African Continent

Citrusdal and The Baths

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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June 14, 2002 My birthday
The Baths is a health spa about 16 km from Citrusdal in a pretty wooded gorge. It is a long weekend in South Africa; Monday is Youth Day-(SA has 13 public holidays) so Rod’s wife Brenda drives up from Cape Town. Bob and I, Sarah and Adrian and Heather and Fi upgrade to a chalet-$6 each and it’s wonderful to sleep in a bed.

Around the camp fire that night James and George teach me how to say “cool banana” in Swahili: Poe Matoke!

There is a cold swimming pool and another swimming pool fed by the hot springs so we sit in the soothing warm water a while before going to bed.

The next morning at breakfast Bob shows me a note he has written: “Happy Birthday,” which takes me by surprise as I had forgotten what day it was.

Then the truck takes us into Citrusdal where we experience a wine tasting of South African wines, including one made of Rooibos Tea which tastes like medicine. There is a nice break in the weather and we have lunch out on the front porch; the food is wonderful and half of us order a second entre which startles the woman restaurant owner!

That evening back at camp Bob appears with a cake and one candle and Nikki gives me Apricot jam and a piece of handmade soap made of goat’s milk and Ylang Ylang that we can use in our apartment in Cape Town. Think she must have seen me eyeing these things in the little wine shop…I am very touched by everyone’s good wishes!

Then everyone walks up to the Baths again. Just as Bob and I were getting into our tent, though, Rod drives up and tells us there has just been a cancellation in one of the suites in the hotel…so off we go to yet another night in a real bed on my birthday! Turned out to be a really good thing though because Bob was up about 10 times that night with diarrhea.

Orange River Bush Camp at Fiddler’s Creek

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The facilities are nice-big grassy campsite and there is a lapa (open air shelter) covered with green leaves of a plant with purple flowers within which to eat and wash dishes.

At camp we eat left-over Kudo steak sandwiches for lunch and kick back in the grass lean-to kitchen to watch it rain on the river…I am beginning to feel sad that the trip will be ending in four days…after seven weeks on the road sharing experiences I realize I care very much about the other travelers.

We all go to the bar where there is a nice fire in the braii (barbeque). I drag my computer and connectors to the bar with me and Sarah says “looking for a powerpoint?” That is a plug-in or socket. To us in the U.S. it means a microsoft application. I love learning all these different terms. Some of us order a Gluhwein (hot spiced wine). Then it’s Amaretto and coffee.

The next morning we packed up the tents in the rain, had breakfast of coffee and crepes with lemon juice and sugar and drove into the town of Springbok where we headed straight for the KFC…oh, grease heaven! While there-in walked one of the guys from the Kumuku Truck-barefoot in the rain and cold. Within 5 minutes Nikki had told him he looked like shit and where was his shoes! I asked where they were headed…he said he didn’t know-he just gets on the truck in the morning and gets off when it stops. We all laugh.

Two hours out of Springbok James “hoots” the horn as we pass the Kumuku parked at a toilet stop. Yeah, we’re going to beat them to the hot springs and get the best camping spot! It is getting colder when we go to the bar so we order hot mulled wine while the camp operators build a fire. Michelle introduces a mathematical puzzle which stumps everyone.

We shower in the thatched open air showers and crawl into our tents; during the night it starts to rain but we are snug. The next morning we are up and can’t wait to get to the last camp of the trip before we hit Capetown-Citrusdal and The Baths!

Fiddler’s Creek Camp

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June 12, 2002 To the South African Border
In the morning before we leave camp, three guys walk up to our campfire as George is frying bacon; I walk up and introduce myself. Two of the guys don’t speak. They ask many questions…what is your truck carrying…where are you all from…where did you travel from…are you going to South Africa? I came within an ace of saying “yes, we are going to South Africa and I just finished reading “Bang Bang Club” and I want to see the townships described in the book but there was something a little off…they were much too reserved…South African police, Rod hisses when they leave.

At the border the immigration officials who are jealous of George and James go into a room to confer about George’s passport but they don’t come out again. I go to the truck and tell Rod and everyone else that they are keeping George…silence for two seconds…then Rod gravely says “you’re kidding aren’t you…” He didn’t think it was funny.

Hobas & Fish River Canyon

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June 11, 2002
On the way from Serus the topography is incredible–perfectly formed mesas and buttes-almost Utah-like. We stop in the tiny wide spot in the road called Bethanie. Bob mails a card to his mom and I buy some pop and sausage in the little market. We notice some light skinned women sitting around-told Bob they looked exactly like Central Asians; James says they are probably mixed Bushman and White.

Later I read Laurens Van Der Post describe the Bushman in his “The Lost World of the Kalahari” as having the face of a central African black turning into “a lovely Provencal apricot yellow” and that “he moved in the glare and glitter of Africa with a flame-like flicker of gold like a fresh young Mongol of the Central Mongolian plain…his cheeks high-boned like a Mongol’s….” Some description!

It’s Bob’s turn to read “Bang Bang Club” about the experiences of four photographers during the last four years of the war in the townships of South Africa before Nelson Mandela’s release and the first election to include blacks. If you want to know what it was like on the ground in those days this book is graphic. Michael, who is from Johannesburg, says that his dad had the
photography shop that sold the photographers their equipment.

The Bohemian Rhapsody is lifting us high on the stereo-Freddy Mercury singing in that glorious and sadly gone away voice!

We arrive at the camp and Rod registers us with the camp operator in his native Afrikaner and then directs us to “toilets and ablutions” (showers).

We eat lunch while the wind blows sand in our faces and our food; to keep the tents from rolling away we have to put our baggage in them and detatch them at the top from the frames. Adrian asks if anyone has any clothes “pigs” (pegs) and I am mystified until I realize he wants some clothes “pins.”

The truck drives us to Fish River to watch the sun set over the canyon. When we arrive back at the camp a Catholic school has brought about 150 middle school children from Windhoek to hike the canyon and they are all ready to sleep out on the lawn next to our tent. Needless to say, Bob and I quickly move our tent to the other side of the park and then we have Kudo steak, mashed potatoes and carrots and peas for dinner.

In the middle of the night it starts to rain and we hear the kids…then in the morning we find them all sleeping in the camp bathrooms.

The Dunes & Sarus Guest Farm

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June 10, 2002
After a night camping near Sesriam, everyone else is up at 5:00 to go hiking in the Dunes. No coffee and no “breaky” (breakfast). These are the largest Dunes in the world Rod says. I stay in camp by myself and the silence is heaven! The truck returns at noon and we are out of there.

The garbage collectors come around while I sit on a park bench trying to catch up on my journal with my computer. One fellow comes over to look at the computer screen and asks what I am doing. I tell him I am telling my friends back home about Africa. He suddenly leans down closer and looks intently at my screen. Then he wants to know how much the computer cost. He just shook his head and said “very expensive, very expensive” as he walked away leaving me to feel the incredibly deep gulf that was just created between us.

In Swakopmund Rod bought a dark brown sheepskin at a game skin shop which he is wearing around his shoulders. I tell this large man he looks especially intriguing with his stocking cap, dark glasses and bare feet!

The Sarus camp site has a little communal building with kitchen sink and wood stove. Expecting a cold night most of the campers sleep on the floor in the building. Bob and I run Rod out of the “caravan” (little trailer). I note that we call “caravans” trailers and Rod notes that we have gone from “Truck Trash” to “Trailer Trash!” That’s about it, I laughed!

In the evening after dinner Fi and Sarah read my Malawi story on the computer and, laughing, we remember some of the funnier moments of the trip.

Solitaire & Sesriem Camp

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June 9, 2002 Sesriem literally means “six rawhide strings”
The truck ride south to Sesriem Camp was not as cold as we thought it would be. We stopped in Solitaire-a wide spot in the road with a little store with a few shelves of canned food, drinks and a gas station. It also offered Kudo steak and lamb chop sandwiches but the best part was a delicious Apple Strudel made by the Afrikaner owner’s wife.

A black local is barbering by a fence near the tree with a hanging bell that appears on the T-shirts for sale in the curio shop next door. The bell calls everyone to the little church across the street on Sunday. Bob and I buy one of the T-shirts.

When we get into camp we put up the tents and then the truck drove us a few miles over a washboard road to Sesriem Canyon to watch the sunset. On the way back most of the campers ran ahead as the the truck rolled slowly forward-for a time without benefit of a driver-we realized-when one of us discovered James running alongside too!

Swakopmund

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June 6-8, 2002
How are you today mommi? George and James do a pretty good job looking after me-making sure I’m happy so I don’t unglue on this trip and make a problem for everyone-maybe they think we don’t like roughing it even though we have spent 30 years backpacking and trekking. In spite of their best efforts, and in spite of my determination-I unglue anyway as we pull into Swakopmund on the coast…I had gotten little sleep the last three nights in my thin nylon and cotton sleeping bag that we bought in Nairobi because our camping gear had not arrived before the start of the trip. I spent the day in the truck crossing the ice-cold desert in a levi jacket and sleeping bag and I am frozen to the bone. I natter constantly to myself: no one wants to see out-the others were partying late the night before and are all asleep! So why can’t we pull down the clear plastic tarps over the open windows?!!

The bus station is only two blocks away and in a fury I threaten to catch a bus to Cape Town…the only thing that stops me is that the truck has pulled into the locked hotel compound which is such a patchwork of spaces (three other trucks are also inside the compound) and buildings that I can’t find the front door out of the place…I retreat to our assigned room and slam my luggage down on the floor-Bob looking on helplessly! I stood in the hot shower for half an hour in spite of the written warnings on the wall to use the desert water sparingly. I crawled into bed and had been meditating for awhile when I heard Bob ask whether I wanted to join the others to eat in the compound restaurant. By this time I had calmed down enough to grudgingly admit that I had to eat.

The dinner was wonderful. I had fried Atlantic fish with a lemon sauce and Bob had Leopard’s Belly-a stew of Warthog, mushrooms and vegetables wrapped up in a pastry like an Italian Calzone and by the end of dinner I was smiling and laughing again. Nikki had half a dozen fresh oysters and game liver and onions. Sarah and Heather had Ostrich kebabs.

James and George had beef steak. Rod came over and encouraged me to stay…”you are part of the group” he says…which just made me want to leave all the more…but he promised that I could sit up in the front half of the truck where there was no wind. This definitely was the low point of the trip for me-cold and no sleep was not a good mix! And no it didn’t help to think of all of poor Africa where a lot of people are not only cold but do not have enough food this winter because of the latest drought…

Swakopmund was like a time/place warp; the small resort town by the sea reminded me of San Diego-nice wide streets with palm trees up and down the medians except you saw “Right of Admission Reserved” signs above the doors of all the businesses. Retail shops have iron gates that are locked and when the retailer sees you standing at the gate he or she pushes a button that releases a lock so you can enter. Big time security…

Everything is immaculate and run efficiently-by the white Afrikaner owners…the Blacks are the waiters, sweepers, garbage collectors and car watchers…my first experience in an openly apartheid society feels very weird. One evening coming back from the latest Woody Allen movie (only six people in the theater and half of those left early). I scared the pee water out of one of the car watchers when I went up to him and ask if his job ever got boring. Apparently not used to being approached or acknowledged on the street by Whites, he gave me a terrified look that said “hey what’s coming down here,” while one of his buddies comes dashing over to help out his friend. Embarrassed to have put him in that position, I just laughed and slowly moved away as he, realizing I wasn’t setting him up for any bad thing, finally smiled.

We ate twice at a pub that served incredible German food with an Afrikaner bent. Rod had recommended the pig’s knuckle-huge-on a bed of sauerkraut. I delightedly peeled off the delicious crackling.

My hair was in desperate need of conditioning and I needed some pampering so I had my hair washed and colored while Bob bought an interesting African mask and a $40 Ostrich belt that he thought he was paying $4 for…that old decimal problem again!

The owner of the beauty shop was Afrikaner and my hairdresser was black. Afterward, when I walked to the back to tip the hairdresser the white women looked striken. Later in Cape Town Heather had her hair done and while the Black beautician was working on her she leaned down and asked if Heather could keep a secret. Then she requested that if Heather were going to leave a tip could she give it to her personally as the tips were never passed back to the Black beauticians. So now apartheid is just going to go underground like in the rest of the world.

While we are doing this, the other riders participated in some of the activities offered in the area-Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Sarah, Heather and Fi went sky diving and Jimmie, George, Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Michael and Sarah, Heather and Fi went riding quad bikes in the huge sand dunes; George took a tumble in his bike. Fi, Heather and Sarah and Adrian went both lay-down sand boarding and stand-up boarding on the dunes-they screamed down a sand dune, they said, on a board at 80mph! They spent the evening and early morning singing kareoke in the bar with no dinner.

Bob and I of course dropped into bed and the bar is far far away…

In the morning, George has coffee and cereal set up for us and we share the outdoor “kitchen” in the compound with the other truck riders. One of the other trucks has a couple in their 70’s on it-they looked like they were having the time of their lives. I wondered if their truck had a stereo.

Otjiwarongo Cheetah Camp

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June 5, 2002
The next morning James drives us back to Outjo, the small predominantly German/Afrikaner town we had stayed in before and we buy apple strudel and real drip coffee in the bakery and scarf it up during a 10 minute email check on one of the two terminals. Then on to the Cheetah Camp for lunch and tent set-up.

The camp is owned and operated by an Afrikaner farm family who is trying to conserve some of the only 2000 Cheetahs left in Namibia. We all pile into the back of Mario’s pick-up and he drives us to the homestead a couple miles away. As we walk through the gates we see four Cheetahs pacing back and forth across the lawn. We are led around to the back of the house with Cheetah’s dashing unexpectedly back and forth-sometimes brushing our legs-one dashed at me and clamped his teeth softly around my ankle-releasing a flood of adrenalin!

Bob whispers in my ear that we are probably going to get hit up for a donation while Mario and his dad pet the Cheetahs. He approaches us one-by-one and asks if anyone wants to come pose with a Cheetah for a picture. A few have their picture taken.

Then Mario disappears and the Cheetahs start pacing expectantly. Bob says there is going to be a surprise…and sure enough Mario comes back with a bucket full of meat chunks which he throws to the Cheetahs to catch with their powerful jaws in mid-air. All this time some of us notice sheep and goats bleating nervously in the field outside the yard…then after a few hat and stick throwing and catching we are taken in the back of the pick-up again to some large fenced areas near the camp area and watch as Mario throws large pieces of meat to the wild Cheetahs.

At the end of the demonstration Mario disappears and returns with a baby Cheetah that is less than a week old-the oooohhhs and aaaaahhhhhs go up-especially when he nuzzles it with his chin…but…but…questions will be answered in the bar in ten minutes he says.

Then we get a fairly passionate pitch from the young good looking ex rugby player: Cheetahs are recognized as an endangered species everywhere except in Namibia and the farmers are killing them off to keep them out of their livestock. The problem is, he says, that Namibia has passed some laws that prevent Cheetahs from being trapped and sold to parks and game reserves-instead the laws require that any trapped Cheetah has to be neutered. It’s bullshit, he repeats angrily over and over.

So Mario and his family are running an illegal operation…this is Africa he says when questioned…as long as you are careful you can play the game…Mario and his family believes that by working for years with Cheetahs they have learned some game management techniques that the so-called authorities do not learn from “the books” one of which is that Cheetahs will breed in captivity if they are happy. But what is “captivity” he asks…even the Etosha National Park is fenced he says…

At the end he asks for donations in return for being on a email list…his goal he says is reaching the outside world and the media. I think of two things that would be good for him to do. Form a non-profit organization so that he is above reproach as far as money is concerned and so that donations can be tax deductible. Also no reputable media association is going to be able make his case for him until someone with credentials-not associated with the environmental groups that he thinks are in cahoots with the political entities of the country-comes in and studies his game management. Bob looks at me and says what he needs is a good grant writer…I ask him if he wants to live in Namibia but he doesn’t reply. In the end I give Mario US $5 to help pay for the donkey meat he feeds the game because I want to be on his mail list-and I want the recipes for the homemade Afrikaner squash boats, curried cabbage and pickled beets that is served with the spit lamb after the talk.

Mario will stay up as long as he can sell the rest of the campers shots of everything alcoholic on his shelf…we hear laughing and talking coming from the partiers in the bar until early morning! The next day on the road Heather is sick again…

Meeting Mario and his family gives us our first contact with rural Afrikaner farm culture. Working the land makes you very down to earth and practical anyway. However, Mario had an independent attitude that reminded me of my dad. When he sold the ranch in southern Oregon and bought a small acreage near Salem to be near his only grandchildren, I told him that since he no longer had a Caterpiller cat to dig his own garbage hole, that he would have to take his garbage to the local landfill. But he came back with the first load he took! “They wanted me to pay to dump my garbage” he said disgustedly. “The hell with them!” So after that Bob and I had to take my parents’ garbage to the landfill for them.

We head south and then west across Namibia. The topography is flat desert with dunes. The closer we get to the coast the colder it gets until we see the crummy weather up ahead hovering the shore. Even though the Kumuka Truck left camp at 5am we pass it parked at the side of the road having lunch in the harsh wind. We honk as we pass and exchange The Finger. The kids all laugh.

Then finally the arrow-straight road on the flat African pan that we have been on for the last five hours ends flat out at a right angle with the beach!

Ombinda Country Lodge

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Sunday June 2, 2002 near Outjo
Yesterday the truck broke a spring so we stopped in the Afrikaner town of Outjo to find a mechanic and pick up some groceries. James drove us to a beautiful camp just outside the town of Outjo-Ombinda Country Lodge so we would have a place to wait while he took the truck to a mechanic-this is Sunday. We end up spending the night-each of us in these charming little huts made with tree branches one and half inches in diameter-we can see daylight in-between them…feels like Africa only with the best hot shower yet, sink and toilet and beds with electric sheets!

The camp owner, an Afrikaner, has owned the camp for six years. In the bar we watch CNN news and the others drink beer and wine, play pool, swim in the pool and lie in the sun all afternoon. We order dinner at the outdoor lodge restaurant that by 7pm has been closed in from the cold with a roaring wood fire going. Bob has a filet of beef and I have a steak from the beautiful Oryx-the national animal of Namibia! Sleeping that night in a real bed was heaven.

Angolan Refugee Camp

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June 2002
So African Intervention in Namibia
Namibia used to be part of South Africa and South African incursions into Angola and Namibia continued from 1975 until well into the 1980’s and I tell you this because Rod, having been raised as an Afrikaner in South Africa was conscripted from the age of 16 to 18 (between 1987 and 1989) into the South African military and participated in it’s guerrilla activities in Namibia, Angola and also in secret incursions against the ANC in South Africa.

Several thousand refugees are camped in the distance. “We won’t drive into the camp,” he says, “out of respect for them.”