127. The Bushmen and a White Lady
18 March 2015
Our route to Etosha had taken us along the principal sealed roads, which run for mile after mile in ruled lines until some geographical feature causes a deviation. A wide grass verge runs along each side, where termites have erected their mounds, 2 to 3m high, at random locations. Beyond the fence-line there is little to be seen but scrubby vegetation and distant ranges of hills projecting above the flat landscape. Every now and then there would be a gateway for a track leading to a remote farm. Lay-bys have thoughtfully been provided at intervals, with a picnic table in the shade of a big tree; and we stopped at one near some monumental granite boulders for lunch. The traffic was extremely light: sometimes we could drive for 15 minutes without seeing another vehicle. Occasionally we would encounter a lone man attending to a small herd of cows or goats, or a couple of people in a cart pulled by a donkey. Where they had come from or were going to was a mystery as there was little sign of habitation outside the towns. The sense of space is overwhelming. For the return journey, we took some of the un-surfaced routes, kept reasonably smooth by grading machines, although the less used roads could be quite rutted. Rivers - all of them dry - are crossed by narrow bridges or fords. The wide Omaruru River crossing was surfaced in concrete, but some of the smaller ones needed a run at, to get our two-wheel-drive car through the soft sand at the bottom.
We stopped for a night at Otjohotozu guest-farm, at the foot of the Erongo Mountains near Omaruru. It is a remote but charming establishment, with tall cacti each side of the gate, an old donkey cart, thatched buildings and lovely views. It had recently been taken on by a German couple: Andreas, who came to Namibia a decade or more ago as a teacher, and his wife Julie. It so happened that they had other guests for dinner - four employees of a small French-German company which was constructing a solar power plant nearby. We all ate together with our hosts who provided a tasty meal including a main course of zebra stew. The company was very convivial and it was fascinating to hear their experiences of living and working in Namibia. It was nevertheless a strange environment to find oneself discussing concrete technology and soil mechanics with Pascal, an enthusiastic French civil engineer who had studied at Portsmouth University!
The Living Museum of the San People at Omandumba, a little further along the road, is a community of Bushmen who demonstrate some of their ancient culture as hunter gatherers. With the support of a local farm, their aims are to educate visitors about their traditions and to earn an income by offering activities, including bushwalks and hunting expeditions, and from the sale of their wares. Individuals in the group, all quite small in stature, are not from this area, but stay for two or three months before being replaced by others. We arrived to find several women with babies and a few older men sitting in the shade of a huge overhanging rock, working at their crafts. Their spokesman was a well educated, young man, but none of the others, as far as we could tell, spoke English, or else they were too shy. We watched demonstrations of how they make attractive beaded jewellery from ostrich shells, rope from fibrous leaves and a snare to catch small animals. We also saw how they make fire. Two men took it in turns to revolve a stick between the palms of their hands whilst pressing the lower end against a notch in another stick, which soon produced a small pile of smouldering sawdust. They wrapped this up in a bundle of straw which burst into flames when they blew through it. They finished with a performance of dances, not unlike English folk-dancing. As we drove away, we caught sight of some pre-school-age children spying on us from the top of some huge boulders.
The Brandberg Mountain, a circular mass of granite, rises out of the hot, dusty plains of the Namib Desert to a height of 2,570m, the highest point in Namibia. The temperature was in the low 40s as we arrived at the White Lady Lodge, where we spent the night in a little stone chalet with an elephant carved on the door. The proprietors have created an attractive walled garden around the restaurant, with drought- tolerant plants such as cacti, to relieve the harsh desert landscape. Instead of a pussy cat they kept a tame meerkat called Carlos. Next morning at the visitor centre, we were allocated a guide who immediately set off at a rapid pace up the hill. I think it was meant as a joke, as he had a big grin on his face and slowed down - a little bit - when we protested. He lived locally and was very happy with his job working for the National Heritage Council of Namibia, but told us some harrowing tales along the way. One of the other guides had contracted tuberculosis so was off work. Another guide had recently been murdered by his wife because she became jealous of him being too friendly with female tourists. Two young cousins had been killed by a black mamba snake which came into their bedroom at night; the family lived too far from a hospital to get help in time. He also told us that his twin brother was a policeman who was putting on too much weight because he didn't get the exercise our guide did walking up and down the mountain several times a day! He had confidence in the Namibian Government and great faith that the recently elected new President would improve services and infrastructure. He was very amused, in comparison, by the recent shenanigans at the opening of Parliament in South Africa.
As we climbed up the Tsisab Gorge into the mountain, the scorched slopes were relieved by a few acacia trees beside a stream - our first sight of running water in Namibia. A rock agama, a blue, green and orange lizard, soaked up the heat from a boulder. We were led into a narrow gulley, and there on a large overhanging rock face, were the famous "White Lady" paintings. The central character, now interpreted as being not a lady but a medicine man wearing body paint, is surrounded by depictions of hunters with weapons, and animals such as oryxes and zebras. There are around a thousand rock art sites around the mountain, aged between 2 and 4,000 years. The author Laurens van der Post, who had a great affinity with the Bushmen, wrote that, when his family landed in Africa three centuries ago, the interior was like a great open-air Louvre because wherever there was a cave or a rock it was painted with great loving care. The works are believed to have had a role in religious rites, healing ceremonies, social management and communications.
The road to Henties Bay runs via Uist straight across the Namib Desert for seventy miles without another junction. The gravel surface blends so well into the surroundings that at times it is hard to see the edge of the road. The sandy desert terrain is scattered with boulders and a sparse vegetation of thorny bushes and welwitschia mirabilis, the endemic desert plant that can live for more than a thousand years. At one point we passed through a shanty town where dealers had set up stalls to sell an array of colourful, semi-precious stones that they find lying on the ground. As we approached the coast we started to run into the fog that blows in from the sea, and at last the temperature began to fall. We were giving a lift to Claudia, one of the staff at the White Lady Lodge. She had obtained the job through her college, but it was far from her home in the north-east and she didn't even speak the local language of her colleagues. Getting around Namibia isn't easy either, as public transport is so limited. She was due some leave, and, as she couldn't get home, she would stay with relatives in Henties Bay and continue by bus to Windhoek, the capital. We dropped her off on the outskirts of town and continued to the seafront.