Namibia – Where is Everyone?

I arrived in Windhoek, Namibia on Friday, November 10th. One of my best childhood friends, Christy, arrived from Kansas City, Missouri, later that afternoon. Her luggage then arrived on Monday after a few desperate days spent on the phone trying to get a response from South African Airways as to its status, which even included a call to Air Namibia to ask them to walk the 10 meters across the Windhoek airport and beg Tuyamo, the South African Airways baggage handler PLEASE to pick up her phone. (At one point, clearly tired of us, she even picked it up and hung up again!) Miraculously, it made its way to us, at that point located 450 km north of Windhoek at the Etosha National Park.

We rented a brand new, very inconspicuous, lime green Nissan at the Windhoek Airport to drive ourselves throughout the northern and western part of Namibia for 10 days. Of course, this made me (and my family back home) slightly nervous – two U.S. women tourists driving alone, in Africa, on the “wrong” side of the road, with a manual transmission (located on the “wrong” side as well) – but I’ve never had better driving conditions, the roads are nicely tarred, directions are well-marked and, what is most remarkable to us, there are no other people out on the road. Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world with only 1.9 million people living in over 800,000 sq. Km (twice the size of California). This immediately became obvious to us as we set out from the airport located 42 Km outside Windhoek – on the way we did not pass a single car on the road!

Since we only had Friday evening in Windhoek, we arrived to our hotel, Roof of Africa, and asked them to hire a driver for us to show us around for a few hours. Windhoek does not immediately feel like any other African city I’ve seen. Again, there are hardly any people or cars about and it’s very orderly, clean and quiet. Joining our driver, Abner (and not sure why) was a cook at our hotel, Tussi. After an hour of sightseeing around Windhoek – with not much to see other than some German colonial architecture – Abner and Tussie wanted to show us where they lived, in the township of Windhoek, called Katutura. Katutura is a township just like all others I have described, but driving through on a Friday evening, with Abner and Tussie, gave a different perspective. Everyone was outside. Kids rolled tires down the streets. Groups stood outside a few churches and sang. Men sat in lawn chairs and drank. Women cooked in black kettles over outdoor fires in front of their homes. Abner and Tussie talked about living there and owning their homes with pride.

But things became a little strange when we pulled up to Tussie’s house, number 29. “Get out and come see” she told Christy and me. As we were still getting out of the car, we watched her open up the door to her house and immediately slam it, laughing. Already uncomfortable, “what is it?” we asked but could not imagine, “that’s ok, we’ll just go back to the car.” “No, come in,” she said. So we entered. It was pitch black – no windows – and miniscule – not bigger than a walk-in closet. We entered into half the house that contained a make-shift kitchen. A curtain divided the second half, the bedroom, holding a small bed and all the household belongings piled on top of it. As soon as we entered, Tussie pulled back the curtain into this bedroom and there standing in a small, plastic bucket, completely naked, was her 16 year old niece, having a “bath.” Behind the 16-year old girl was her 18-year old sister, whose left eye was swollen shut and did not look well. Stunned, we turned quickly on our heels to leave but Tussie insisted, “no, take our pictures, take our pictures,” she insisted. Christy and I just both stood there for what seemed like eternity and looked at each other, confused by what was happening. “No, really, we will leave,” we said. We walked out and they followed, including the bathing niece who now had wrapped a towel around herself. Outside they again asked for us to take their pictures, and we did (pictured above).

Before we knew it, we next found ourselves at Abner’s sister’s house, to take pictures of his family. Then we went to the home of one of Tussie’s sister’s, to take pictures of Tussie and her sister’s newborn baby. By this time we realized we were becoming the main Katutura photographer, it was getting dark and, with no end to Tussie’s enthusiasm for picture-taking in sight, we asked for them to take us back to the hotel. I still do not entirely understand our interactions with Tussie and Abner – in part I feel they were just excited to show us around and take advantage of our camera, but in part they were putting on a show for us which made me feel as if we were exploiting the situation by just being in their homes, and in Katutura, with our cameras.

Later that night, we ate dinner in Windhoek at Joe’s Beer Haus, a raucous German restaurant. Namibia was a German colony in the early 1900s until after WWI when the League of Nations gave the mandate for governing Namibia to Britain (which then handed it over to South Africa, which controlled Namibia until its independence in 1990). The German influence can still be seen everywhere and we have encountered many German tourists, more than any other group – again, not something I expected for Namibia!