Cross the line in the sand

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This was published 12 years ago

Cross the line in the sand

Tackling the dunes of the Namib Desert.

Tackling the dunes of the Namib Desert.Credit: Getty Images

When a German-style resort town emerges from the desert, next door to a struggling township, Lance Richardson can hardly believe his eyes.

THE horizon is cluttered with plateaus and broken mountains, each angular shape quivering above the sand. None of them are real. This desert is a trickster, manufacturing ghostly ranges like a Namibian satire of the Himalayas.

The optical illusion "Fata Morgana" is my introduction to an odd strip of land sandwiched between the icy depths of the Atlantic Ocean and the oldest desert in the world, the Namib. My second introduction is disorienting fog, created when sea air hits the hot rush off the sand. If I keep driving north I'll reach the Skeleton Coast, a graveyard of lonely shipwrecks that Portuguese sailors, dreading a watery end, once condemned as "the Gates of Hell". But given that sand threatens to erase the highway, already largely invisible, there's no guarantee I'll get there. It seems entirely possible to wander astray here, driving for a landmark that will never get closer, crashing the vehicle into a dune, lying down, fatigued and waterless, to be stung repeatedly by a scorpion.

Deep in this uncanny landscape of Namibia is a resort town. If that sounds like an absurd proposition, one should remember this is Africa. First comes Walvis Bay, which looks like suburbia and sounds like the Blitz, air-raid sirens heralding the impending siege of a sandstorm. Then Swakopmund emerges from the fog as the unlikeliest mirage of all, pastels, baroque architecture and wide boulevards terminating in endless yellow dunes.

Namibia started its modern life as a German colony. Swakopmund, the country's first big shipping port, was founded in 1892. In lieu of anything resembling shelter, its original settlers dug caves into the sand. Though South Africa took control of Namibia after the German defeat in World War I, this did little to stem Swakopmund's growth into a premier German seaside resort. Namibia is now a republic but Germanic eateries and streets with names such as "Ludwig Koch" remain. Were it not for palm trees, desert quad biking and that whole uranium thing, the place could be mistaken for a Bavarian cliche.

South Africa left its mark in a different way. I arrive in the off-season on a Saturday, the Atlantic performing its threatening sea dance for a ghost town. Though tomorrow the church pews will be full, many of the churchgoers won't have come from here. Down the road, like another throbbing mirage, the adjacent township of Mondesa houses more than 28,000 people. Apartheid may be done and dusted but its careful divide of white and black has yet to fully disappear in the Namib.

Visitors can come to Swakopmund and sandboard the dunes, jump out of a plane or track down chameleons south of the Swakop River. They can buy carpets of karakul wool and wooden bowls burnt with the pattern of a zebra. There is a fascinating museum on the foreshore and a lighthouse striped like a barber's pole. The best thing to do, however, is to join a township tour and head to Mondesa.

In the afternoon I climb into a small van with several French-Canadians, Italians, Englishwomen and a stern German man. Apartheid threw together multiple indigenous languages; some residents of Mondesa can speak 11 dialects. Despite our squished proximity and shared linguistic roots, we are a woefully mute lot by comparison.

Not that the guide notices, craning around from the front seat to welcome us warmly to the community. His name is Daniel. Under his jovial watch, we power through an itinerary involving a medicine woman, an orphanage, a grim shanty town and a lesson in the mystique of polygamy. Occasionally a local will stop to listen in: a girl pushing a worn tyre along the footpath; a woman balancing a bucket of water on her head with the same poise as a model exhibiting Dior. At one point, a red car pulls up, the window slides open and a camera pokes out, paparazzi-style. For once the tourist is an equal object of curiosity.

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Our first stop is the market, a dusty square with cinder-block stalls finished with corrugated-iron sheeting. Women in headscarves stand before stores of lentils and tomatoes, or turn fish drying in the sun. Daniel explains the importance of the informal economy here: when a government cannot support its people with a program of effective job creation, they set about creating their own. Mondesa is a town of entrepreneurs, a labyrinth of makeshift barbers, landlords and peddlers selling beef stew and "fat cookies".

"Is it called a fat cookie because it makes you fat?" I ask.

"No," Daniel says, seriously. "No, it does not make you fat. It's like a doughnut. It's cooked in oil."

The market is a first glimpse into the social world of the town. People are enjoying the weekend sun, buying food and services that cost 10 times as much a few streets away in the tourist haven of Swakopmund. Mondesa locals may not have a lot of wealth but they're resourceful. The tour is an example of this: run by locals, with locals also reaping the financial rewards. Another example is a common goal of the "dream house", each individual brick laid as the money to buy it becomes available.

The house of the herbalist looks as if it's held together with a fishing net, though the herbalist herself is immaculate. As we pull up outside, skirting the cemetery and sending a cloud of dust wafting through her drying laundry, she smiles patiently and adjusts jars in an open basket. Aunty Wilma wears polka dots and a bow. Though she looks like Lucille Ball, she offers a cryptic handshake and speaks in an astonishing medley of syllables and clicks. This is the language of the Nama people, in which the difference between declaring love and admitting murder is a single tongue strike on the soft palate.

Enjoying our bewilderment, Daniel hands around a series of medicinal jars, deferring to Aunty Wilma for their name and application. This root, shaped like a piece of coral, dupes the brain into thinking the stomach is full. This one cures headaches when brewed as tea. This strange leathery object is the anus of an aardwolf, burnt over an ostrich shell and rubbed onto babies to prevent sickness.

"An example of how you never know where medicine is coming from," Daniel says in a moment of sublime understatement.

Even at this early point, it's abundantly clear the tour is something extraordinary - an insight into a living culture that has adapted to tourism without selling itself out. But though Swakopmund and Mondesa may be said to exist in a freak meteorological bell jar, this culture does not. We meet Natalien, a regal Himba lady with a hat like the twin horns of a bull. She nods serenely, enjoying a lively discussion of marriage and initiation rites. Equal time is given to her orphanage, however, and the consequences of HIV that have left her with so many hapless wards. A poster on the wall reads: "AIDS does not discriminate, so why should we?"

This even-handed approach to Mondesa is a surprise, given how often cultural tourism glosses over the bad stuff in favour of dances and tribal costumes. Daniel drives us through the poorest neighbourhood, an "informal settlement" of houses made from cardboard, wood and desiccated palms. In a twist of galling irony, the only permitted cinder-block structure belongs to the fire brigade. Alcoholism and violence are rife but, nevertheless, Daniel is hopeful. He slides through empty grids along new roads, anticipating a formal expansion to the town, including electricity and wells for water.

The tour finishes at a modest house, where we're greeted by a table laden with stiff millet porridge, crushed beans, fat cookies and Coca-Cola, "our traditional drink". There are also dried worms.

To begin with, everyone is nervous, bristling against the taboo of eating with bare hands. Then some tentative bites bring about the realisation that nobody really cares, that it's all delicious. The beans are sweet and warm, the worms like nori seaweed - odd but not unpleasant.

Soon there's the first wave of free chatter in hours, people laughing despite the language divides, opening up to something different and completely charming. The thing about difference is that, forced together and committed to etiquette, people instinctively seek out commonalities. No forks and dirty hands turns out to be a good place to start.

The writer travelled courtesy of World Expeditions and Etihad Airways.

Trip notes

Getting there

Etihad Airways flies daily from Sydney to Cape Town or Johannesburg in South Africa via a connection in Abu Dhabi. +61 2 8024 7200, etihadairways.com.

From South Africa, both South African Airways and Air Namibia fly to Windhoek, Namibia's capital. Swakopmund is a 4½-hour drive west.

Touring there

World Expeditions offers several itineraries through Namibia that stop in Swakopmund. The 19-day Southern Africa Explorer, ranging through South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia, costs $3190 and includes a dedicated guide and cook, all accommodation (either campsite or hotel) and most meals. 1300 720 000, worldexpeditions.com.

See + do

The small and locally run Hafeni Cultural Tours conducts Mondesa excursions on demand, so time is negotiable. Cost is $N400 ($47). +264 64 400731, heinisdream@gmail.com. If you're travelling with World Expeditions the tour can be prearranged.

To explore the Namib Desert and its wildlife, a Living Desert adventure takes to the sand with a four-wheel-drive. Look out for the Dancing White Lady Spider cartwheeling down the dunes at 44 turns a second. Cost is $N600. +264 64 405070, livingdesertnamibia.com.

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