Hayestack

Popa Falls is a rapid on the Kavango River just outside the Mahango Game Park. On our way there we stopped at a supermarket to buy cold drinks. Small and dingy, it was anything but “super”. But it did have cold drinks. Men and boys propped themselves against the walls as though the walls were in imminent danger of falling down. Swigging periodically from bottles of Windhoek lager and tins of cola they stared at us as if trying to work out from which planet we had just arrived.

A bedraggled youth of about 15 years sidled up to me. His body odour had arrived a good minute before him. I suspected that his torn, stained and holey brown tee-shirt had started out in life as a white one. In one hand he held a long stick to one end of which he had attached bottle tops in the form of two wheels which he pushed around in front of him.

“Gimme a dollar,” he said without moving his lips. The words were nearly totally incoherent but this was the beggar child’s usual demand. His eyes were glazed and watery, his face puffy. His repeated demand was turning into a mantra. Evidently, his tactic was to wear his victim down with a combined assault on nose and ear so that the victim would give a coin just to get rid of him. And before you think me the most callous person who ever breathed, you must understand that these “professional” beggars can earn anything up to 80 Namibian dollars a day and have to give most of it to the older boys in the gang. Our hard-working cleaner earns 50 Namibian dollars and has to support a family.

John knew the best way to Popa Falls. “There’s a track at the end of this garden.” We looked but saw no garden. “There!” he said, pointing to a field half the size of England. “Oh, that garden,” Linda said.

It turned out that we had managed to evade the enterprising woman who had appointed herself entrance fee collector to the Falls.

“That woman robs people” said John. She had been a former class mate of his and he knew her tricks. We were pleased not to have been robbed that day.

At Popa Falls, John and his family stripped to their pants and braved the foaming water. It looked cool and refreshing, but, for me, totally resistible.

Of course, they had no towel, so, with jeans over wet pants they paraded back to the car like cowboys who had been in the saddle for 2 months without a break. Laugh? I could have wet myself.

Tags: England, John, Linda, Mahango, Windhoek

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Namibia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.