Out of Warthog Territory
Added on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
Beware of the warthogs
Just arrived in Grunau, south Namibia. No local money and the prospect of riding another 80 miles to the border in the dark. There are few animals, no road kill, possibly kudu which stand two metres tall. No warthogs now, I’m out of their zone. To get to the end of the day safely you have to tuck in behind a fast moving vehicle. If something jumps out into the road, it’ll hit the vehicle before it hits me. Hopefully the vehicle in front will squash it sufficiently for it not to be a large obstacle. Maybe if the tyres pump out the entrails it’ll be down to skin and bones before I arrive. If I follow in the tyre tracks that mark across the poor beast the impact will be less. Night riding is all about survival, the animals and for me.
I am now out of warthog territory, no elephants. Giant meteorites are behind me and the bowling club of Windhoek have put away their bowls.
At the outskirts of Grunau a Shell garage has dimmed lights but is still serving fuel. I ask the owner, a kindly old man if he will take dollars if I book a room and he’s reluctant. Then his grandson reassures him that it’s not a problem and he agrees.
His restaurant area is old fashioned, so not like the immaculate and modern Engin fuel stations that line the main highway across Namibia. Since Katima, the Engin brand dominates the road more than any other. Namibian gas stations, like many first world operations, have one-stop formulas which cater for all of your needs whilst you’re journeying across the country. There were more private individuals travelling in their own vehicles in Namibia than Tanzania or Zambia. There is more money, and whilst most obviously it’s from Windhoek, small settlements all have two or three branches of big brand banks in which the farmers can come into town and deposit their takings. Farmers here don’t farm for the fun of it; it’s too harsh for that. There are no subsidies and in this arid landscape you live and die on what you can grow and sell. In Kalkrand, 140 miles south of the capital, a man came up to me and thanked me for visiting his country. He said it was good that I spent money here. He also said he was going back to his farm to celebrate his mothers 95th birthday, that it was a great celebration, and he chuckled and left. An old woman stood by me in a small local gas station as I drank a juice. She clicked her words in the way Xhosa and San tribes people distinguish certain vowels. She rubbed her stomach and said she was hungry. I think that this was a ploy because she looked plump and rather well fed. Anyway, I left to ride and see if I could make the border before dark, but this was looking doubtful.
Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world. 1.8 million people are spread out over 318,000 square miles allowing for less than six people per square mile. By contrast, the state of Texas, known for its wide open spaces covers 267,300 square miles and holds more than 20.6 million inhabitants, about 21 people per square mile. It’s known that Namibia receives very little rain and has almost no regular surface water, so maintaining two world-class deserts: the Namib, the oldest desert in the world and the Kalahari. I was on the high escarpment that makes up the centre of the country and this receives just six inches of rain during the year.
The surface of the road changed from one of being newly tarmaced, to that of one having previously been laid but was now riddled with irregular lines of black tar. It was as if the road had dried like old skin and someone had filled in the cracks with a tar brush. This could not have been possible, as the lines would have extended hundreds of miles. The road must have sunk so forming the cracks through which tar, melted by a deadly summer sun, would ooze.
I was tired. My sense of time and place had eroded to the point it was no longer linear. For weeks I have moved every day, starting early, finishing late, all day, every day, mostly alone. Yes it had been quite hard, partly because the poverty of some of the peoples I passed had challenged me, but also because of the speed of the journey. The refractory period of recovery was getting less and playing catch-up with fatigue on an R1, emotionally and otherwise, is a dangerous thing to do. Then, I guess I like danger, at least the danger I know about.
Tomorrow I would be in Cape Town. I wasn’t interested in the symbolic ride to Cape Aguilas, or the extra 50 kilometres to Cape Point…I’d done enough. The African leg of the journey will have been completed.
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