Open Features: 5 - In Namibia
"Ahead were real sand dunes. They were nothing like beach dunes. They were high, with sand scurrying up their faces like a swarm of insects, trying to escape the wind...'' Isabel Bradley and her husband Leon finally arrive in Namibia.
The road from Port Nolloth to Alexander Bay is practically straight for about eighty-five kilometres, leading travellers between sand dunes along a beach that is a hundred kilometres wide. There are occasional glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean on the left, and of mine dumps marking the places where diamonds are being extracted from this unfriendly coast. Not even one blasted tree blights anything anywhere.
At this stage in our journey, we were both tired, looking forward to settling into our comfortable, fully-furnished house in Oranjemund. Alexander Bay is bypassed by the quiet main road, which leads straight into the Alexander Bay Border Post. On the South African side of the border, which is the Orange River, we climbed out of the car with our passports and Leon's precious visa clutched in our hands. The weather was cool and mostly cloudy. A wind with an edge to it tangled my skirt around my legs. A friendly official looked at our passports, stamped mine (everyone in the world stamps South African passports, it seems), didn't bother to ask for the visa, or proof that we owned our car, or any other official documents.
We drove past the police check-point, where two men in blue admired our red Mazda MX6; then across the longest privately owned bridge in the world. This single-lane concrete and steel construction is not pretty. It spans the churning, orange-coloured waters of South Africa's largest river, including a couple of islands where gemsbok grazed beneath us. Incidentally, though the waters can be orange-coloured, the river was named after the Dutch Prince of Orange, rather than for its colour.
On the Namibian side of the river, we once again parked the car and walked into the immigration offices. A young official and her supervisor were working with a group of people, one of whom we overheard was travelling with an invalid passport. She and her companions were turned away. We filled in our arrival forms, including the purpose and duration of our visit. The young official turned to us with a smile, and without looking at the forms we handed her, asked how long we were staying. Still without looking at them, and without asking for any visas at all, she stamped our passports, and we were officially in Namibia!
WHY did we wait so long for Leon's work visa? We could have been here months ago. Of course, it's best to be legally safe in the wilds of Africa. In spite of our two-hour delay in Springbok, we arrived in good time for our "early afternoon" appointment. In Alexander Bay it had been going on for four o'clock, and late. Namibia turns its clocks to daylight saving time at the beginning of April, and is an hour earlier than its neighbour. In Oranjemund, it was only a quarter to three!
Getting through Namdeb Security took far longer than either of the border posts. Eventually, we were each handed a black identity tag and a paper certifying our right to be in Namibia. We drove through the final check-point and into the desert. Ahead were real sand dunes. They were nothing like beach dunes. They were high, with sand scurrying up their faces like a swarm of insects, trying to escape the wind. We turned left. After a few kilometres, there, in the middle of the desert, was an avenue of tall, billowing trees planted on a carpet of bright green grass. It looked totally incongruous. Leon drove through the wide avenues of this little town as if he knew the place - which he did, of course, he lived here for five years about eighteen years ago. Little changes in Oranjemund, other than the people.
We went straight to the offices where Leon would be working. The building was painted luminous yellow with luminous green pointing and trim. There we met with the man who needed his services (another Leon). The "other Leon" guided us to the house which was to be home for the next three months. Number Twenty-Nine, First Avenue, was on the coastal edge of town, with only a line of trees, planted a couple of hundred metres away, between us and an open expanse of desert used to dump disused machinery, the "pink pan", and ultimately the sea. The wind howled across the empty spaces, only partly broken by the trees, then hurled itself against our house.
The cloud cover grew heavier.
