Namibia Road Trip – Day #2: Windhoek to Namutoni (Etosha National Park)
Herero Children in Okahandja, Namibia
Our rental truck drove like a riding mower trying to cut on an incline. The warning sticker on the speedometer reminded me to keep the truck at 120 kph on the highway, but I truthfully felt nervous nudging it over 90 kph on Namibia’s B1. The truck was pushed along on its rear wheels, and it felt it. Although a sizable eight barrel engine was under the hood, I had the sensation that the front wheels were barely hanging onto the road. She drifted even with constant correction. Keeping a vehicle on course is no big deal with power steering, but in a truck like that where everything is manual, it quickly became work.
Add to this the fact that you have to constantly pay full attention and be ready for anything I soon had muscle pain along my biceps, neck, and shoulders. I don’t mean “anything” like someone switching lines on you without signalling; I mean “anything” as in people, animals, and natural disasters.
As in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Namibians walk along the shoulder and across the highway all the time, and kamikaze drivers fly by you on both sides that constantly kept you on your guard. Additionally, the Namibian landscape is simply spectacular, and you just want to look. It changed dramatically as soon as we exited Windhoek. Rolling desert plains were replaced by white sand flats were replaced by rust-colored mesas. I was desperate to pull over and just take it all in.
I quickly needed a break. We stopped in Okahandja, which is kind of a regional center for the Herero people (I mean, for those surviving Hereros that the Germans weren’t able to slaughter after General von Trotha issued his Vernichtungsbefehl). There wasn’t much there except a craft market and a Spar supermarket. There were some graves for well-known Herero military leaders, and on a whim we drove to see them. After two or three trips on the street where they were purportedly located , we found a hand-painted sign which lead us past some tennis courts to a grove of palm trees. There we found the graves, and an unexpected reception.
There, we found ourselves completely surrounded by a mass of Herero children. They jumped and waved and asked for money and failing that – food. Seeing they wouldn’t get either from me, they were happy to get attention.
They lived in shanties with their families amongst the grove. A few cooking fires were visible through the foliage. As excited as the kids were at our arrival, the adults didn’t acknowledge us. I stepped out of the car, and one of them lead me by the hand to the graves. They weren’t much to look at (the graves, I mean), and to be quite honest, I was distracted by the little shitheads messing with my side-view mirrors, the wheel caps, and the spare tire. They backed off after stern warnings in German and Afrikaans (okay, Dutch), but I still needed to shoo them away from the wheels and the undercarriage before I could drive off. I had to laugh. I felt a group of them hanging onto our bumper as we traversed the rough road back to the asphalt.
I tried to chastise them again in my best stern voice, but they caught my smirk and began laughing. I remembered when I myself was a smart-ass punk hanging onto the back of those horse-drawn carriages in Central Park.
“Stupid karma,” I muttered.
We continued northward on the B1. The roads got windy, and elevations dropped and climbed. The truck was not happy with steep inclines in either direction. And when she wasn’t protesting at 4,500 rpm on the hills, she sucked down gas at an alarming rate. We had to refill in the town of Tsumeb before we could go further. We also refueled ourselves at a German beer garden (I had an iced coffee, thank you very much). I could have stayed longer, as the garden was liberally populated with songbirds, but even they couldn’t drown out the awful German Schlagermusik being piped through the outdoor speakers. Man, I fly thousands of miles and I still can’t get away from that crap?
I was glad for the caffeine, as the drive only became more challenging. Even though were weren’t in the National Park yet, baboons, kudu, and African warthogs darted across the road at the worst possible moment.
When we finally arrived at the gate to Etosha, my arms were pretty beat. Thing is, we’d been driving on pavement all day, and the driving would only get tougher.
Yee-ha.
