Namibia I – Dotty over Damaraland: Of Red Rocks and Brown Elephants

In which Ilana’s journey ends with many elephant, a Best Desert Game Drive Ever, and Shabbat on Mars only nicer.

The final stage of the journey began (is that an oxymoron?) as we awoke to a gorgeous sunrise, drank a last cup of coffee, looked out over the grasses and regretfully left Palmwag on the Thursday morning and bumped our way to Damaraland Camp – fondly known as “D-Camp.” It feels like the end of a pilgrimage, one that began in luxurious abundance of water, through the drier yet still fertile grasses of Palmwag, and ending at D Camp, where the view from the camp is down into the dry Huab riverbed, flanked by bare rocky mountains on either side. No rains of any consequence have fallen in the area, so the ground is not covered with softening grass and shrubs of Palmwag. Its bare rock and sand, boldly dark red-brown, made me feel like I was on Mars, but I’m sure the Red Planet doesn’t have the occasional milkbush and shepherd tree to break the scene, or such nice people around. D Camp staff has a range of fascinating, warm characters, from Rosie, the first female black guide in Namibia, to Lina, full name Piscalina, who is extra large in size, voice and character. When Lina walks into the room, you KNOW it! She is also the manager of D camp and from the looks of things (sparkling clean; I could have literally eaten off the kitchen floor but they didn’t make me) she runs a damn efficient ship, and there was a warmth and pride in their Camp that came from everyone that was overwhelming.

Their pride is not undeserved. It’s a stunning little camp, tented of course, gorgeous stone bathrooms with forceful showers (real water once again! They get the water from a little village a few kilometres away.), delectable, large beds with snuggable duvets, and that Martian view that at first shocked me with its barrenness, but with which I fell in love more than any other. As the sun moves westward behind the mountains, one is struck again by the awesome starkness of the environment. The mountain ridges stand out austerely against the bright sky, lined with a bizarre tree called a hemelsbesem – a heaven’s broom. It has a thin trunk that ends in a few whispy branches that do indeed seem to sweep the sky clean. And the silence is louder than ever, every chirp of every bird seems to take force to break through it. I know this all of course because I spent an intense Shabbat here… but more of that later.

So, back to the people of this camp. As I mentioned, Lina is larger than life, who took to my ‘eccentricities’ with alacrity, telling the kitchen staff in Afrikaans that if they used their knives to cut my food, “sy sal vreeslik siek word, en sy kan doodgaan!” (“She’ll get very ill and can even die” for those of you who are Afrikaans-challenged.) I didn’t want to contradict her, but it did seem a bit extreme! Oh then the two cats, Thelma and Louise by name (half domestic and half wild antecedents, who themselves are “undergoing strict family planning” as Lina puts it), wander around, piling like purring rugs into laps and generally giving a friendly feel to the place. Carina is the assistant manager who kept me company on Shabbat, and Aloysius was our intrepid guide who took to our demands with admirable equanimity.

Now, this camp gets even more interesting when it comes to community conservation and ecotourism and I crave your patience for this, because it’s important. The story goes back to Apartheid times, when the South African government ran South West Africa as Namibia was known. In their infinite wisdom (not), they decided to move some tribes made up of a mixture of races that lived in Upington/Augrabies area of South Africa to the Damaraland area. (Of course the fact that people think they can just move other people without so much as a by your leave… anyway.) So a number of tribes were uprooted and dumped here, in an area that was pretty barren, since the white farmers had been moved out as well… long story. Anyway, one of the tribes, known as the Riemvasmakers, came to live in Damaraland and, although they came from a similar habitat, the local Damaras taught them many things, and now there is much intermingling amongst the groupings. Be that as it may, the area is harsh and dry, and the size of an average village is 5 or 6 shacks if that, with about a hundred goats which function as general currency and status.

However, not long ago, the inhabitants of all the little villages decided to combine into the Damaraland Community, and Wilderness helped inspire them to do it. Wilderness offered to build a camp here in the area, using local labour, staff it with local people, with the promise that the community and Wilderness would partner in the venture until the people were ready to take it over themselves, at which point, Wilderness would continue to market it, but the camp and its profits and benefits would belong to the people. Hence, the camp is staffed and run entirely by local Damaras and Riemvasmakers, who do a brilliant job. This has been such a success that the area was declared a Conservancy by the Namibian government, and in fact it and Wilderness won the World Tourism Conservation Award just recently and we’re all very proud. In order that all the people of the area benefit, all funds etc are run through a Trust, the Torra Conservancy Trust and its annual meeting happened to be on the Saturday that we were there, so Mike and Chris were able to go and watch a new kind of conservation and community in action. The people see the wildlife of the area (yes there is, wait till next paragraph) as assets, tourism as a way forward, and in fact, other communities have now come to us, asking for the same thing, as it is so successful. But I’m not going on more, cos it sounds like a publicity thing for Wilderness, but it is one of the reasons I work for this company and it means something to me, hence I must tell you about it. It gives much significance to my daily profession. See?

Anyway, where on earth was I? Oh, yes, so we settled in at D Camp, took a break for an hour to explore the area and see the Penduline Tits at the small plunge pool they’ve made in the rocks, then Aloysius took us out for a drive to the nearest village called Fontyne, meaning fountains, what a laugh in the desert. Each village in the area is in reality a cluster of shacks or broken down houses; Fontyne is an old farmhouse (white farmers once worked this land before being moved off to presumably greener pastures), a few huts, a small water tank and a dusty vegetable garden. As we arrived, it being sunset, the goats were being herded into their pens for the night. Horribly thin dogs sat watching, their ribs sticking out in a way that bothered me a lot, as you can imagine – wanted to take them all home with me. But they function as watchdogs, barking if hyaena or jackal arrive at night to feast on goat, which constitute the currency of wealth and status in this land. Quite an education for western eyes. The chief of the ‘village’ came to greet us, and a little girl in a pink dress ran away when we said hello. After sundowners were taken with a seriously stunning view, we returned to camp for dinner under the stars and a beer or many around the fire. By 8:00 we’d all collapsed!

The next day, being Friday, Mike decided we needed to track down the desert-adapted elephant for photos. When the river flows, i.e. in summer, the elephant are down in the riverbed but now they had moved to the grasses near Palmwag, so off we went to try and find them. I had impressed upon all and sundry that I had to get back by 5:00 latest, and that if I wasn’t, I would be getting out wherever we were and begin walking. Especially since it’s actually much safer here than in Joburg, I reckoned I had no excuse for Pikuach nefesh and would have to do so! So it was with a certain sense of trepidation that I joined them on the trip, but they all assured me they didn’t mind getting back by sunset and we’d make it. Well, what a drive; the amount of game we saw didn’t seem to square with the fact that this was desert. We hadn’t gone far along the main road (straight and wide, but still sand), when we noticed elephant tracks crossing the road and going toward a water tank belonging to a small village. We drove up to it, noting the elephant dung on the side, and asked a man dressed in a torn shirt and satin pink pyjama shorts if he’d seen them. Yes, he said (in Damara – lots of clicks in the words) they had come to drink earlier that morning and then had gone “that way.” This is how things are here: people share their water with the elephants and live with the animals in a way that we in South Africa have lost. There’s even a village that waits for the three bull elephants that come daily to drink before releasing their goats so as not to disturb them… Which is not to say there aren’t complaints when the ellies get into the vegetable gardens. It strikes me that this is the way conservation should be everywhere.

Anyway, we left the beaten track for one somewhat less beaten and for the next seven hours we bumped and bounced along ‘roads’ all too similar to those of Palmwag. We saw those ellies: a small herd (desert elephant herds are always small because of pressure on food and water sources) that posed beautifully for Mike, walking in single file reminiscent of Jungle Book – remember? – through long swaying grass, with the mountains as backdrop and backlit by the early morning sun. We proceeded to see some agitated zebra which turned out to be agitated because of the cheetah relaxing in the shade of a milkbush, a mangy jackal, three hyaena feeding on a carcass, some vultures joining in, a lovely journey of desert-adapted giraffe, and of course by now ubiquitous gemsbok and springbok. Up hill and down dale, we ate lunch once again in a dry riverbed under a mopane, at a spot known as Poacher’s Spring – for obvious reasons. Now, instead of poachers, we saw the Rhino Monitoring guys and the field ranger unit of the Conservancy, which gave me the warm fuzzies.

Suddenly it was 2 o’clock, we’d been driving for six hours... and Shabbat was in at 5. Uh oh. Um, I asked Aloysius, so can you get me back in time? Sure, he said, but then we have to go fast (remember the roads…) and not stop. Okay, we take a decision that we’ll only stop for really awesome stuff. Excellent decision. Not five minutes later, we see a black rhino. We consider whether we have time to track it, regretfully decide no, and fly on. After more bouncing for an hour we reach the ‘main road’ and promptly see the second herd of elephant, along with five-month-old baby Rosie (Named for our female guide!), too good an opportunity, so we have to stop to take pics, then quickly, we say, let’s waai! So off we go, wind tearing through the hair, taking breath away. Oops, we come past Bergsig, main village in the area, and see a sign we have to take a photo of: “Wilderness bottle store” – as far as we know, our company doesn’t do that sort of thing but maybe one of the directors is moonlighting… On we go, screeching to a halt at an Augur Buzzard, it’s forbidden to just drive past one of those, okay, let’s go now, we bliksum off (as Chris Bakkes would say), and we’re finally getting closer to home, come around a corner – and there’s a bakkie (small truck) on the side of the road, its 12 occupants waving us down desperately; they have a flat tyre and no jack. Everyone looks at me. I say: “go change the tyre but quick as a brick!” It was done in less than 5 minutes, and we blast off out of there in a theatrical cloud of dust.

Needless to say, we made it home, hair standing on end, caked with dust, by 4:30! But, as Mike said, I had now officially introduced them to the ‘pre-Shabbat rush’ and Fridays will never be the same for them again! I had plenty of time to take that much-needed shower, get everything ready and serenely light candles in the lounge, watched avidly by Lina and company. Singing kabbalat Shabbat as the horizon darkened and melted into the sky, relaxing at dinner (my special Friday night meal of fettuccini with pesto) with good company, and sipping a whiskey while the wind meandered around the rocky hills, we looked back on an incredible day with much satisfaction; all this combined into a different yet very true Shabbat atmosphere. Once again, by 8, everyone had turned in. Me, I decided to take advantage of there being no lights on AT all, ANYwhere, and walked out a few metres from my tent, attempting not to turn my ankle on any rocks. Wow just wasn’t the word. The stars shone so clearly, in a perfect arc over me in all directions that ironically, I felt that I was in a planetarium – remember the school trips? – and the whole beautiful blazing galaxy was being shone down just for me. (The only thing missing, I thought, was that little red arrow that would move jerkily across to point at things and the disembodied voice telling me what it was….) I felt the minuteness of my existence and yet the interconnectedness of all things; trying to remember that line I once read about how everything in the universe is made of stardust; we are indeed children of the stars.

Shabbat day was a mixture of amazing silence and communion, and a sense of what it means to be an Ivri – me’ever hana’ar, that famed lonely person of faith. I joined the others for a 5:30 breakfast (halachically it was the only thing to do, no eruv there you see), and then Mike, Chris and almost the entire staff of D Camp went off to Bergsig for the AGM of the Torra Conservancy. In true democratic form, this is a meeting to which villagers from all over the 350000-hectare Conservancy come to be heard and apparently there were many voices lifted, including our very own Lina. Mike and Chris had a great day, seeing more elephant, observing the meeting and then going to see Rosy-faced Lovebirds, the last particularly grating, but there you go, such is life in the Jewish lane. My day was somewhat different but no less satisfying for all that. After breakfast and sitting on my little veranda alternately watching the Ruppell’s Korhaans honking importantly around the camp’s little birdbath, and reading parsha, off I went for a walk with Rosie. We walked up to a viewing point not far from the camp, and sat to admire the view and listen to the silence. On the way, she showed me fascinating plants (I even met a young Welwitschia again!) and the different colours in the stones and sand, altogether making the Earth’s surface much less Martian than I’d thought.

Aside from the walk and a quick chat with Catrina, I essentially had the whole day to myself in a camp devoid of human company. And it was marvellous, more, it was elevating, strange and surreal. I ate my lunch with Thelma and Louise, sharing my biltong with them, and clambered up a small hill to sit and stare at a springbok who stared back unblinkingly at me. (He eventually decided the relationship wasn’t going anywhere and went away.) It became so clear to me why many of our ancestors found it easy to talk to God in the desert. Life is cleared of all extraneous detail, whittled down to its essentials. It is only earth, and few creatures and plants. All baggage is cleared, and it’s just me and the Creator. In the late afternoon, I got up and without thinking, walked out of the camp, straight down the valley. I walked until I couldn’t see any human habitation; I was truly alone. And yet, I wasn’t lonely. I was out there with my Friend, talking to Him as I haven’t done for the longest time. Ever sung Yedid Nefesh at the top of your voice, the silence of the rocks and the whispering of the leaves joining in, all the while in the middle of nowhere? Well, now I have.

Okay that’s starting to get very odd and drippy, so I’ll also admit that when the guys came back I was like an excited puppy, thrilled to have company again. We had other guides with us that evening and enjoyed chatting over the day, looking at Jupiter’s moons through the telescope and I was introduced to coffee and whiskey, highly recommended especially for those of us who view both those as our favourite drinks.

Sunday was the last day, sadly, but you’ll be happy to know that we still did a full day’s journey in half a day, driving through to the next Conservancy, known as Doro Nawas, where Wilderness is building a camp with the people from that community. On the way, we had a wonderful game drive as usual, especially with the sighting of a whole lot of bat-eared foxes who ran and bounded through the grasses in the most obliging manner. The sight of a herd of 70 springbok grazing on the outskirts of De Riet (another main village of about 12 houses), with golden grass, white houses, green trees, purple and black mountains and the wide blue yonder made a stunning portrait that sits inside me still. We managed to go past Doro Nawas camp to check its progress, but before that, got to Twyfelfontein, where there are the most incredible ancient rock paintings and prehistoric rock engravings (petroglyphs they’re called) to be seen. We repeated the pre-Shabbat rush, bouncing and flying along, wind tying bows in my hair, only this time it was to get back to camp to get to the airstrip to fly to Windhoek to wait at the airport to fly to Johannesburg chad gadya-a-a chad gadya. Oh, sorry.

And that, my dear friends, is that, here endeth the long long lesson. And if you can’t get to Namibia (such a shame really), then at least go to the Negev and have a whirl at the stargazing awesome God thing. You’ll be so pleased you did.

Namibia II – Palmwag – Of Rhino and Poetry

How to go existential rhino tracking in three easy steps... 

In which Ilana meets one of the most amazing men ever, a black rhino called Speedy (he wasn’t) and a Welwitschia plant with more personality than most dates. (There’s a pun there but we just won’t go there, hameivin yavin etc etc.)

As you may remember, we flew off from the furthest north in Namibia and made our way south-east where the landscape began to look like lush grassland. But it’s still desert, remember, just that it’s had good rains and happens to have basalt-based soil, so it holds water better – hence the grass and Mopane trees that make me think I’m somewhere near Letaba. We landed under a hot east wind to be met by Chris Bakkes, one of the most wonderful characters I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. He could have walked straight out of a Herman Charles Bosman book, Oom Schalk Lourens with a touch of William Wordsworth, a “scholar and a gentleman” as the other Chris put it. He lost his arm to a crocodile somewhere in Kruger (I’m reading his semi-biographical novel about it at the moment – in Afrikaans, come on, be impressed, will you), and his first statement when you meet him is: Can I give you a hand? When you politely decline he says, that’s good cos I only have one, and then laughs an uproarious laugh at your discomfort. With his long blond hair, a bearded smile like a Cheshire cat, and enormous voice and figure, he is literally larger than life. One of the most positive people I’ve met, he loves his life, particularly his rhinos. Which is why we found ourselves bumping and jouncing our way across the gravel plains in search of one for seven hours the next day. And boy when they say gravel, they mean huge boulders and rocks over which the vehicle jolts as Chris changes gears madly with his elbow. In fact at one point, the other Chris hit the roof quite literally and I parted ways with gravity and almost landed a few feet out to my left, and after twelve hours of it – I kid you not – one has to wonder at the amazing human body: that my organs are all still in the same place inside me that they were in the morning is probably a minor miracle.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the rhino. But first let me tell you about Palmwag Concession and Palmwag Rhino Camp. The Concession is the result of a few incredibly committed individuals who saw how the black rhino – not exactly numerous anywhere in the world – and other animals were being hunted to extinction and did something about it. They – known as the Save the Rhino Trust – took poachers and made them trackers to monitor numbers of rhino, encouraged the local, mostly impoverished people to see rhino as an asset that they could get more money for alive than dead. The area is now officially recognised as a semi-conservation area, there are a few locally run lodges, and ours is Rhino Camp. Situated in the middle of the concession, in a valley that was ripe yellow gold with waving grasses across which hundreds of handsome Hartmann’s mountain zebra galloped, the camp is reminiscent of Livingstone or Selous, explorers of Africa. (Well, white ones. People that lived there already actually knew the place, didn’t have to explore it did they?) It’s tents, but please note that the tents are large and the beds enormously comfortable, there are still en-suite bathrooms, your towelling gowns, beautiful wooden basins and the best is that, what with water at a premium, there is no running water in the bathroom, aside from a flushing toilet. So when you want a shower, you tell the hostess, Emsie (Chris’ partner), who organises that a few minutes later, you hear a polite “your water is here,” and lo and behold, a man arrives with a bucket of boiling water to fill up your bucket shower, which has a tap and shower head underneath. If you want a cooler shower you just wait a bit…. And it makes one realise just how much water we waste on long showers when, 3 minutes later, the water is all gone!

On the first day – Monday, if memory serves – we arrived at camp just after sunset, having bumped our way along the ‘roads’ (I use the word advisedly), and after that short shower, went to sit by a cheerful fire, where Chris was regaling a group of British guests about his Italian ancestor who was at the battle of Waterloo, then a Spanish prisoner of war… I lost track but I think he shocked them out of their senses; we couldn’t get a word out of them the whole evening! Emsie was amazing with the kosher deal, by the way. She had emailed me for more details and I’d sent her the Beth Din sign, so she went into her stores and every tin that had the sign was used! She insisted that I have three courses along with everyone else. So I was treated to unusual combinations of tinned things for hors d’œuvres (good old koo), fish done in tin foil, and then fascinating desserts of banana and coconut – it showed me that kosher is really not a problem if you have someone who is happy to put his/her mind to it. The long, romantically lit table in the mess tent was evocative of Africa of old, the moon made the grasses blue, and Chris and Mike swapped bush tales (each one funnier than the next, wish I could remember some of them).

The next day, off we went rhino tracking. Well, to be honest, we track trackers who track rhino. You see, the SRT employs about 45 men who go out every day to monitor all rhino in the concession. And thanks to their presence and observations, this is the only population of free-ranging black rhino that is actually growing in numbers – and they’re not in a national park or reserve, there are no fences to protect them, just the presence of people who care. So, today, we and the guests, driven by Chris and Kapoi (an ex-tracker – his name is the Namibian pronunciation of Cowboy, his dad liked the name…), followed the tracks of the trackers’ vehicle as they wended their way from one ephemeral spring to another. Lots of upsy-downsie stuff, as we bounced our way across miles of concession for seven hours. You see, black rhino feed at night and early in the morning, have a ‘daycap,’ and turn in by snuggling up under a bush for the day. So one hopes to see them early or later in the afternoon when they’re up and about again. But the day wore on and no sign of any of them. Mind you, it wasn’t a waste, in fact it was a lot of fun because we saw our first desert-adapted elephant – the same elephant as in Kruger but these particular pachyderms have adapted marvellously to desert conditions. Ours was snoozing under a tree, languidly scattering dust on his body.

We stopped for lunch under a Mopane tree in a dry riverbed. This is an experience let me tell you. Chairs, table, tablecloth and a basin with soap and water and towel all come out from under the vehicle, then delectable food (and Ilana’s tuna salad but there you go then) and coffee, tea, cutlery and crockery, serviettes… it all magically appears and everyone settles down in the middle of nowhere for a meal fit for a constitutional monarch. We returned after this  (via a herd of some 70 zebra galloping through a strong dusty wind where I felt I understood ‘desert’ more than on the dunes) for a siesta during which I sat under a tree and listened to some silence interspersed with the Star Wars-like calls of the Ruppell’s Korhaans. After fortifying ourselves with coffee, off we went again, and I was a little sceptical about our chances, but lo and behold, just before sunset, there was Speedy, our very own black rhino – the desert-adapted subspecies, Disorus bicornis bicornis! One feels quite superior about seeing one, not just any endangered black rhino, my dear… Chris, enormously excited (considering he sees them every day), leaps off the vehicle, making mad motions to us to be very quiet, because Speedy is looking myopically in our direction trying to work out if we’re figments of his imagination or just trees that have been here all along. Eventually deciding we’re trees, he moves off down into the canyon and begins feeding while we do the silent stalking thing, crouching, freezing at Chris’ hand signals, finally sitting on the stony ground to watch him (the rhino, not Chris). Chris and his team will not allow ‘their’ rhinos to be disturbed in any way, so we watch from a distance, but he’s beautiful, munching away at a poisonous milk bush, as the setting sun transforms the grass into veritable fields of gold. Eventually we make our way back to the vehicle and toast each other and Speedy the rhino with goofy smiles and sundowners. 

Most people stay only two nights at Palmwag, since one day usually is enough to be able to track a rhino, and that is what everyone comes for. But we stayed an extra night and went exploring the 2^nd day. As Chris got into the driver’s seat, he grinned his wide, mischievous grin at us and said: “We’re going over there” – pointing to some grey mountains in the far distance – and then, what became a leitmotif of the trip, “The safari is not over yet!” So off we went “over there.” Into the mountains, bouncing down into dry watercourses, then up again, over hills, through Mopane trees and milkbushes – the sense of exploring, of seeing just what’s over the next horizon intoxicating. In terms of game, it was a bit dry and there was a fierce east wind so strong one could almost lean against it, but we still managed to see the gemsbok and springbok that have become like impala, some kudu, a scrub hare pretending to be a rock, and a rhino rubbing post that shone blackly in the sun, like obsidian, smooth from centuries of rhino-use.

It was on this drive that I got up close and personal with a Welwitschia plant. These are enormous wonders of the plant world, part gymnosperm (cone-bearing), part angiosperm (flowering plants), they grow slowly and their trunks become stunted, so that the one we saw must have been 900 years old, but was only up to my knee. They grow only two leaves all their lives, which become tattered and torn as they grow; otherwise I guess the leaves would extend for a kilometre at least from the plant. I like old, venerable plants. They seem wise and at peace, in their sense of place and time. No rush, they say. Hold fast. Do what you’ve been put here to do. All will be well. The fact that such a plant can live in such a harsh environment for so long is amazing.

The sense of time being what one chooses it to be deepened as we steeped ourselves in this journey. We stopped for lunch – again in a dry riverbed in the shade of a Mopane – and as we sat and talked, I realised that this kind of life steeps deeply into the very bones of the body. When I thought of Johannesburg, the image that came to my mind was of a movie fast-forwarded, people whizzing, gabbling, no time… whereas here, life goes at the pace it should: one step at a time, one deep breath of clean air at a time. Time to talk to a plant and rub a rhino post. To take in the sky and wonder at the grains of sand. To sit in the shade and watch a red insect make its way laboriously over sand to an unknown destination.

But there are moments of extreme excitement too. For example, as we wended our way home that day, somewhat bruised, hair like straw and faces encrusted with dust and heat, half asleep as Chris manoeuvred the vehicle rockily toward home, and Mike was just commenting about the chance of seeing a rhino, there’s a flash of spotted cat – a leopard had just caught a dassie, and dashed over to some rocks where she settled down to devour it with gusto. We watched through binoculars as she finished her meal and cleaned herself, what a beauty she was, a youngster, we surmised. We watched in delight for about 20 minutes, at which point she got up and left us, still cooing in awe.

What made Rhino Camp so rounded an experience, though, was that at night, after dinner, Chris would move to the fire, and there he would recite poetry. He would declaim the poems of Canadian Robert Service off by heart – something about the Yukon – or he read Shakespeare, Thomas Pringle, you name it. My only regret was how tired I was; I felt enormously grateful to God, that I had been given the gift of sitting under the waxing moonlight, listening to a one-armed protector of wildlife read poetry, the crackling fire a sharp counterpoint to the infrasound bass undertone of desert silence.

Namibia 2005 - Of Sand Dunes and Fairy Circles

Dear all,

In which Ilana gallivants off to the wild, lonely, starkly beautiful deserts of north-west Namibia, quad biking on dunes, tracking black rhino and explaining ‘kosher’ to Himba, Herero, Damara, Nama, Riemvasmakers, Afrikaners and general others.

Well, first a bit of background to those who I have not been in contact with personally and for which profound apologies. Although I believe most of you know – or may remember – I’ve enjoyed working for Wilderness Safaris in the office, but of course had hopes of visiting some of the fabulous places in which we have camps. I say the last word with trepidation as for many Jews it has distinct negative connotations but for Wilderness it is that we have a camp, with tents, but this isn’t your basic Bnei tent, this is luxury, but it’s not a lodge. Wilderness is about that – wildness, remoteness, places that are as other as the moon. And Namibia is… well to say it defies description hopefully is incorrect as I valiantly attempt to restrict the amount of times I use words like awesome, wow, gosh, gee whiz, incredible, ohmigosh, etc etc.

[Having said that, R Cordoza’s talk on Shavuot has reminded me to say that of course, such words should be used every day when the sun comes up, we open our eyes, the sky is blue – in other words, even life in the city is one that deserves a big WOW to the creator, but I digress. Already.]

You see, the desert isn’t as simple as I thought. There are ‘seas of sand’ as some areas are known and those are sand dunes fairly obviously. Then there are the remnants of volcanic activity from many millions of years ago, become mountains curved and cut through by ancient rivers. Much of the north-western area (our destination on this trip) looks like this. It’s dark rock, with a black inside that, when exposed to the sun, wind and temperature extremes, crack and rust into reddish-brown gravel plains. Then, furthest north, just on the border of Angola, are two enormous valleys, smooth and straight for miles and miles between the mountains: the Hartmann’s and Marienfluss valleys. This is all technical but I’m trying to explain what we were seeing from the air and then experienced with our very own flat feet – every aspect of the desert revealed more surprises, more ways that life could survive out there, from fragile grasses that poked timidly out of the red sand, to tough milkbushes that have enough poison in them to kill a person – but rhino enjoy it. In the hilly areas, if the rain is good, the grasses are high, Mopane leaves glisten in the sunlight and small bushes burst with leaf and small yellow flowers. As for the Welwitschias! But more of that later.

After much whinging, really obvious nudge nudging, wink winking and outright pleading, I was asked: so, if we make a trip to Namibia from Friday to the following Sunday can you do it? Get me there by sunset and I’m your lass, I said. (Well, not really. I think I just nonchalantly said, oh okay, sounds like a plan, meanwhile jumping up and down in my head.) So the great Namibian journey (9 nights, 3 at each camp) was duly planned, participants being Chris Roche, our Communications Manager who knows the Latin names of every plant, Mike Myers – no, really – who is a damn fine photographer (and the photos you saw/will see on Webshots are with his kind permission), a past guide with a stock of really funny bush stories and a wonderful outlook on life (One of his favourite sayings, so you understand, is: Polygamy is one wife too many. And so is monogamy.), and one highly excited Jewish person complete with cooler bag, lots of Osem soups and hopefully enough food for two Shabbatot. Oh and purple plates and knives, forks, etc.

We flew to Windhoek International on Air Namibia, which kindly remembered my kosher meal but I wish they hadn’t – it was the dreaded Belgian black box, with meat that reminds you of Husky dog food… anyway, landed in Windhoek, hopped into a small Cessna and winged our way north. And then more north (norther?). And then we landed to refuel and when I tell you we landed in a cowpat or seven I kid you not. Truly desert scenery, a dusty town to one side, burning sun, and three ragged kids who stood and watched us avidly as if we were the best entertainment they’d had all week, which is possible. It’s not like they have TV. Or school for that matter. Africa ain’t for sissies, remember.

Anyway, took off again, the heat rising off the stark landscape making the plane do a lot of bumpy stuff that my tummy could have done without. But the view made up for it: from the air, the land is brown-red and freckled with trees and bushes, then the plane bumps over black mountains with sharp edges, jagged tops and the land opens up into an enormous plain of sand – the Hartmann’s valley (see why you needed the introduction?) which was lunar in its desolation. But the weirdest things of all were the fairy circles! You know crop circles? Well, these are just as mysterious but better. Amongst the freckles of vegetation, suddenly there are large perfect circles of… nothing. Their diameter is ringed with grasses, but their centres are bare of all life. From way up here, it looks like a bit of a case of acne. No one knows how or why these form, and the theories range from magnetism, old upside-down termite mounds to – you guessed it – aliens.

Anyway, we bumped down into the valley, truly and most satisfyingly in the middle of nowhere. I spent a lot of time saying “wow!” because I’ve often yearned to be in the middle of nowhere and here I was and I was not disappointed. The air was as sharp as crystal; the lines of everything so clean and clear that all the time I was in Namibia I felt like someone had given my eyeballs a good cleaning with windscreen cleaner. Every blade of grass stood out clearly, the horizon was razor-sharp-edged and it was possible to see that sand has different hues, the valley floor shading from red to brown to burnt orange back to pink. Before, I may have intellectually realised that the desert was sublime, fragile and beautiful, like the wing of a butterfly, but when I stood in it, in all four dimensions and all five senses tingling, it reached deep inside me and tugged at the soul of the most primal, the primordial act of creation – I remembered we are formed “from the dust of the Earth.” More, it is a minimalist experience, where one is taken down to the most basic of our lives on Earth – geology. You see, most of the time, rocks, soil, minerals, the raison d’etre for plant and hence animal life, are covered over most effectively – by grass, trees, buildings, even animals, our busy lives – all blur the lines of planet Earth as it were, the bones on which she clothes the flesh of life. But here in the desert, only the faintest of coverings occur, allowing one to admire the clean, unspoilt lines of every surface, be it flat plain, rocky crag or twisted dry riverbed. This is geology made alive, geography in your face, where one looks Earth in the eye and counts her millennia through the very coloured strokes carved in the cliff faces.

While that may seem like quite a rant, it is an attempt at describing what I felt for much of my time there, so I hope you understand - but such a primeval feeling does not translate well. It’s the best I can do.

So, back to Earth we landed (har har, sorry sorry) and NJ, manager of our Serra Cafema camp, picked us up and drove us for an hour to the camp. On a complete high (see previous paragraph) I sat in the open vehicle, wind whipping my hair in all directions, and drank it all in – exhilaration was trebled when we came across a Burchell’s Courser which was a lifer for me, but then most birds I met here I had never seen before so I won’t detail the cries of delight here. Yelping intensified when we drove up a dune and coasted at 45-degree angle down the other side, thetyres swishing through the orange sand and the world almost upside-down.

After much desert travelling, to arrive at Serra Cafema is a completely surreal experience. You see, it lies on the Kunene River, which is the border between Namibia and Angola but is also one of the few permanent rivers in the place, so with a suddenness that almost hurts the eye, one goes from sand to lush vegetation and blue-grey water rushing, roaring through rapids on its way to the Atlantic Ocean 60km hence. Because of the dryness of the area, the lushness only extends a few metres away from the river, so the contrast was striking. I was given a lovely room with a view of the dunes, but constantly felt out of touch with reality (no comments please) because I’d be looking at these mountains of sand, but hearing water rushing by, so the resulting feeling was that I was at the sea. A distinctly odd feeling to have for three days; it never went away completely.

Anyway, there wasn’t time for bizarre reflections; Shabbat was coming. The guys went off to do activities, and I went to the kitchen to try and explain kosher and Shabbat simultaneously, not to be recommended really. Robyn, the South African-Australian-Namibian hostess and NJ’s wife, was fantastic and got stuff organised pretty quickly, but the staff were most shocked to have a guest (that’s what we call the tourists) come into their domain. In fact, it took them all three days to get used to me walking in and cutting things. Anyway then it was time for a shower (with a great view overlooking the dunes of course) and light candles somewhere in the lounge area – which by the way is amazing, built off the ground – everything here is built on raised platforms for when the river floods, which unbelievably it sometimes does – but instead of chopping down the huge Ana tree (also known as Albida trees, sort of like Acacia) where they wanted the lounge, they just chopped open bits of the roof and walls so the branches could go through. When it’s windy – often – the branches move creakingly against the wooden constructs that surround them, so that it seems like they’re steady and the room is moving around you – one could get seasick. Sunset was sudden behind the mountains, and after davening in the rapidly fading light (couldn’t leave a light on, no electricity as such, just a generator so one would waste energy), I repaired to the lounge to read about Namibia till the guests and the guys got back. The guests were a bunch of odd Americans (no offence but they were a bit), and some hilarious British, but here’s the thing, see: at these places, everyone eats together at a long, immaculately set table, set up next to the swimming pool, with oil lamps set about amongst the serviettes and lovely salt and pepper crouettes. The moon rose early and cast its own unearthly (well obviously) glow to join the golden light of the lamps, making the silverware sparkle. And then there’s Ilana’s purple plate with her ‘special’ food that looks different to the three-course meal that everyone else has, in particular because of the amount of tinfoil everything comes wrapped in…. Boy I lost count of the number of times I had to explain, then put up with the suddenly thoughtful silence. But that is life in the kosher lane bringing to one’s consciousness difference and the existential aloneness of R. Soloveitchik.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, so first of all, my room, which was wonderful, but then all the rooms at the camps are and if I go on about them I’ll be accused of sounding like the brochures I write so I won’t. But I will say that the way the camp is structured you can have a river view or a dune view, and I’m glad I got the dune view since one can have a river view anywhere. From my veranda extending outward was the unexpected dapple-green of tree leaves, mustard bushes and yelling of Red-eyed Bulbuls and other birds hopping about the branches, Red-eyed Doves cooing (no, they don’t all have red eyes…). Then golden sand rising up into a steep dune, followed further back by the grey rocky mountain covered with pale yellow grasses, ending finally in infinite sky. As I looked out on Friday afternoon, a man appeared suddenly on top of the dune, which was unnerving: he broke the lines you see.

To continue with Shabbat, I went for a walk in the morning and met some wonderful yellow tok-tokkie beetles at the dune base, as well as a number of Mountain Chats, and in the afternoon Robyn took me for a walk away from the river, eventually climbing a dune, which let me tell you is serious. Think of a walk on the beach, and how tired you get as your feet continually sink into the sand. Now make that walk almost perpendicular and you have some idea. Near the peak I was crawling on hands and knees, most undignified but I thought I had to get there if it killed me! You know the best thing? The edge of a dune is so thin and sharp, it is almost one grain of sand thick. I stared and stared at the edge, panting away, and almost spontaneously combusted with amazement at the miracles of the world we never get to see – unless we’re very ‘lucky.’

As for the rest of the time, I relaxed at camp, in particular making very sure to see that the hammock on my veranda worked properly. It did, I’m happy to say, and gave me no small measure of intense contentment, lying swaying gently in the breeze, surrounded by dappled shade, orange dunes and azure sky, reading the parsha. How much better can it get?

Sunday showed me the beauty of the desert in infinite detail, from grains to mountains. It also made me an addict. That is, for quad biking. Now, quad biking funnily enough is one of the best ways to see the desert, and in fact is one of the most ecologically friendly ways to do so as the bikes are slightly lighter than vehicles, making less impact on the soil. Even so, we only go on paths made for the purpose, especially on dunes. The ecosystem is so fragile out here that by creating new paths one is most certainly killing off grasses that will not re-grow for next year. See? Quad biking is very cool, and we did it for 6 hours! It is very easy really to drive a quad, it is fun and it is noisy, the last being the only downside. But it is THE way to experience such enormous landscapes. Even in an open vehicle, you feel separated from your surroundings, but with quads, you’re able to move over the land but be close to it. (Walking is best of course, but think of walking on that beach that goes on forever and then up….) You’re surrounded 360 degrees by sky above, sand whirring beneath you, undulating dunes and jagged mountains blue in the distance. There were two senses, both threatening to overwhelm me. On the one hand, I realised the power of technology – with the push of my thumb there’s a surge of power beneath me and with a roar I climb the steepest mountain with ease. One tends to feel like king of the world, and I, drunk with the power of human genius, would raise my hand to wave regally at the Universe – forgetting of course that my thumb was in control here, so that I would immediately decelerate and do an undignified squiggle in the sand as the quad swerved – hoping that the Universe hadn’t seen that bit. (Actually that tended to happen when I saw a bird – skidded madly while trying to identify it.) The other sense though, is that of smallness, of being a veritable speck on a truly enormous planet. That but for technology, I would be helpless, lost and probably die out there within the day, of extreme temperature or lack of water. While the chameleons and larks have evolved past me, and could – and do – outsurvive me with ease.

(And then, every now and then, the roar of the engine and wind in your hair makes you feel like a Hell’s Angel, until you realise you have a weenie bike, and no tattoo of a skull on a hairy arm. Or a hairy arm, but that’s probably for the best.)

So, away we roared into the desert (but even with such noise, the silence overwhelms as soon as you stop), up dunes that were in fact mountains, and down through flat plains and bounced over rocky hills too. Hartmann’s Valley was particularly inspiring – huge and flat, ringed with mountains that grow blackly out of the red-pink smoothness. On such flatness, I stood out like a pimple, out of place and visible. Yes, you see, in such an environment one gets weird ideas sometimes. Like this one that occurred to me as we picked up speed on our way home: you know when you’re driving fast on the highway and all those poor butterflies and insects splat on your windscreen – and suddenly I thought: but I have no windscreen, so what are they going to splat on? And had an image of my face and sunglasses all splotted with insect corpses… luckily, we weren’t going that fast.

But before we turned for home, we did and saw many things. First, we lay down in a fairy circle. I’m happy to report that no aliens beamed us up and did experiments on us. (Or maybe they did?) There we looked at grains of sand. There’s no need to snigger, don’t you remember looking at sand through a magnifying glass? Well, we did it by looking through a pair of binoculars from the other side. I highly recommend this activity: each grain is differently shaped, some black, some white, and some pearly pink – each individually crafted by the Creator. To look at something that is so basic, yet the end of aeons of erosion, was something that I found more exciting than anything else, including scudding down a 45-degree dune and praying not to wipe out.

Then there was the desert chameleon we met who went all colours and eventually decided to climb into the wheel of the quad for a bit of shade, the springbok who stood outlined against the sky, the gemsbok who galloped through orange sand that billowed out in dust clouds behind him, the dozens of variations of colour and kind of desert that we drove through, all buzzing with life, even if all you can see are the flies…

Gosh what a rant. So very quickly, came home, had lunch, passed out, went on a sundowner cruise, I mean talk about aberration, a cruise in a desert, watching waterbirds like a Goliath Heron and meeting a few crocs on rocks, watching the full moon rise through the palm trees before returning to Serra for a lovely dinner by the pool, under the moon, the dunes gleaming pale blue in the distance.

That was Sunday that was. Monday began at 4:30 for some reason. I think it was the full moon shining in my face that woke me from a bizarre dream that had lots of old friends (you know who you are) all meeting me in a museum somewhere in Joburg. So I decided to stay awake to watch the moon set behind the mountains, frogs cheeping, rapids roaring like the sea, the dunes cold, silent and still. Then up we got and left Serra as the famous Namibian fog wallowed in the valleys, mountain tops floating like islands above it. The fog, rolling in from the coast, is the little moisture that feeds most life in the desert and that day I said “Poteach et Yadecha… Your hand opens to feed all life” with a new and amazed understanding. We were on our way to the airstrip but on the way George took us exploring all wonderful places, and we managed to see a few ‘big’ animals – zebra, ostrich and cows. We ended up having lunch again in the middle of nowhere, sitting under a lone Shepherd Tree, a small circle of shade in the middle of blinding hot light. In the distance, as we munched lunch, a springbok watched us with surprise, and when walking out of the shade to ‘go behind a bush’ (as we so delicately put it), the heat beat at one from all directions – up from the ground and down from the sky. There are almost no sounds at all, just the buzzing of insects and Mike snoring really. And then the sound of a small plane approaching… it is our flight south, to the next camp, and as we take off, I could swear that a fairy circle winked goodbye… (Okay not really, but it’s a good ending, don’t you think?)

Until the next one, that is.