Arrival in Swakopmund

I’m writing this entry from the passenger seat of a Nissan 4X4 truck about 200 miles from Etosha National Park. Most of my future posts will be written from the passenger seat of this truck because it’s the only place where I can get reliable power to juice up the laptop.

I would like to write that I made it safely from Windhoek to Swakopmund but I don’t want to embellish. The journey was anything but safe. Since I’m a friendly guy and I like getting to know the locals, I tried to chat up the Swakopmund van driver. He was a young guy, no more than 25 years old, with spiky black hair and a huge belly. His name was Johannes and he spoke English with a thick Afrikaans accent. He wasn’t much of a talker. He wasn’t much of a driver either. I asked him a few simple questions but all I could muster out of him were grunts and a few one word responses. It felt like one of those awkward conversations in a bar where you know the person isn’t interested in talking to you but you feel obligated to ask just a few more questions because it would be rude to excuse yourself so quickly. I asked one final question, “so, do you like your job?” His face lit up. “Ohhhh yeah”, he replied as he tossed his still lit cigarette into the trash bin. He took a deep breath and words started rushing out of his mouth. He began to describe how he loved the feeling of the open road and the rush of adrenaline from barreling down the highway. He told me about one of his favorite games on the road. He called this game “passing a car at high speed around a blind curve on the narrow 2-lane highway.” A bit of a long name for a game but the man is a bus driver, not a marketing expert. When he stopped talking, I asked the obvious question, “but what happens when a car comes in the other direction around the blind curve.” This one really got him going. Since there are barely any guard rails and the land on the edge of the road is flat, he likes to swerve hard off the road and kick up some dust. I asked another obvious question, “but what happens when the oncoming car does the same thing?” Perhaps there was something about my tone that made the question sound stupid and he answered it curtly, “I just swerve harder. Nobody swerves harder than me.” This response took my heartbeat down a few notches. What a relief to know that nobody in Namibia swerves harder than Johan.

I knew I had to redeem myself. I didn’t want Johannes to think that I was just another dumb American tourist. I asked him a not so obvious question, “but what happens when the curve has guard rails and you can’t swerve off the road?” A huge grin spread across his face as he pointed to the front of the car and said, “that’s why I have the rammer.” Johannes, the bus-driver-turned-poet-laureate had a way with words. The rammer was a collection of empty plastic water bottles glued together in the shape of a happy face. The structure was attached to the front of the car with a dark paste of mud, dried grass, and gravel. On blind curves where it wasn’t safe to pass cars using the swerve technique, Johannes would give the car in front a little bump using the rammer. The bump had to be hard enough to let the car know he was serious, but not hard enough to crush the rammer. It was a delicate move. Even then, the rammer didn’t last more than 4 or 5 bumps so Johannes spent several hours a week collecting and gluing used water bottles. It was his hobby.
This is how Johannes set the tone for the journey.

The excitement of the drive was quickly tempered by the loneliness of the empty highway. Namibia has one of the lowest population densities in the world and it’s possible to drive for nearly 50 miles without seeing a building or a person. The other passengers in the van slept. Drives like these demand the comforts of home. I threw on my headphones and began to cycle through my old favorites. I put on some early 90’s rap that reminded me of my misspent youth playing videos games and tinkering with computers. I moved on to Pink Floyd. The aural desolation of their music was perfect; empty landscape, empty mindscape. I sang along quietly and my neck bobbed along every time fell asleep. I put on some salsa. The night before I had met some locals at the hotel bar that took me to the only salsa bar in town, “El Cubano.” They had a great Angolan band playing old salsa hits and the Cuban owner invited me over to his table for a beer. They played one of my absolute favorite songs in Spanish, “Burbujas de Amor.” Apparently he doesn’t get many Spanish speaking visitors. He told me that Cuba helped Namibia during their fight for independence and there are still about 200 Cuban doctors practicing across the country. Next, I put on some old Tango favorites. Of these songs, the last is the one that I recommend the least when driving alone in the desert. Tango has this way of taking all the love and heartbreak that I’ve felt and tangling it into a tight little ball and then making it explode in my chest. Empty landscape, empty heart.

As I began to approach Swakopmund, I received a text message from Ben, “we’ve got the beer on ice and we’re not starting until the fun minister arrives.” The fun minister arrived in style by convincing a local to give him a ride from the van stop to the campsite.

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