Windhoek - I travelled back in time when I visited Namibia a few weeks ago. S’true: although the country lies directly north of Cape Town and my destinations were closer than Joburg, the clocks are set an hour behind those of South Africa because the Namibia goes over to daylight saving time in winter.
But it was also a figurative jump backwards in time because this was the first time I’d been to two of the outposts of civilisation in the Namib Desert – Walvis Bay and Swakopmund – since the South African flag was lowered once and for all in the country nearly three decades ago.
Sure, some things have changed: the previously pristine stretch of coast between the two has developed messily and the Swakopmund town centre has relocated a couple of kilometres northwards, but the desert and Namibian culture remain virtually unsullied.
Given that the Namib Desert is one of the oldest in the world, the former is hardly surprising. However, if you take into account that the country’s German-South African influences are little more than a century old – with about a quarter of that being post-independence – the human quality of its timelessness is quite astounding.
I lived and worked in Namibia on-and-off for nearly a decade. I had a German-speaking girlfriend whose parents owned a 17 000ha farm on the edge of the Namib-Naukluft National Park so, as our little Air Namibia Embraer jet descended towards Walvis Bay’s Rooikop airport, there was a distinct feeling of “coming home”.
I couldn’t wipe the nostalgia from my mind but I also couldn’t help smiling at the thought that daily flights from Joburg and Cape Town allowed Rooikop to add the word “international” to its name.
As lots of former troopies of my generation will tell you, Rooikop (and Walvis Bay for that matter) is a bit of a s**thole in the middle of nowhere. Actually, the town’s only redeeming features in my memory were the stupendously beautiful dune sea (the largest south of the Sahara) that surrounds it, the avian oasis at Sandwich Harbour and the presence of Swakopmund just 30km up the road.
Nothing that I saw on the latest trip has changed that perception, though our group had several delightful hours cruising the Walvis lagoon on a catamaran where the pelicans, gulls and seals were plentiful, as was the Old Brown Sherry.
The latter was particularly necessary because, strangely, the Namib coast can be extremely cold. There is an almost-permanent fog bank – generated through interaction between the heat of the desert and the icy Benguela sea current that causes a permanent cycle of evaporation and condensation – that can reach up to 80km inland.
In fact, as desert guide Tommy Collard tells us, for many of the creatures that populate the Dorob National Park, it is the only moisture they ever experience. “Water is the currency of the desert,” says the gruff ex-policeman as he pokes around the dunes and scrub clumps for sidewinders, shovel-nosed lizards and chameleons.
This is the countryside where Mad Max: Fury Road was filmed; a production that has left the locals with mixed feelings. The socio-economists loved it because it ploughed a lot of money into the coastal economy but conservationists are bitter because they say Max and his protagonists’ vehicles ripped up swathes of an exceptionally sensitive biome.
The damage, they say, could take generations (if not centuries) to be reversed.
Ecological damage does, on the other hand, have its blackly humorous side: there is a road-sign between Walvis and Swakop (as the locals call it) saying “No off-road driving”. It stands forlornly in a sea of vehicle tracks.
My other favourite sign – and one that I was on the lookout for as we headed from the airport into Swakop – stands at the edge of the desert and states simply “Sand” with a large exclamation mark above it. You’re not kidding, mate.
You could just as well go inland about 40km and expect to find a similar sign proclaiming “Rocks” while driving through the breath-taking dolomite formations that make up Moon Valley on the way to the Goanikontes Oasis. We had a wonderful desert dinner – all fire, candles and stars – before heading back to Swakopmund in an impenetrable pea-souper.
Swakopmund is a wonderful anachronism. It’s South Africa but it isn’t. It exists in a modern, independent African nation but it finds itself in a colonial time warp.
The first European colonists of this south-western corner of our continent were the Germans. Apart from attempting the first genocide this side of the equator – the schutztruppe (protection force) virtually wiped out the Herero between 1904 and 1907 – they’ve left a strong linguistic, architectural, culinary and beer legacy.
Also, sadly, a musical one, but more of that later. Our group has no sooner checked in to our 4-star hotel, the beautiful and quirky former railway station now renamed the Swakopmund Hotel and Entertainment Centre, than one of my colleagues set out for Kücki’s Pub. This legendary watering hole opened in 1981 (which was also the first time I drank there) and promises hot beer, lousy food and bad service. Thankfully, it under-delivers on all three.
What it does deliver in spades is the Namibian dialect of Südwest-Deutsch, German to which a plethora of Afrikaans or even Wambo words and phrases have been added. I start picking up the gist of conversations after my third pint of Hansa Draught… three days later at Narrenwecke, the precursor to the annual Swakopmund carnival, I’m actually speaking it.
Narrenwecke is a costumed-street party with beer, braai, German hilarity, what passes for music and even more beer. And Jägermeister. It’s all great fun and it’s conducted to the bemusement of everyone who is not German-speaking or a tourist. Even the Afrikaans-speaking locals have either a single beer or give it a wide berth.
The knees-up is held in the main road, called Sam Nujoma Avenue, but everywhere there are signs that recall the town’s colonial past – Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse 31, Hotel zum Kaiser and Kaiser Bill’s coat-of-arms outside the Adler Apotheke und Drogerie.
The best piece of colonial architecture is just across the road from Kücki’s. Lore has it that Hohenzollern Haus, now a block of upmarket apartments, was a brothel for German officers and the prancing cupids above the entrance would seem to attest to that.
The other positive German legacy lies in the food and specifically in the popular café society of the town. You won’t get bad coffee anywhere and the pastries at Café Anton on the beachfront or brötchen at Café Treff in the town heart give new meaning to dying and going to cholesterol heaven!
l Jim Freeman was a guest of Air Namibia and the Swakopmund Hotel and Entertainment Centre. For more information, go to www.airnamibia.com and www.legacyhotels.co.za /en/hotels/swakopmund
Jim Freeman, Saturday Star