Greetings cyber-trotters,
Chilly and dusty, located in a desert on the west coast of the
country, Swakopmund is the premier Summer holiday destination for
Namibians and some South Africans. The town is all about relaxing and self
indulgence; the slow pace reminds me a lot of Big Bear Lake California
where I went to high school.
Being a bargain hunter at heart, I
jumped at the chance to take a (cheap) deluxe overnight train ride across
the desert to this coastal tourist town. The Desert Express is Namibia's answer to the extraordinary
Blue Train in South Africa. People around here don't like the comparisons foreigners
commonly make with the South African train, but the two services are
similar. This one is cheaper ($222 for a 24 hour ride!), but it is nowhere
near as luxurious as the Blue Train. On my trip a large group of noisy,
chain smoking Italians more or less took over the train along with a group
of 12 Americans making me the only solo traveler on the train. I learned
again that romantic experiences like this are not much fun alone.
In addition to the ultra-comfortable sleeper transportation, the trip
included a couple mini-safaris of sorts. Yesterday about an hour into the
trip they took us to the private Okapuka Ranch game park where we watched
"wild" lions being fed big chunks of raw leg-of-antelope red
meat no more than four meters from the timber walls separating us from the
oblivious felines.
Our particular run had some unexpected excitement. Half way through the
20-hour ride at about 22:00 the train rolled over a rotten rail and jumped the track.
Fortunately, the derailment happened in slow motion on a section of track
that demanded slow rolling, being scheduled for early replacement. Some of
us didn't even know there had been an accident until much later the next
morning, because when we boarded the train earlier in the day they had
told us to expect a five hour stoppage in the middle of the night to make
sleeping easier.
The next morning before dawn we were awakened to watch the desert
sunrise... and as it happened the phenomenal process of wrestling a 110
ton locomotive back up on the tracks. After a gourmet breakfast on the train, the railroad
staff got us all transferred to a bus for the last 150km to Swakopmund. On
the way we stopped at the dunes in the Namib-Naukluft Park where many of
us climbed some of the steep sand hills. Different.
It is winter here in Swakopmund, cold and overcast... dreary. Aside
from the sand and weather this holiday town in many ways is a lot like
Santa Barbara; tourists flock here during their summertime,
December-February. Few tourists bother this time of year, so I thought I
might really enjoy the un-crowded ambience. Right now I am not so sure. I
did get a great 4 star hotel for about $56/night. The Hansa
Hotel television
even has the Discovery Channel! This cyber cafe feels pretty good, too.
Check here
for pictures I took of the lion feeding, derailed train, dunes and
around the town of Swakopmund.
The beggars here are weird: they stand outside stores patronized mainly
by foreign tourists drawing attention to some torn part of a garment they are
wearing and chant in English: "Money, money, money. Give me money." One
father(?)-son team had the 10-year-old boy chanting: "Give me money.
I want to buy something." Try as I may to maintain my equanimity,
every encounter with a beggar leaves me with an emotional dilemma. Some of
the people decidedly are truly needy, but giving them money eliminates the
incentive for finding real solutions to their economic problems. Most I am
afraid, are obvious confidence artists who have perfected the performance of
"pathetic pleading" guaranteed to touch the heart of even the
most jaded "rich foreigner." Signs posted around town urge
people to decline requests for street handouts, something I always do
since learning in Bombay that Indian beggars rake in three times the
national average income of a legitimate hard working adult male in that
impoverished country. Beggars are everywhere, of course. Living in Santa
Barbara I had plenty of time to watch some of the least needy beggars of
the world and instantly recognize most of
the usual scams.
In the face of cold logic my decision to rebuff beggars makes sense.
But when that little girl of six walks up in (theatrical) rags, tugs on my
sleeve and flashes those sad big brown eyes pleading, begging in a strange
language which no one needs to understand in order to get the message, all
my logic knots up into a tight ball which drops right down to the pit of
my stomach.
I don't know how to solve the admittedly serious and pervasive African
poverty problem and these personal encounters with beggars have done
little to help me understand the true dimensions of a challenge that has
existed in every country on the earth since the beginning of time.
Religions with which I am familiar teach believers to help individually.
Logic suggests the creation of a safety net is the responsibility of
government and social institutions. Evolution seems to have hard wired us
for pity... and created a subset of humanity all too ready to take
advantage of that predisposition. Well... that's a lot more than I
intended to say about the strange begging habits here in Namibia.
I love getting comments from friends who tell me about their own
current travel activities. Invariably folks add, "Our ramblings are
nothing like the adventurous project on which you've embarked."
Looking back on all my world hopping I see some variables that have little
to do with the length or hazardousness of travel. The most exciting parts
have always been in the planning and remembering. And, it is the most
mundane events that sometimes make the best adventure: anticipation is
priceless and memories are treasures beyond tally.
It doesn't seem to matter if I am anticipating a weeklong trip to visit
friends in the next state or a yearlong international sojourn to discover
the meaning of life. I wonder if that might not be true also for friends
who have compared their "anemic" travels with my "red
blooded" wanderings. Ordinary events of all kinds take on magic
qualities in the after-telling. At the time they are happening I just do
what must be done and I am convinced that the way I personally go about it
is for the most part genetically predetermined. Genetic predisposition is
such an overpowering force in our lives and generally goes unrecognized in
the same way we ignore the fact that cultural imperatives also
predetermine much of our actions. So there you have it: the devil makes me
do it. I don't really have much of a choice.
I also didn't have anything to say about which gender, language or religion would be
mine at birth. Forget freewill. It is a much-overrated concept identified
by the ancients to make each individual increasingly responsible for
natural animal behavior no longer tolerable among growing herds of
intelligent beasts.
To get a bit more philosophical: I now believe we have the beginnings
of tools to make better use of each human being's unique genetic
endowments. These tools will allow us to more clearly see early in the
life of every new child what strengths and limitations will circumscribe
its needs and accomplishments, allowing us to make adjustments in the
customized educational resources offered to each kid. Finding the wisdom
and political will to take advantage of our new scientific knowledge and
biotechnology will
be the major challenges of the current millennium.
What is so obvious to
me at this stage of my own reading is fully appreciated by no more than a
tiny group of academic experts around the world in areas of study related
to behavioral genetics. Wider scientific appreciation and public education
will not happen anytime soon. Like the discoveries of Archimedes, Darwin,
Galileo, and countless others, I am certain it is destined to have a major
impact on the course of civilization eventually. When it does, it will usher in a new golden age for humanity. If it doesn't, I'll eat my hat. You may hold me to that
promise. I am sure our grandchildren will be alive to reap the benefits...
probably before the year 2040!
Back here on planet Earth I continue to see things uncommon in my
everyday life back home. For example: young men occasionally grab their
crotches and hold on for up to a minute as they pass people (both men and
women) on the street.
Public nose picking is a high art in many places I've visited. I've
seen (only) guys work at getting accumulated crusts out of their large
nostrils on busses, in restaurants, in up-scale shopping centers. They
never seem the least bit self-conscious.
I am rarely out of earshot of what sounds like a party. People love to
laugh and laugh they do everywhere. I am beginning to think a lot of
people on this continent are hearing impaired as one can hear individuals
engaging in animated shouting conversations, often with a tinge of
hostility in their voices.
There are many San (Bushman) people working in the city. They are so
easy to recognize; they look just like the star in the film "The Gods
Must Be Crazy!" Like they were portrayed in the film, all San people
I see are small gentle folk with light coffee colored skin and speaking
that unique language punctuated with clicks. I even learned a San word
myself that contains a click: "*no" and after a little practice
actually can pronounce it. The trick is to start humming an nnn... sound
and then add a tongue click followed by changing the "nnn" sound
to the "oh" sound. The San word means, "be quiet."
The African continent continues to be in turmoil and people are on the
move. The easy and cheap availability of transportation makes it possible
for anyone looking for economic opportunity or an escape from social unrest
in their own village to rush to a new place perceived as better. Many try to (illegally) make
their way up into Europe, but most flock to other African cities all over
the continent, almost always merely exchanging one set of problems for
another. In any larger town one can find immigrants from all of the other
fifty countries of Africa and the hundreds of different tribes and
ethnicities.
Large cities like Windhoek are great for observing the full spectrum of
native ethnicities found around the African continent. Colors range from
"white" albino (I've seen a surprisingly large number of them)
to jet-black. Facial features range from delicate European to jutting chin
and broad nose. Body stature ranges from tall skinny "bean
poles" to short, large bone "Neanderthal." There is no
single typical African phenotype. People have told me they can recognize
people from other tribes by their appearance alone, while others tell me
they must hear speech or see characteristic tribal garb to know their
origin. If I were to create a composite "average" native
African, he would not be that much different from an "average"
American other than generally darker skin color.
In larger cities people
are as fashion conscious as in any comparable European or American city.
Forget the naked savage African stereotype from the pages of National
Geographic. Almost everyone wears Western garb, even in the poor rural areas I've been so far.
On no fewer than a half dozen occasions, I have been stopped on the
street and told that I look a lot like Kenny Rogers: old white guy, short
white beard, and American clothes. Several times I could see they were
waiting for me to deny being the celebrity. It now seems possible that
some of the younger people I have seen staring at me on the streets
previously might be due
to mistaken identity. American movies predominate in theaters wherever
I've looked.
The other night I had a delicious Zebra steak dinner, tender. As I
enjoyed the familiar "beef" flavor of the red meat I couldn't
help thinking how like horses are the Zebras: horsemeat can't be all that
different. (Apologies to my horse loving friends.) Then, seeing it listed on
numerous cafe menus I finally ordered a bacon and banana Toast (sandwich).
Hey! It's not bad. Between two slices of white bread buttered on the
outside, the bacon actually is a piece of ham (lunch meat) and the banana
is sliced cracker thin. The resulting assembly is toasted like a
grilled-cheese sandwich. The banana adds little to the flavor of the
preparation, but changes the texture in a particularly pleasant way. Try
it. You'll like it! If someone watching you says it looks horrible, just
say "*no" and tell them it's a Bushman concoction.
When I leave here I'm headed south toward South Africa, probably
stopping in Keetmanshoop to avoid traveling at night. I think I'll end up
in Cape town, but that might well change as I get closer to the border and learn
more about the transportation options.
Peace,
Fred Bellomy 21 July 2001
PS: Many of my postcards get mailed long after I've left the places
described, sometimes weeks later. If you really get curious about my
actual present whereabouts, drop me a line; I always mention my current
location in replies to your welcome letters. If I do disappear on one of
my ill-advised explorations, letters from my last checkpoint should give
Embassy people a place to start their search for the missing American. F
