Hayestack

  Sheena, Georgina, me, the wall and the rockery.

The sudden and unexpected nature of the encounter made it quite shocking. It happened like this. We had had a wonderful night at the luxurious lodge at Ghaub saying goodbye to Addy and Barbara who were returning to the north of England after a three and three quarter stint with VSO at Katima.

“Have you seen the meteorite?” asked our good friend Sheena, a lively 66 year old from Scotland who had come to Namibia shortly after us. She was driving us back to Rundu in her bakkie and was having trouble locating the main road. The more we drove, the more familiar the roads became so that we began to think we were in a vortex loop like the Bermuda triangle from which we would never escape. If you can read this, then we have escaped. If we have not, we are still there and you should come looking. Let me know if you can’t read it.

“No, we have not seen the meteorite,” we replied. Let’s go and see it. It is the largest known meteorite in the world and is 800,000 years old, at least. We parked the car and wended our way to reception. Opposite the rockery is a suntrap wall perfect, with hindsight, for basking snakes and other reptiles. We walked in a line towards this wall, Linda, myself, Sheena and Georgina. As Linda was passing the wall I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked down and saw a snake wriggling in the short space between Linda and me in an agitated state. One more step and I would have blocked the snake’s escape into the rockery, a most unfortunate occurrence. The word “snake” involuntarily escaped from my throat and I instinctively took a step backwards. Fortunately, Sheena moved in the same direction and Georgina shot off behind the wall. The snake, which seemed just as anxious to get away from us as we from it slid in front of me into the rockery. Between 1-2 metres in length it was brown and closely resembled the black mamba we had seen dead on the road some weeks previously. Not wishing to believe that I came so close to the deadly fangs of such a poisonous snake I am happy to believe it was a less harmful mole snake, though this is shown as being more orange in one book. The lack of obvious moles is inconclusive since the snake may just have eaten them all.

The meteorite looked like a big chunk of metal with silver streaks where people had scraped slithers off. It comprised iron, nickel, cobalt and other metals. It seemed strange that this large object was once flying along in outer space. It was not far beyond the bounds of reason to imagine this to be an alien spaceship and I was half expecting a hatch to open and strange creatures to emerge. I have been standing in the sun a lot recently.

Looking for whales, Mossel Bay

As we travel along the coast towards Cape Town, we enter the acclaimed “Garden Route” of the Southern Cape. This is one of the lusher and, reputedly, most botanically interesting parts of Africa. Some plants here grow nowhere else in the world. We travel through its green forests and valleys and I am reminded of journeys through the British West Country. It is certainly no more picturesque here. The only differences are that, the sun doesn’t shine all day everyday in Devon, temperatures rarely reach 34 degrees centigrade and there are no signs that warn “Feeding the baboons will incur a fine of 100 rand”. Otherwise it is just the same.

Plettenburg Bay’s up-market ambiance rivals Torquay. We drive through it with scarcely a second glance as our backpackers hostel is 7 kms north. The owners, former hippies, have collected us with characteristically casual timekeeping from the taxi rank. He has a strange accent and a stranger looking beard. We are being kidnapped for all I know. The publicity states that this backpackers is situated “on a pristine farm with white picket fences.” Whoever wrote that must have been on hallucinatory drugs as the farm is dilapidated, the fences falling down and must have been painted before paint was invented. “Visitors may help themselves to the vegetables growing in the garden,” says the sign. In the event, there are only two radishes on the tiny plot. “Have you helped yourselves to the vegetables?” asks the long haired, paunchy lady owner enthusiastically. Georgina, who has tried one of the radishes is able to say “Yes, thankyou.”

The one great advantage of this backpackers is that it has unlimited internet access and not many people around to use it. We forgive it all its other faults for this alone. Besides, we are only staying one night. There is also a television room and a selection of aging videos. The threadbare couches smell of dog but we manage to get through one film without gagging. It is a shame that dog owners grow oblivious to the smell of their own pets. The film is set in Africa and stars Kim Bassinger, who had, apparently, turned from the erotic to more serious (lol) acting. Her talents, it would appear, are more suited to the erotic. The film makes such a big impression I cannot remember the plot. It’s Africa, though. There were elephants and they had big ears (like the male lead).

The other backpackers owner drives us to the minibus taxi the next day. He is formerly from England and very pleasant to talk to. He takes our photograph to go on their website. We smile and try to appear like happy, well satisfied customers. Thinking of their internet connection helps us with this.

We drive through the beautiful lagoon town of Knysna, reminiscent of the English Lake District, and stop at Mossel Bay. We like this small, comfortable seaside resort with many historic buildings. The backpackers is compact and attractive. We just about manage to fit our tent on one side of the small front lawn. Any closer and the bushes would be inside our tent. As it is we can justifiably claim that we have “camped in the bush”. The coastal promenade is just down the road and the school field there has been turned into a camping site for the summer holidays. Tents and caravans are so packed together that people camping in the middle would have to be air lifted in. We come to a large cave overlooking the sea which has been developed into a whale watching platform. We stare out to sea until our eyes become blurred and our heads spin. But there are no whales today. We should have been here last October when the whales were migrating along the coast. Never mind, we see a lot of rock dassies which are a kind of very large, guinea pig. They can be quite tame and approach you for food. Some of them have a mad, rabid look in their eyes. A large one stands in the middle of out path and is reluctant to move. We stare each other out and the mad dassie is the first to blink and slinks into the undergrowth. Further along the cliff path we meet a young couple staring out to sea. After mild interrogation we discover that the girl comes from Walthamstow. We try to resist the cliché, “What a small world,” but it inevitably slips out.

Georgina is keen to swim in the Indian Ocean before it meets the Atlantic just down the coast. The rocks here form a natural swimming pool. Though waves crash into it, it is safe to bathe. There are even chains sunk into the rock for swimmers to cling onto to stop them being swept away by the swell.

natural pool, Mossel Bay

In the evening the High Street is transformed into a large, Christmas market. Strangely enough, this takes place just once a year and always before Christmas. We walk along inspecting the stalls. It could have been Walthamstow market especially after our earlier experience. It sells the same cheap, tawdry trash. There is nothing distinctively local or interesting about it. One novelty is the stall that cuts up potatoes to resemble a twirly thing on a stick, which is deep fried as one long twisted chip. Somehow I manage to resist. Nothing else catches our eye apart from a shop selling palm trees covered with so many fairy lights it illuminates the night sky and must warn shipping for miles around.

Our friendly receptionist’s boyfriend drives a minibus taxi and he will fetch us and take us door to door to Stellenbosch, our next stop. Luxury. The trouble is that all the other passengers are picked up door to door, so we have an extensive tour of the local housing estate, several times, before we are eventually on our way. Will your National Express bus stop and wait while you pop back home for a pair of shoes you’ve forgotten?

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.

Have you ever woken up and, for the first 30 seconds, had no idea where you were? It was like that when I woke up in Sophie’s Motel. The bed was strange (I’m not used to waking up in strange beds), the room was strange, the light was strange. Then I remembered…we were half way around the world.  Being on the equator, daylight remains at a constant 12 hours throughout the year. From about 6 until 6, no change, no seasons.

The road from Entebbe to Kampala was being radically improved.  Gangs of workmen and women were clearing rubble, planting trees and bushes.  Mostly, the women did the work while the men looked on.  Moses took great delight in telling us that this was because the Queen (of England) was coming. I looked for a hint of irony in his eyes when he talked of the Queen with such excitement, but there was none.  He seemed genuinely excited.  He wished she would visit more often so that more roads would be improved.

Moses also explained that the Money Exchange at Entebbe airport had short-changed us.  The woman at the counter had deliberately “picked” (Ugandan for stolen) some of the notes from the bundle.  We had given this money to Moses for petrol but some notes were missing.  “They prey on new visitors who don’t know the currency.  And the women are worse than the men,” he explained.  “They are more cunning”.  “Well, isn’t that true the world over,” I thought, but didn’t dare say it out loud.

As we entered Kampala in the early hours of the morning, a faint mist lay like gossamer over the city.  It was only when we entered the cloud that we could smell the diesel fumes in the air.  Lorries, buses and cars all belched out thick, acrid, blue fumes from their exhausts.  “Diesel engines cost more to service than petrol ones, so people don’t bother,” Moses explained as the lorry in front disappeared in a cloud of it’s own exhaust.  It was amusing to think how paranoid we, in Britain, were about our meagre “carbon footprints” when other parts of the world were indiscriminately spewing out huge quantities of pollution.  I don’t mean that we should do the same, but let’s not be so paranoid about our relatively much smaller contribution.  If you spend any time in Kampala, pack an oxygen mask along with your malaria tablets.  The pollution will get you long before the mosquitoes do.  Or, maybe the maniac drivers on those hugely congested roads will.  If there were a Highway Code (and I very much doubt it) there would be just two rules, viz. 1)  if you see a gap go for it at great speed.  2) Ignore all other drivers unless they are two inches from hitting you.  Our driver, Moses, was a professional Kampalan driver and he nearly knocked down just one motorcyclist.  If I had been driving, boy, would there have been carnage?  I’m glad we didn’t hire a car as we now would either be lying in the Kampala morgue or still trying to find our way out of “the city with no street signs”.  Accidents are a common occurrence.  A few days later we saw a car drive into a motorbike.  The pillion passenger (no helmet) neatly jumped of the bike mid strike and nonchalantly walked away as if he’d performed the same trick a thousand times before.

We hadn’t realised how ubiquitous private security guards were in Uganda.  Two burly guards clutching huge shotguns stood outside the currency exchange office in Kampala.  Were they expecting trouble?  We decided not to stay long enough to find out.  It was unnerving to see a line of young men on motorbikes watch our every move as we left the office with our money.  We jumped into the car where Moses had parked hoping it was his.  Fortunately, it was.  As we sped off,  I nervously looked out of the rear window but no bikers were following.   Moses knew all the short cuts.  To avoid congestion he turn a turn and we ended up in pot-hole city.  The road was like a Swiss cheese.  We zig-zagged around the biggest craters and even had to do a cross-country stint over some rough ground to avoid disappearing down a black hole.  The road led, unsurprisingly, to the car spare part centre of Kampala.  Mountains of rusty metal, salvaged, no doubt, from previous wrecks, were piled high by the sides of the road.  Nearly all the vehicles in Uganda are Japanese.  Most are minibus/taxis in various stages of disintegration and full of people.  They are legally allowed to take 14 people.  The one we went on had 19.  The law is regularly flouted.

Dilapidated villages and shanty huts line most of the roads in Uganda.  There was hardly a stretch of road free of buildings.  They were mainly structures cobbled together from odd scraps of wood with a piece of corrugated iron placed on the top.  These were homes to, perhaps two adults and four children.  Some were superior and made with mud bricks.  They looked like rows of garages.  Often they were painted bright yellow or shocking pink.  They reflected the battle between the two mobile phone companies.  The pink were for Celtel, the yellow for MTN.  They seemed to be evenly matched.  Well, I suppose it was one way of earning some shillings and getting your house painted for free. Apparently, this is a country where the average villager travels up to two kilometres to make a call and the waiting list for access to a fixed line telephone is 3.6 years, if you can afford it.  Some were shops, having a small pile of tomatoes, maize or similar placed outside for sale.  The towns and larger villages had shops with piles of mattresses outside, beds or even coffins for sale.  There was probably a good trade in the last item.  The roads seemed to be centres of Ugandan life.  Even in the most remote stretches there were people walking along the road.  They didn’t seem to be walking anywhere in particular.  They were just walking.  The men tended just to stand and stare blankly.  The local “gut-rot” made from Sorghum, a grass seed resembling corn, maybe partly responsible for this, together with the cultural tradition that the women do all the work.

We spent that night at the Margherita Hotel overlooking the Ruwenzori mountain range on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   Someone said there were gorillas in those mountains.  But he may have meant guerrillas.  I was too afraid to ask.   We didn’t stay long enough to find out.