wanted to head further north still to the Epupa waterfall, I needed to move on and say goodbye to Namibia, I still had Victoria Falls and Ethiopia and only a month left of my whole trip. Chris and I hadn’t actually talked about going separate ways, and I had a lump so large in my throat thinking about it that I couldn’t bare to bring it up with him then.

A man approached us and asked us for money. We tried to explain to him that fifty people or more a day ask us for money and we couldn’t possible say yes to everyone. He said he understood what we were saying and sat beside us and told us that Africans, particularly the Himba people, think that all white people are rich and that is why they get angry when we don’t give them money. We had a half hour long conversation where I actually thought he understood our point of view. But then he asked us again for money and exasperated we got up and left him there.

The next morning I woke up to a phone call from my partner. She told me she had been out the night before and slept with someone. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking, even though we had an overseas arrangement actually meant it was ok to do so. But I thought about what Colin had been saying about sex the night before, and I was thinking about all the people I had met in Africa who thought sex meant nothing – it was something that all animals do, humans included, like eating and sleeping. And then my heart quietened down and my hands were steady again. We’d been apart for three months at that stage, it was starting to feel like three years.

It was a bad start to my day. I had had a troubled sleep, not knowing if I would stay with Chris or leave him that day. Not knowing how I would get out of that town, not really knowing where I was going next. I was feeling the same deep sadness as when I left Jo’Burg, thinking I would never see the friends I had made there again, and now I was thinking I will probably never see Chris again either. It made me feel nauseous. Decision making has never, and will never, been my forte.

I watched Chris go through his regular morning rituals that I found so endearing. The first thing he always did when he wakes up was rip the curtains open and declare with glee “the sun is shining!” like it wasn’t shining the day before, or the day before that, or every morning since he’d arrived in Africa. When he has his first sip of Earl Grey tea he always smacks his lips together and sighs “ah! That’s good!” like he has never tasted tea before.

When I told Chris that I was leaving that day he went into the bathroom and stayed there for what seemed like an awfully long time. He later told me that he was crying in there.

He watched me packed my bags (and couldn’t believe that I didn’t fold any of my clothes). He walked me to the start of the highway so that I could hitch-hike east, in the direction of Victoria Falls. The sun was hot and I was fighting back tears. We hugged and took a couple of photos and then it was time for him to go and try and get his ride North. As he walked away I let a single tear free.

About twenty feet away he stopped and turned back around.

“Friends for life?” he called to me.

“Friends for life!” I called back.

Twenty more feet after that he turned back around and blew me a kiss. Then he kept walking and once again I was on my own.

A reality check in a dream

 

Fairly late the next afternoon, Chris and I were bouncing around on the back of a beat-up old Ute (Colin our guide was in the passenger seat in the cabin). A group of men had to push the stalling vehicle until finally it farted into action and we rattled along a dirt track heading into the Namibian scrubland, heading deep into the big blank patch on our map. Both of us were in jeans and t-shirts, our faces pink and raw from the unyielding sun, goofy grins from ear to ear, we could taste the promise of something awesome to come. We were both standing up holding on to the flimsy sides; I think we were too excited to sit.

The all-Himba passengers (except for the skeletal goat) were staring us down, but Chris barely seemed to notice. I tried to smile at them, I tried to show my’ friendly foreigner’ face but it was received with stone-cold stares. I gave up on the locals and absorbed the surroundings instead. Herds of cows were led past us, beaten on the back by the young boys driving them. We hadn’t seen any villages yet but random groups of Himba people scattered the sides of the dirt path waiting for rides in to town.

My trance on the world going by was cut short when I felt this warm tickle on my bare toes. The goat was peeing on me. The Himba passengers nudged each other and giggled. My eyes met those of the goat and I couldn’t be angry, it was so scraggy and malnourished, and looked like it had copped its fair share of beatings in its life time. I tried to wriggle my toes out of the way, gently as though I didn’t want to hurt its feelings. I owe that goat a favour, the warmth of its wee had melted the ice amongst the passengers and the women in the Ute started to talk to me. They didn’t speak a word of English but tried to teach me some of their language. “Omudwandu” they rubbed their skin, “omuyapa: they touched mine. When we passed a cow or another car they would say a word and I would dutifully repeat it back to them. And then one of the men stood up beside me and sang to me. The women chuckled and I blushed.

The car was spitting up billows of dust which seemed to make the sunset a deeper scarlet colour. Chris was holding on to the cabin and facing the setting sun he faded in to a silhouette, around him the first stars began to glitter. In amongst cleared scrubs sat little villages of half a dozen or so little stick huts, a camp fire and Himba people going about their lives. One by one the others jumped off at their little villages and waved us goodbye, until it was just Chris and I, anxious to reach our destination.

When we finally spluttered to a halt the sun had well and truly set. Jeckey’s uncle, the driver of the Ute, led Chris, Colin and I to a little hut set apart from the rest of the village. This hut seemed bigger than the others, it could easily fit five adults lying side-by-side, it was raised off the ground on wooden stilts made of tree branches, the walls were made of mud clay, the roof was corrugated iron and inside it was bare except for a blanket on the floor. This would be where we slept.

We were instructed to leave our bags in the hut and the uncle led us to three women who were perched on the ground in the centre of the other huts.

‘What do you want to ask us?’

Colin interpreted, in very broken English, what the women said. They sat in bored silence waiting for us to throw a barrage of questions at them. It was all a bit awkward, set up like an interview. Neither Chris nor I had any real questions for them. We were there to just be silent observers or friendly guests. We weren’t anthropologists or politicians, but I got the feeling that those sorts of white intruders were what they were used to. The women kept waiting for us to ask questions. I had none. Chris was better than I was at easing the awkwardness and asking the usual sorts of questions: What do you eat? What do you believe in? Why do you cover your bodies in clay? Despite the awkward atmosphere it was peaceful out there. Quiet. A soft blue light made everything clear, cast from a nearly full moon.

Finally, the women gave us permission to leave and we went back to our hut. We weren’t even offered water, and I was worried we were meant to bring our own.

In the hut Colin, Chris and I made sandwiches from the supplies we had brought with us. Colin gave us the answers to the questions I wouldn’t have dared ask the women. ‘Wife sharing’ what I call ‘trading in women’ is common practice. When a baby is born it doesn’t matter who the biological father is, the husband must take responsibility for it. He then tells us that wearing condoms is common practice – which I do not believe at all. And he contradicts himself by saying that men will never perform oral sex on a woman because a man’s semen stays inside her and you don’t want another man’s in your mouth. He talked a lot about sex, and very graphically.

Sick of the way he was talking about sex and horrified at the way women are regarded I changed the topic, “The women kept telling us how poor they are… yet they own hundreds of cows” I asked him what a single cow would sell for. N$5000 – N$7000 he tells us. “Per cow!” I am shocked! They are really sitting on that much money? I try to tell him that all of my money and possessions combined equal 2 cows. He did not believe me. “Honest!” I protested.

As soon as Chris left the hut to pee, Colin asked me to write down my contact details in Australia: “then through the bank you can transfer money to me”.

The next morning we woke up with the sun, Chris had barely slept anyway, the cold stone floor hurting his back. I am lucky enough to be able to sleep anywhere, anytime, probably the reason I can travel so much.

We left the hut to explore the surroundings. Already the villagers were awake, inside a large wooden pen milking the cows. We stood watching long enough for one woman to invite me in and she showed me how to milk a cow. I crouched down beside her and gave it a go… nothing came out, not a single drop. She laughed and showed me how to do it again. Chris, another woman and some children stood beside me watching. I tried again, and still no milk came out. How hard could it be to milk a damn cow? Pretty hard is seems.

Colin came to take us away from the women and the cows and over to the uncle, it was time to present him with the gifts that we brought. He sat on a directors chair drinking beer, even though it was only 7am. We handed him the bag of oranges, 10 kilos of maize, drum of oil, box of tea and two kilos of sugar. We had also brought sweets for the kids, which neither Chris nor I wanted to do, but Colin had insisted we should. The kids that had taken to following us around all politely waited while Chris handed them all two sweets each.

The uncle did not look happy with our gifts. “Where is the tobacco?” he asked Colin to ask us. We hadn’t gotten any tobacco. A very young child, of maybe two or three was leaning between his knees and he gave the child the beer in his hand and shooed him away. The child happily held the 700ml bottle of beer that was half of the size of him and guzzled its contents. Chris and I flashed each other looks of disapproval but said nothing. Then the uncle opened the bag of sugar and filled the children’s cupped hands with it. The children shovelled the handfuls of white sugar into their mouths, and again Chris and I shared looks of reproach.

The women brought over bowls of sour milk for us. I gagged as soon as I saw it. I thought ‘no way can I drink that’. Chris went first. When he took a sip there were curdled chunks of milk on his lips and I had to get up and walk away, my eyes were watering and I honestly thought I was going to puke. But I had to have a sip next. I stared into the bowl, the water had separated from the solids and it smelt just like off- milk. I tried not to breathe in the smell as I took the smallest of sips and swallowed it quickly, hoping it would slide straight past my taste buds. I passed the bowl on and listened to my stomach turn. To my disgust, Chris actually had another sip.

The uncle swigged from his hipflask and told Colin that if we wanted to stay another night we would have to go back into town and buy more gifts for them. I was pissed off, we weren’t even offered water and he expected more gifts.

One woman took us in to her hut and showed us the cow skin she sleeps on. Her spare head pieces and steel jewellery hung from the walls around us. On the floor was tubs of the animal fat and clay that the women smear all over their bodies. She scooped a dollop and rubbed it on my arm and leg. She asked to see my tattoos, and was shocked by the ones on my back and asked me if it bleeds. She told me they are beautiful. A crowd of children were cramming in the door way of her hut, passing around the bag of sugar we brought and scoffing it by the handful until the bag was empty and they tossed it behind them onto the ground.

She pointed to the cow-skin on the floor and told us that she needed a mattress and blankets and would Chris and I buy them for her. We said no. She thrusted jewellery in my face and told me to buy it. I shook my head no. Then she asked me to giver her some medicine to make her pregnant. I told her that no such medicine exists. She didn’t believe me and asked me again to give her pills that will make her fall pregnant. Again I told her that no such pill exists. And she glared at me angry.

Chris, Colin and I went for a walk to the neighbouring village. We stopped to watch a woman making butter, she even said we could take a photo and didn’t want money for it.  We passed a young girl who was shaking large flasks of milk in the sun. This is how they get soured milk. In Australia it is just off milk and I couldn’t understand why they don’t just drink it fresh. Colin sleazed on to the girl, and later told us that he had been trying for months to get her into bed.

We got back to the village from our walk at only about 10am and from a distance I could see that the uncle was mad. He wanted to be in town hours ago, he yelled to Colin who translated to us. I assumed his hipflask was empty and it was past beer o-clock. He never told us he wanted to leave early, we assumed we would at least have gotten a full day there, though to be honest I was ready to leave, they had made it perfectly clear that we were not welcome unless we were giving them tobacco, mattresses or magic pills.

Standing up on the tray of the Ute heading back into town I had a rare “wow I am in Africa” moment. Those moments didn’t happen enough. Usually I am so caught up in my own head and thoughts that I am never truly present in the moment. But standing on the back of that Ute, with the already scolding sun burning the back of my neck, I watched women walking the side of the road with buckets on their heads, we passed donkeys herded by young semi-naked boys and some totally traditional Himba women were sitting at my feet and I thought with elation “this is Africa”.

Preparing to Meet the Himba People

The next day Chris and I got up early and went for a walk to find some coffee. We passed the bar we had first drank at the night before and I stopped to take a photo of the pile of empty beer bottles where the Herero women sat, leaning up against the wall that advertised ‘Tafel Lager’ and ‘Windhoek Draught’. I did a 360 degree turn on the spot and saw four giant billboards all advertising beer, as well as the biggest building across the road with one whole wall painted in the ‘Tafel Lager logo’. How fitting for a town that obviously has a drinking problem!

There are only two paved roads running through the centre of town. When a breeze lifted, the dust was so thick it choked us. And on that breeze we could smell the Himba women, a unique and undeniable smell of the animal fat they lathered on their skin. It reminded me of the old cooking oil in some of the dirty deep-fryers I had worked with in café kitchens, mixed with the human odours of sweat from bodies that by tradition are not meant to bathe for their whole life (why men could bathe and women couldn’t I will never understand). When we passed a whole group of Himba women my stomach would churn just a little.

A Himba woman pushed her children in front of us and begged us to take their photo for N$10, the kids struck a pose they had done many, many times before.

Some Themba women followed us all the way to the coffee shop, rattling beads of jewellery in our face; they even took the bracelets straight off their legs and arms in desperate hope of making any sale.

More and more people walked beside us, I had no idea what they were saying, I could only assume they were asking for money.

At the coffee shop Chris and I tried to deconstruct our opinions on the tribes so far.

Chris said that when he was in Germany he saw a documentary on the Himba people. It was so romanticized it made them look exotic and beautiful, showing them all dressed up, cooking food together in their family circles, whilst the children ran around happily chasing chickens. But now, he said, he sees what it is really like. That when those film makers turned the camera off the Himba asked them for money to buy alcohol.

I showed him the photo of the woman and her children I had just taken and said:

“I could put this photo on Facebook and underneath it write ‘this woman asked me to take a photo and proudly showed off her children, then she gave me a piece of her jewellery – how lovely they all are’. I could wait for all of my friends to comment and then later post the same picture and write ‘this woman demanded I take her photo and giver her money. She tried to sell her children’s image for more money still, then she forced some jewellery on my arm and demanded I pay $30 for it. She needed to buy more beer’”.

Chris had arranged to meet a guy he had met last night who offered to show us ‘the heart of Opuwo’. He was there with his friend and they took us through the market place, which was a cluster of maybe 60 little shade covers balancing on stilts built from tree branches. Perched on the dirt in the small relieving patches of shade were a couple of hundred people. Some of them were selling things, such as sweets, home made alcohol or animal carcasses dangling from the roof of the hut, covered in dirt, dust and flies.

It was only midday and already half of them were drunk. I asked our guide what people do here all day “they just sit and drink and talk too much” he replied.

Every second person wanted money, as soon as we said ‘no’ they completely lost interest in us, turned their backs and pretended we weren’t there. I tried smiling at people, waving to them, but they just stared back with blank, un-moving faces.

Our guide took us into the village where many people lived. Some of the huts were made of mud and clay, some were just made of sticks, and many people lived in typical 2-man camping tents. The people there also just stared at us, or asked for money, our guide informed us that no white people ever go into that part of town.

Two or three times in the span of five minutes our guides sighed, exasperated and lamented that it was too hot. I took up the hint and suggested we have a drink.

“Is there anywhere we can go to sit in the shade and just have a soft drink?” I asked, not wanting to be around anymore drunk people.

“No just bars” and they led us to the closest one.

Chris went to the bar and bought two cokes for us and two beers for our guides. More drunk people loitered around us demanding money, and as usual when we said no we were flashed looks of annoyance or even anger.

As soon as our drinks were finished we kept on walking to the only side of town we hadn’t seen yet. “What is up there?” I pointed in the direction we had not been yet “more bars” our guide answered. We kept walking anyway, even though ‘more bars’ was the last thing I felt like seeing. But as we kept walking we reached a hotel advertising rooms for nearly half of what we were paying for our hut. We asked to look at a room and it was twice as big, twice as nice, had an en suite, a fridge and free tea, coffee and internet. We told the guys we had to leave them there and swap hotels. “What will you do now?” I asked the guides. “If you give us money we will drink beer” they replied. So I gave them N$30 and ran off.

That afternoon Chris was texting another guy he had met the night before. I wondered how distracted I had been by all of the girls fighting over me, for me not to have noticed Chris meeting all of these useful men. He assured me that this one, Jeckey, was a good guy. I agreed to go with Chris to meet Jeckey for a beer.

It only took five minutes of talking to him to realise that Chris was right, Jeckey was a gem! He was a Himba man, though fully modernized and working for an NGO in town. He said his uncle lives in a Himba village and would give us a place to sleep for a couple of nights, so that we could have a ‘real Himba experience’. He said we just need to present gifts to the chief of the village, not money, but useful things like maize, oil, tea, sugar and tobacco. He warned us that we would be sleeping on hard floors “and…” he paused “… white people aren’t used to the Himba smell so you might…” he imitated someone gagging and then vomiting, and we burst out laughing. He went on to joke that when a man has sex with a Himba woman everybody knows about it – “he is smeared in red and can’t wash the smell off for weeks”. Chris and I had been pretending to be husband and wife (it makes it remarkably easier) and so I made a show of nudging him and declaring that no matter how hard he tried to hide it I would always know if he cheated on me!

Another drunk guy approached us but this one was Jeckey’s friend. His name was Collin and he offered to take us to the village, to be our translator. We took him up on the offer, we would have rather had Jeckey as our translator, but he had to work, so this guy would do. He would meet us at 1pm the next day and we would hitch a ride to the village.

Another very drunk man pulled up a chair and sat in our huddle. He was sweet and harmless, though at first annoying.

“See that building there!” he slurred as he motioned to a half-built house across the road. “My building… Me… I’m the boss… 8 days I have to have it finished…. 8 days!”

As Jeckey and Collin explained, that house was going to be the first two-story building in Opuwo, and was soon the be the pride of the town. Two years they had been working on that building and still it wasn’t finished. This drunk man beside us was responsible for it, and he had just been told he had to finished it in 8 days or else he lost his job.

I considered the lifeless shell of a building and thought that not even a miracle would get that building done in 8 days. “You better swap that beer for a hammer” I said. Collin leant in to me and whispered “the whole town thinks it will fall down soon anyway”.

The conversation kept flowing but every now and then the drunk man would interrupt “hold, hold, hold!” We would all pause to listen to what he had to say.

“But the building!” he would cry and wave his arms in the vague direction of the construction pile across from us. The first few times I rolled my eyes, but then I found it quite amusing. This poor guy was so distressed, but really, it was quite funny.

Jeckey was real ‘marriage-material’, he was honest, kind, hard-working. I asked about his parents. “My mother died when I was 15, my father died 5 years after that.” I asked what they died from “No one knows” he hesitated “some people say they were cursed by a witch”. My guess is they died of HIV/AIDS but I dared not share that.

After two beers Jeckey announced that it was time to leave, that he had to get up early for work the next morning. He insisted on walking us home because his parents had taught him that if ever something happened to your guests on the way home it is on your conscience. Told you he was marriage material!

In the hotel room Chris and I laughed a happy, relieved, elated laugh. How nice it was to finally meet a Namibian who wasn’t just using us for money, but who seemed to genuinely just want to be our friend, help us, chat with us. We were stoked that we had found everything we had gone to Opuwo looking for. We were giddy with excited nerves at the thought that the next night we would be lying under the stars in a Himba village.

Everytime I see this picture I think about how sad they look. I wonder if I noticed it at the time?

The Tribes of Opuwo

The next day we only had to stand on the side of the road for an hour before we got a lift. We were lucky, because the closer we got to Opuwo, the more empty the roads were. One of the only bits of traffic we passed was a mini bus that had smashed into a cow. I wanted to cry, the poor big thing lay there on her side obviously suffering. The front half of the bus was pancaked and everyone stood around looking quite stupefied. I wanted to get out and help the cow somehow (it isn’t unusual for me to be more worried about animals than humans) but our driver refused to stop. He said that sometimes it is a ploy to get cars to pull over so you can attack and rob them. I thought... how did he explain the battered cow getting in on that act?

But that accident was by far the most populated event on those desolate roads and I wasn’t too eager to join the pack of abandoned passengers waiting in the heat for the next generous ride.

Our driver’s name was Harald, he was from Norway and working in Northern Namibia on a ‘development project’ that he chose not to share the details of. But he was a useful resource of knowledge, he gave a good introduction to the tribes of the north that we were about to meet.

He explained to me the various tribes – the Herero, the Damara, the Kavango, the Themba and of course, the famous Himba.

He explained that the Himba have managed to hold onto their traditions because even the missionaries didn’t make it this far until the late 1960’s. Tar roads were only built in the north in the last decade and the only other interactions the tribes had were with Angolans who crossed to boarders to swap Himba cows for cases of beer. The Himbas have no real concept of money which makes them vulnerable to exploitation. On top of that, alcoholism had begun to run rampant amongst tribes, especially in Opuwo which is the town we were heading to, the last town this far north and the centre for all the various tribes.

He warned me that some traditions were positively remarkable – such as the women covering their bodies head to toe in a mix of animal fat, dung and clay, yet other traditions were not so positive, mainly wife beating and wife swapping (against a woman’s will – as a form of trade between men).

As we neared Opuwo I got a little hopeful - would I see one of these enigmatic tribe people? What would they look like? What would I say or do if I did see one?

The town snuck up on us…. And so did the sight of its people.

I didn’t spot one or two of these people… the entire town was teeming with them!

Chris and I became animated with excitement. Astounded and thrilled I wanted to leap out of the moving vehicle. On the one hand it was so surreal… the sort of images I had only seen on national geographic. On the other hand it was totally intimidating. And on the third hand (if I had three) I was simply blown away.

Of course there are a lot of people in Western clothes, particularly men, but the different tribal people were so fetching that they held my attention. The Hereros and the Himbas were easiest to spot - and yet so vastly different from each other.

Herero women wore brightly coloured Victorian-style dresses with a matching head piece in the shape of a bull’s horn.

The Himba women wore cow-skin skirts and were the same ochre colour as the dust under their feet. Their hair was dreaded but caked in clay and their bodies were adorned with extravagant heavy iron and leather jewellery.

Then there were the Themba women who wore cotton skirts and layers of jewellery around their waists, necks, ankles and arms, but theirs was made of brightly coloured beads.

Harald dropped us at the cheapest lodge in town which for a clay hut with nothing but two single beds and some torn up mosquito nets it was over-priced but we didn’t care at that stage, we wanted to hit the streets.

The town was bustling as it neared dusk. It was dirty and dusty and the edges of the road were lined with rubbish – mostly empty beer bottles. The brick houses that were actually shops or bars were old and run-down, and the make-shift tin shacks looked like they were only ever intended to be temporary.

But I loved it. I loved how gritty it was. I loved how raw the people were. I loved the energy. I LOVED that Africans did their business on the streets, not behind closed doors - it makes far more entertaining tourism.

Opuwo is quite small. It had a market place that had already closed up for the day, a bakery, a supermarket, a few banks and one café. It had plenty of bars though. And none of them seemed to be wanting for business.

We got stared at the whole time… of course! But we were staring back just as intensely. Many people came up to us, and spoke to us, but very few spoke English. It was hard to know at that stage if the greetings were friendly or hostile.

We stopped in front of a very large brick bar, full of people. Squatting against a wall was a group of a dozen Herero women, in their beautiful bright robes plonked down on the dusty ground in a pile of empty beer bottles. We watched in awe, as they passed around bottles of beer, belched and wiped the snot from their face with the sleave of their elegant satin robes. The sight was so contradictory it was exceptionally peculiar.

I suggested to Chris we have a beer at the bar. He hesitated, as I wanted to, but I forced myself forward. Every eye in the place followed us all the way to the bar and then all the way back out the door again to the outside where we perched on the step to devour our beer, and the best view in town.

Within seconds an old Herero woman in a bright yellow dress stumbled up to us and leant down to rest her elbows on my shoulders. In my ear she slurred something in words I didn’t understand. Her eyes couldn’t find a focus and she reeked of alcohol, but she was in a damn good mood and her toothless smile spread ear to ear.

She indicated that she wanted us to move over and she fell down between Chris and I.

Her head lolled from side to side and occasionally she stretched her arms out in front of her face and waved them around like she was dancing.

Shortly after we were surrounded by a swarm of drunken women. They all started running their fingers through my hair, poking at me and grabbing my beer to swig from it. It was hard to see who was playing with Chris, I was literally trapped in the circle of women. They all talked at once and then pulled me up and over to the dance floor.

I kind of awkwardly shuffled along with the girls and tried to imitate their dancing style. They stuck their bums out and shook it, while they held their elbows up and out to the side. It is a very bum-heavy dance that I was not used to and I felt a great sense of relief when Chris appeared at my side, shaking his arse to the beat. The girls loved it and I am believed their laughter was in good jest. The dance floor attracted a very entertained crowd.

Then this girl staggered up to me, she was so drunk I was impressed that she managed to stay reasonably vertical. She started grinding up against me, touching my breasts and my face and she wedged her thigh between my legs. I kept backing away until I hit the wall. I sent Chris ‘help me eyes’ but he shrugged in a ‘what the hell could I do’ kind of way.

I was too careful not to be rude. I didn’t yet know what was and wasn’t culturally appropriate, but I wanted her to back off.

Finally one of the girls that had pulled me to the dance floor marched over and pulled her off me. But that didn’t go down too well and a fight broke out.

The full-on drunk girl’s friend stomped over and started yelling and then four more girls appeared and the fight was on. Chris and I stood there helpless and dumbfounded. It would have helped if we knew what they were saying.

The girl who had first saved me grabbed me by the arm and yanked me out of there. Chris shuffled close behind. Her name was Elsie and her English was quite good. Her posse followed us to the next bar a few doors down.

It didn’t take long for the drunk girl to hunt us down again, this time she wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her body against me “don’t you want me?” she slurred in my ear.

“What the hell was happening here?”

 I was so confused at that stage. If a girl did that to me in Sydney I would have had an inkling into what it was she wanted… but in the farthest reach of Northern Namibia could this girl actually be gay?... And open about it! Or was it simply a matter of confused cross-cultural communication and language barriers?

I wriggled free and told her she needed to go home and sleep. Chris just stood there and laughed as she tried to embrace me again.

Again Elsie came to my rescue and heaved her off me. This caused an even bigger fight. It was mostly verbal except for a few pushes and shoves.

Elsie and her friends won the fight again and the drunk girl and her friends sulked off. Mostly I was afraid that they all knew I was gay then, and afraid of any repercussions it could bring.

We all move on to the next bar and I bought Elsie and her friends a beer for saving me. They dragged me up to the dance floor again and yet again a crowd of gawkers gathered around. Chris and I must have been a sight though. The girls did their best to make my awkward body bounce around like theirs.

Another horribly trashed woman stormed up to Chris and demanded money. He said “no sorry” and she stepped over to me and in the same aggressive growl she demanded money. She poked a finger between my eyes and I stared back at her and said nothing. For a third time that night poor Elsie came to my rescue and for a third time that night she got into a fight doing so.

I was over it then, exhausted and overwhelmed. Elsie suggested we go to another bar, I suggested we went home.

As we left I saw the drunk girl number 1 watching me (the sleazy one) and I knew that leaving was the right decision.

We all headed out of there together and were walking down the street when Elsie yelled “police!” She grabbed Chris’ bottle of beer from his hands and hid it under her animal-fur mid-riff jacket.

The paddy wagon pulled up and three cops in camouflage crawled out. I couldn’t understand the words but it was plain to see that the cops were not happy with Elsie and her bottle of beer. She tried to object and all of her friends were protesting flustered. One of the cops walked around to the back of the car to open the wagon door. In Australia it is a fairly empty threat, but I could see the panic rise in the girls and I got fearful for them.

I stepped up and grabbed the beer from Elsie and emptied its contents out.

“It was my beer” I told the cops. “I am sorry I didn’t know the rules, she is my friend, she was just helping me… see no more beer, my mistake”

The main cop stared me down, he stared at the girls and back at the other cops. There was silence as we all waited with held breath. Finally they all got back in their car and drove off.

We kept on walking and I saw that Elsie was literally shaking, her teeth were even chattering. She didn’t even get slightly scared in the other three fights she faced that evening and I only just realised what a close call it had been. Perhaps in Opuwo the cops didn’t just parade around in pathetic attempts to look macho like they did in Australia, maybe in Namibia their threats were real.

Back in the silent hut I exhaled fully for the first time since getting dropped off in Opuwo. No more watchful eyes on me, no more dodging drunken bodies, no more people sticking their open palm out in my face demanding money… at least not for another 8 hours anyway.

That pile of beer was where the Herero women were sitting

two herero women

A himba family