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.