My favourite Namibia memories

Making pizzas on Friday nights with one of our student’s mums.

Stuffing our faces at the Nest Hotel because we were pretty poor and ate mostly rice at home.

The time Fiona and I took a road trip round the whole country and had no radio so had to sing to each other all day.

Our comedy dog, Diaz, barking at the kids at school or following us around or weeing on the floor.

The time we were stranded in the desert with no water, no money or bank card, no ID, no suncream and no keys to get back into our car.

The time Lucy and I were painting murals on the wall in the creche where we taught and the kids started singing Atomic Kitten to us.

When I used to jump in the freezing cold swimming pool every morning at the guest house where I lived and worked in Namibia.

The time we walked out to Diaz Point, which took hours and hours, and we had three apples between us.

The time I lost control of the car and went on a little spin off the road with Fiona yelling “Steer into the spin!” and clinging onto the dashboard.

Singing the Amarula song with the kitchen staff at Grootberg Lodge.

One of my students, Zara, saying “Thank you for teaching us,” after a class.

Bungee jumping, like a loony, over the Zambezi River during a stay in Livingston.

Sleeping through the most important day in the Namibian calendar, their independence day, then making a story up for the newspaper afterwards (we ran the local town newspaper and we had to make up the main story of the whole year. Shoddy).

Climbing into the big wardrobe in Lucy’s room with our friend, Andre, to look for Narnia. We were sober, by the way.

Packing a tent, some sleeping bags, a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a knife and walking to the campsite just out of town, Shark Island, and camping for the weekend to get away from it all.

Flinging ourselves in the pool to cool down after a hot sweaty bus journey back from Victoria Falls to Windhoek.

Taking a load of disadvantaged kids away for an activity week in the desert and, among other things, teaching them how to swim.

Drinking cups of rooibos tea and watching the sun set over the Atlantic ocean and the clouds and sky turning pink and purple and orange.

Fiona and I going to the coolest bar in town, Rumours, and graffitiing our names behind the bar.

Cutting my own hair because I had no money for hairdressers.

Going out to an old abandoned town in the desert with our friend, George, and him giving us Namibian names. Mine was Naufiku, which means ‘born in the evening.’

Fiona chucking a glass of triple shot Jaegermeister and coke on a car.

Going to badminton club on Tuesdays and being rubbish at it.

The time we spent the night in Keetmanshoop

For the past two days I have been working at the Destinations Travel Show in Earl’s Court with a travel agency I used to work for in Namibia. I’ve been spending hours talking to people about Namibia and the sights and how to travel around and I keep remembering a time when my friend, Lucy and I, went to Cape Town for Christmas. By public transport. That was out first mistake.

Before working in Windhoek, I lived in Luderitz for a year. Luderitz is one of those out-of-the-way places at the bottom of the country with few transport links and train tracks which have been swallowed up by the desert and the sand dunes. You pretty much need to have your own car, which we didn’t.

So we relied on the bus service. There was a bus inland from Luderitz to a town on the single main road running down the middle of the country, called Keetmanshoop. Once we were at Keetmanshoop, there were plenty of buses heading down to Cape Town. We had bought our tickets for the whole journey from Luderitz to Cape Town and, mistakenly, thought this guaranteed us against potential mishaps. We had our tickets! And we would succeed in our mission!

The first stretch, from Luderitz to Keetmanshoop was fine. It was five hours of talking to and playing with the other children on the bus, being only children ourselves really. Then everyone got off in Keetmanshoop and dispersed. Our bus to Cape Town was due to pick us up in about seven hours so we knew we were in for a long wait. The bus picked up at a petrol station so there was no official seating area or anything.

We plonked down with our bags which were bigger than us and full of nonsense we didn’t need for a three week holiday in a big city. We waited. 2pm. 3pm. 5pm. 8pm.

And soon the time for the coach to appear was approaching. It did not appear. 9pm came and went. 10pm. There was no-one else about and no bus. We took turns to walk up and down the road and look to see if it could have passed by without us noticing.

Eventually, around 11pm, a double decker bus rolled in and a few people appeared with bags and hurried to the bus. Being the polite Brits that we are, we queued in an orderly fashion as the others pushed in front, holding out their tickets. Eventually, we were the last two to get on, having not pushed in. We held out our tickets and the woman said, “I have one seat left.”

“But there are two of us,” we protested. “And we have tickets. Look. Tickets!”

Seeing we were getting irate, she said there was another bus on the way, we were not to worry. O ok, we thought. They must put two buses on the route because it’s quite busy. Pacified, we sat down on our bags to wait for the second bus and watched the first one drive away.

We waited and waited and waited. Midnight. 1am. 2am. Lucy and I decided to take turns having a nap and keeping an eye out. Lucy went first taking a nap…. And didn’t wake up and I felt mean waking her. So I was in charge of staying awake to watch for the bus. I employed a method of taking walks up and down the road to look for the bus and sitting down to read or write letters. The black star-filled sky started slowly to turn dark blue then lighter and lighter. 4am. 5am. 6am. 7am.

So now we had been sitting on a pavement at a petrol garage for 18 hours and we realised the inevitable truth that there had never been a second bus…

We sat and waited for a new plan to become clear.

It was as we were thinking about what to do that a man approached us and asked what we were doing. We explained that we had been waiting for a bus to Cape Town which had never arrived. He was going to Cape Town, he explained, and did we want a lift?

We jumped at it and, thanking him profusely, made our way to his car with our bags. Now I think about it, he had all the classic signs of being a bit suspect. Pale skin, prematurely receding hairline, slight stoop, randomly approaching two young girls to ask what they are doing. But we were delirious with tiredness and without any better plan up our sleeves.

The drive there was pretty uninteresting apart from the fact that we listened to a Faith Hill album on repeat almost the whole way. And it was a looooong drive. I had opted for the front seat so was obliged to make polite conversation for the entire time, still unable to sleep. Lucy had cleverly chosen the back seat and got to sleep when she wanted.

When we got to Cape Town, he was stopping in to drop off his bags then take us to our hostel. While dropping off his bags, we were invited in to his house and ended up in a slightly bizarre situation making small talk over cups of tea with the parents of a man we didn’t know.

When he dropped us off, we gave him money for petrol, thanked him loads, took his phone number and said it would be great to meet up for a drink (we didn’t). In the Long Street Backpackers, where we were staying, the two other friends we were meeting were having heart attacks as we were a full day late and the bus company couldn’t tell them if we had ever boarded the bus. Of course they couldn’t…..

And in case you’re wondering, apart from the shaky start, we had a great time in Cape Town!

Of COURSE there won’t be snow in Africa!

I just have to say something which has been on my mind for a while now. That song, Feed The World, which I thought was Free The World until really recently. It’s ridiculous.

“And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime.”
Duuuuh! Of course there won’t. What that got to do with anything? Is that fact supposed to evoke pity in me?

O no, they won’t have snow, they must be soooo gutted. I bet all that sunshine and warm weather is really bugging them and that they wish, in their hardship, that they had snow. It’s so hard living in a sunny country.

It’s the worst thing ever. If, as we are led to believe by the song, everyone in Africa is sitting around starving and poverty-stricken, do you really think SNOW, of all things, is going to help the situation? Now they’re starving, poverty-stricken and dying of pneumonia.

As an aside, there also “won’t be snow” in Australia this Christmastime but they can think again if they’re expecting a load of food parcels because of it!

The next bit, “The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life.” Talk about talking down to people! Like we’re whispering with a doctor about a cancer ridden old lady. Africa isn’t one massive country unable to do anything for itself or work out how to get food. If you’d have told any of the people in the town in Namibia where I lived that the greatest gift they could expect was to not die, I’m pretty sure they would have found it hilarious. They were people like you or I and they were doing ok. Of course there are places of extreme poverty in many countries in Africa but as a whole, it’s just not possible to write one song, applicable to all, about how everyone is starving. It’s really offensive.

And lastly, “Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?” To be honest, I don’t think it’s very high on the priority list. A lot of African countries aren’t Christian. It makes absolutely no sense to say, ‘O, isn’t it awful? They don’t have any celebrations at Christmas.’ It’s like a Muslim country singing a song about how awful it is for us in Britain and “Do they know it’s Ramadan time at all?” Well, no, I don’t know when Ramadan is, not because I’m terribly unfortunate and you must raise money for me. Just because it’s not something I celebrate anyway. So to say about Africa, do they know it’s Christmas – probably some of them don’t. What on earth has that got to do with how poor they are or aren’t?

And that is my rant over and done with. I’ve been needing to let that out for years over this stupid stupid song.

Thank you.

PS I’ve just remembered that there was a town further inland from Luderitz, where I lived, which did get snow! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bob Geldof. Was it Bob Geldof?