Camp

Yainguaz Camp Near Gobabis

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June 1, 2002 Yainguaz Camp near Gobabis, Namibia
The countries of Botswana and Namibia are very different geographically from Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The topography is flatter even than Botswana and much of Namibia is desert except for Brandburg Mountain, a huge marble massif rising out of the desert-also called Fire Mountain because of the way it appears at sunrise and sunset.

We still have to cross the Ondundozonananan (not a typo) Mountain Range in the south of the country before crossing into South Africa. Probably for this reason there are no villages or even huts along the road; the nomads in the area are few and we see only a few people in the small towns.

Crowded House, a New Zealand group is singing the chorus to “The Weather With You” which is “Everywhere you go you always take the weather with you”…and then “If you can’t change the world change yourself…” This music has played so much it has become the truck’s theme song.

It’s a breeze crossing the border into Namibia-and no charge for our visa. We are south of the equator now…it is winter and it is freezing cold but Rod doesn’t put the flaps down on the long-haul drive….and I suspect Bob has asked to have them rolled up so he can see out. I am fuming at what I consider his selfishness. We are all in our sleeping bags. We need the girls from Britain here to mutiny…You Bastard! Lorelle would have yelled!

Half frozen, we get to the camp after dark and put up the tents. James inspects a broken spring on the truck as we eat our dinner in the dark. We can’t use the multi-use hall of the camp to put our tents in as we had hoped because the Afrikaner farmers are having a joint birthday/wedding celebration and all the space is being used.

Bob has put the tent on a hump so I am cold and miserable all night as I scrunch down in the corner.

Diamonds And Plastic

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On the way back to Maun Botswana in the Safari truck, Rod explains that the area around Maun is in the fastest growing area in the southern hemisphere because of the discovery of diamonds and with it comes the technology to make plastic-there is paper and plastic everywhere.

Gary says the safari owners have tried to start campaigns to clean up the plastic but the grocery store clerks, for example, will put individual chicken pies in plastic, several of these go into a plastic bag and that goes into another plastic bag at the check-out counter. So it hangs in trees like Christmas ornaments, gets caught in bushes and fences and clutches the sides of the roads. Actually it reminds me of Los Angeles freeways. We get to quickly check email before driving on to the Truck camp.

All over Africa we have seen references to preservation of culture, celebration of diversity and unity in diversity, themes familiar to us as westerners.

May 31 Sitatunga Camp
We hit the showers and camp again that night at Sitatunga. It feels like we are back in civilization again; I fall into George’s arms saying how happy I am to see him again! He loves it. The other riders party in the bar but Bob and I hit the sack as we will be up before daylight to hit the road again.

AIDS & The Ocavango Delta

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Wed May 29-30 , 2002
Can’t stop in Maun to check email because nothing opens until 10am. Gary takes us into the Delta on his Safari wagon with two long seats back to back down the middle of the truck bed.

As we drive through town he stops by the cemetery on the outskirts of the town to explain all the new graves covered in green awnings to keep the evil spirits away; 37% of the people in Botswana has the HIV Virus. The epidemic is exacerbated by the local belief system that you get AIDS from condoms…that the way to cleanse yourself from the disease is to sleep with a virgin-so there are a lot of rapes. Many of the locals, according to a South African newspaper think AIDS stands for something like “Americans Interfering…” I can’t find the exact quote now.

Thousands of graves-row upon rows-are all covered with new blue awnings “to keep away the evil spirits.” They won’t win this one Gary says. Don’t fraternize with the locals he warns as he gets back in the truck.

Later we read an article in the Botswana Guardian reporting on a recent AIDS Awareness campaign that said that superstitious beliefs are being blamed for a rise in ritual murders, trafficking in human body parts to obtain substances for potions they believe will strengthen them against misfortune, and false AIDS cures. Human sacrifice is needed, many Africans believe, for the purpose of obtaining a victim’s life force through a potion. The article went on to say that the Traditional Healers Association of South Africa has condemned healers who tell their patients suffering from AIDS that the disease can be cured through sex with a virgin.

In Mozambique, health officials are cataloguing traditional medical practices with anthropologists from the Maputo campus of the University of Mozambique with the aim of separating out good information from bad and legislating against promoting harmful practices, according to Dr. Manuel Ferriera. “You can’t use reason against superstition,” Musa Khumalo, a ministry official said. “Sometimes you just have to legislate against it.”

The Safari truck takes two hours and 11 minutes (Bob says) through Maun, down a side road to a dirt road that takes us through Mapani trees and thorn bushes that whip the truck and threaten us, and across the Buffalo fence to the edge of the Delta where the Mekuros and the polers are waiting for us.

On the way we stop twice to give Heather time to hang her head over the side (ethanol…alcohol…poisoning from the night before, Bob says) while Gary tells us about the local people. They make their mud huts out of Termite Mound mud because the saliva from the termites that is in the mud, when mixed with water, makes a kind of very hard cement-like mud. Even though the mounds stand peak-shaped anywhere from four to 15 feet above ground, 90% of the rest of the mound is underground and it is this soil that the people dig out for their huts.

Gary says he is the local bus system for the people in the mud hut villages along the way. When he comes through they ask to catch a ride on the way back to Maun…then they catch a ride with him on his next trip into the Delta in 2-3 days. They shop mainly for sugar, flour, tea, pop (sudsa) and meat, he says. Well, at least it keeps the brain functioning if not the rest of the body.

At the Buffalo Fence a woman appears who opens the gate and counts us to make sure the same number of people that go in come out again.

Maun & Sitatunga Camp

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Tues May 28,2002 To Sitatunga Camp near Maun Botswana
Up at 5:30 again. Had wieners, eggy bread (French Bread) with honey and canned spaghetti for breakfast. James is doing his usual antic-body stuff while eating his eggy bread-“fucking sweet honey!” he says out of the blue and everybody laughs-suddenly awake. James is usually very animated and pretty funny.

It’s 200 km to Maun (rhymes with down) where we will wonder around the town for a couple hours before we continue on to our camp for the night. On the way we see two Oryx and Rod explains how their unique breathing aparatus works although I can’t remember any of it. Later we saw Ostriches again. Rod says they are the largest birds in the world and they can kill a human by stamping them with their feet. When they run it looks as if they are running on a water bed.

We stop for toilet and suddenly a big army truck filled with army guys pulls in after us….oh, no we all yell…but they were just checking to see if we were alright and pulled back out on the road again. George hides the meat from the veterinary road checks that are looking for meat with lung disease before we take off again.

The truck slows down again and we look to see a dead cow by the side of the road with about a dozen or so vultures hovering around it. The truck stops so we view the whole grizzly process: One vulture gets on top of the cow and punctures a hole near the rear of the stomach. The entire head of the vulture disappears into the hole and then others take their turn. As the truck starts to pull out again everyone lets out a YUKKK…as one of the birds sticks his head up the bum! Rod says we should be grateful to the vulture and the hyena…keeps disease from spreading…The birds are even built for good hygiene, he says, hardly any feathers on the head and neck for smooth entering of the hole…so what’s so sick we remind ourselves…we eat dead meat too!

Many of the younger women walking along side the road are wearing their hair in plaits and the young guys have those tiny dreads with heads shaved around the sides. I was told later in Swakopmund Namibia by a young guy with the same hairstyle that they got it (hair shaved nearly to the top of the head) from an early American black rap star! When I teased him about naughty rap lyrics he just laughed but a couple older black Africans who overheard me nodded their heads up and down in assent-all the while making faces. Don’t think the older ones approve of the young black male African penchant for black American rap!

Some of the older women from the Herero tribe are wearing long Victorian-style dresses that flare way out at the bottom. The unusual dress, which is now a tribal trademark, was forced upon them by prudish German missionaries in the late 19th century. On their heads the women wear a huge “hat” that looks much like a very wide bow. What is very distinctive about these women, however, is the regal and proud way they carry themselves when dressed this way.

We will see some of these women later in Namibia. Actually, the whole outfit reminded me of the red and white dress and headbow that the stereotypical “mammy” wore in early American movies. Apparently when in traditional dress the men wore a variation of the Scottish tartan kilt but we don’t see any of those.

We stop for internet but the computers are down.

May 28 Sitatunga Camp
The WildLife Adventure.com truck is at the camp…Kumuka truck comes in and we look for Damian and Melissa who transfered to the Kumuka in Vic Falls so they could get down to Johannesberg…you’d think we were all long lost friends as our riders let out a squeal and run to hug them.

Rod has contracted with a Safari Tour company to take us into the Delta on Mekoros so Gary from the company stops by to give us details. Gary, originally from New Zealand, lives in Maun and the locals call him: “Geeza.” Mekoros are an ancient way of plying the delta; canoes carved out of tree trunks with a poler that stands in back pulling the canoe forward.

The other riders party in the bar which didn’t close until 2am and the music was so loud you couldn’t sleep…even with ear plugs…I stayed surly for two days. The Delta will offer respite…

To Lusaka Zambia

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Tues May 21-22, 2002 Long Drive to Lusaka the capitol of Zambia
Up at 5 am again and on the truck by 6:30. Take the whole day just to drive to Lusaka-about 12 hours or 800 km on the “bloody truck” as Janine put it in her diary.

Stopped off in a village in the early afternoon; watched two women under a tree lather up a naked little boy-child about 3 years old with soap and water from a plastic bucket but we are too respectful to take a picture. Whenever the truck stops raggedy kids materialize instantly…seemingly out of nowhere. Waiting for…hoping for a handout. I throw out two little bags of chips…The two biggest ones got them, I tell Rod! He answers with a cynical grin…African Democracy!

Then a black African adult about the age of 40 walked past the truck and yells at us bitterly, “What are you doing here! You are from free countries! You look like prisoners sitting up there! And don’t give the kids anything! You just teach them to be beggars!” I don’t blame him one bit for his bitterness…I want to know about his bitterness…otherwise how am I to know how to act-particularly in regard to my government’s foreign policies.

We see signs for Zambian beer called Mosi…I see a sign “Anti Corruption Commission!” Rod says “yes and there is an anti corruption commission on the anti corruption commission! Another sign…Knowledge is Power Bar and Restaurant…I can go with that!

African Presidential Excess
On the way into Lusaka all the traffic was stopped by uniformed policewomen and then we finally saw the reason for it; the president in an entourage of about a dozen vehicles…including an ambulance! Someone suggested he was probably on his way to the airport. Later in the South African Cape Times we read “Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa was clearly hoping to impress First World lenders when he ordered his ministers and officials to board a 69 seater bus bound for the airport. He was en route to South Africa to attend the World Economic Forum summit. Apparently the presidential motorcade to see the President off at the airport has become rather a drain on resources so in the interests of cost-saving, the Zambian leader has said it will become standard practice for ministers and party officials to bus it to the airport whenever they want to wave him goodbye.”

This is nothing compared to Zimbabwe’s president however. The U.S. is threatening to recall three commercial airliners sold to the country two years ago for nonpayment. It has been reported that Robert Mugabe will commandeer a plane at a moment�s notice so that his wife can go on shopping sprees in Paris-even having the seats removed so there would be space for all the packages. In the future, with international pressure, I hope this phase of Africa’s development is going to go the way of Uganda’s Idi Amin which is OUT!

On the way into town saw a huge billboard that said  “Do not allow people to become perpetually dependent! Do not give alms to beggars!” I think to myself this town is fighting a losing battle. Another signs read “Polite Notice-No Bus Stops.”

I keep losing track of the date…Bob has to remind me to take our Larium for prevention of Malaria on Sundays.

Every time the truck stops Damian from Australia gets out and runs up like a little kid to ask James “Are we there yet” Damian and Melissa sit behind me and I get to talk to them a lot. I like them. Once Damian made a cynical remark and Melissa apologetically said “Isn’t he terrible?” I said, oh no, that is just black humor! It helps us get through life!

Yellow Chicken Camp

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May 20, 2002
Then to Yellow Chicken Campsite and dinner in the dark. The charming camp, in the middle of a huge 40 year-old German farm, is run by a Brit and his wife who was 8 months pregnant. There is a law now that Whites cannot own land but this farmer’s land was grandfathered in because he had owned it for so long.

Soap and towel even…and so clean…and smells so good with candles burning everywhere…and hot water even…this is the nicest camp yet! The girls all have a shower the night we arrive so I decide to wait until morning. On my way I see how two black African guys have to bucket the water up out of the well…then into a barrel a few feet away…then pull it bucket by bucket up into an elevated water reservoir. Then a fire is built in an outside fire burner to heat the water. I stubbornly return to my tent without a shower.

Lessons from an African Bush Camp Operator
Janine and Sarah stayed up and listened to the camp operator who has lived in several countries in Africa over a period of 15 years talk about things he has seen and experienced. He said most people are Christian but most only convert because they are given a bag of maize or a pair of shoes and still continue their own spiritual traditions including witchcraft.

He also said that if a woman gets pregnant outside of wedlock that she has to marry the father of the child. So sometimes if a man sees a woman he wants he rapes her until she is pregnant and then she has to marry him. I don’t know which countries he was talking about here. About AIDS, the locals don�t understand the disease and don’t believe that condoms are of any use-hence the proliferation of the disease.

The operator was particularly adamant about stopping the food and other aid that people get…he believes it keeps them from becoming self sufficient…teaches them to always have a hand out…that it would be terrible in the beginning to withdraw the aid but in the long run it would be better for the people.

In fact an article appeared in the South African Cape Times a few weeks after this in which it was reported that dozens of nongovernmental organizations rejected the final declaration of the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome saying it was “more of the same failed medicine” and would not end hunger.

Distribution of resources is almost impossible due to bad roads, insufficient trucks and buses, a poor public transportation system.This results in 90% of the villages and towns living in isolation having no access to the market and no access to money. One hundred and fifty poorly developed countries are leaning on 25 developed ones. If one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal for a refugee in some camp is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Paris, one critic has said.

The answer, many are thinking, is a multidimensional approach to the develop-ment of healthy societies: develop regions especially through education; encourage local societies participation in public life including ability to dialogue; observe fundamental human rights; begin democratization and develop interdependence. This will not be easy. It will require new politicians who care about development-not warlords who sew contention in order to retain their own political power long enough so they can drain the country of money and resources.

The camp operator said that he feels sorry for African-Americans who come to Africa looking for their roots…they leave devastated when they discover they have absolutely nothing in common except color…and being black means nothing here because practically everyone is black…so no one is going to greet the black Americans with open arms-particularly well-fed affluent ones and the Africans assume the blacks who come here must be rich or they couldn’t get here in the first place…and we travelers without a doubt are all immeasurably rich compared to the locals.

In the morning as we were leaving I asked the camp operator what the best thing was about living in Africa…the beauty and wide open free space, he said waving his arm out toward the sun rising over ripe wheat..and being able to live the way you want to with no 9-5 job!

Cross Dressing At Kande Camp

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Sat 18th 2002 Town of Mzuza
We get off the bus and go to the market in Mzuza to buy clothes for the Cross Dressing Party at Kande Camp-we have drawn names of the opposite sex and have to dress them-we have a $3 limit. Walking back to the truck I take a picture of a street sign “No Stop!”

Malawi Lake Kande Camp Two Nights
We drive into camp past the Kumuka truck that is roasting a split pig with it’s head still on above a charcoal fire…OH SICK…the girls on the truck wail. By now we are pretty dusty and scruffy and everyone wants a shower before heading to the bar for a Fanta or beer. This bar owner is a bald guy in his 50’s with a huge round gold earring in one ear-I ask him for a Pimm’s Cup. He looks at me like I am nuts and says he ha”)

I drew Rod’s name for the Cross Dressing Party so I bought him a bra and hot pink half slip and funky shower cap-we make him take off his shorts before he puts on the half slip-he loves it! Someone bought Bob a pink and white dress that looks like one his 80 year old mother would wear. Lorelle is hillarius in a diaper with a pacifier in her mouth. Rod buys Janine a snappy little outfit with a black and white zebra “Hooters” cap. Adrian gets to wear a bright pink billowy taffeta dress that looks like a Balenciaga designer model.

This clothing must be sent here by aid groups in western countries because we never see African women wearing these things which are really inappropriate for this culture. The party is in the bar and riders from the other trucks get a kick out of us-they will have their turn the next night.

Chitimba Beach Camp

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When we pull into the camp compound there are three trucks aready there-drifters.com, ontheaway.com, and Africa.overland.com written in huge letters across the sides.The camp bars in Africa are open-air like they usually are in tropical countries. The camps are more like resorts without all the expensive amenities and they don’t really have a “bar” feel.

The bartender, from the UK, was an overlander driver for two years, has owned the bar four years-and has had recurring Malaria countless times. In anticipation of the worst, Bob asks him many questions about Malaria.

Half a dozen burly middle aged men are already at the bar when I go up to ask for a plug-in to recharge the computer and the camera. I ask if they are independent travelers-no-they say they are building the road. I say oh, you are responsible for our horrendous ride into the Camp! They laugh. They are here for the girls on the trucks, the bartender says later.

One British guy born in Burma is married to a Tanzanian and another from the UK is scared of AIDS after having hundreds of prostitutes, he says, so he hooked up with a woman from Ghana about a year ago-his wife of 31 years at home. I ask if there are many expats in the area. There are several doctors and some Peace Corps volunteers; they say they have been told by the volunteers that most of them will go to work for the CIA when they are finished with their two years which surprises the heck out of me.

Each truck gives the bar a list of clients and we just put everything “on the tab” and pay before we take off in the morning as we do at all the camps.