Day Trip To Angola, the Red Line and a Goat As A House Pet!

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M - Its not often you get to visit a country like Angola so it was with great excitement that we boarded a ferry to take the car across the river to Angola.

Only joking, just wanted to see if Steve (the owner of our vehicle ) was reading the blog!

We did get though get pretty close, our camp site near Rundu on the edge the Caprivi Strip literally overlooked the Zambesi river that is the boarder between Namibia and Angola. Apparently its common for tourists to take a fishing trip on the river and then touch down on the other side 'visit' Angola. We decided that jumpoing out on the other side wasn't really worthy of a pin in the map so declined and enjoyed the view of Angola from our camp.

In Namibia they have something called the Red Line. It follows one of the major highways that cuts West/East across the north of the country. Below the Red Line the landscape is all very large white owned farmland. Above the Red Line are lots of very small farmsteads. The former have the economies of scale and capital to farm in the manner one would expect in a first world country. The latter looks looks like something that has probably not changed much in a few hundred years and seems to be more about survival and subsistance living. The Red Line also acts as a control line for livestock. The theory is that north of the Red Line there is Foot and Mouth and south there is not. A key point for someone crossing the line is that you can't take fresh meat southwards and their are numerous checkpoints to enforce this ... Some aren't quite as official as others and seems more about gathering provisions for the checkpoint staff than enforcing a potential infection problem ...

We had been told that once we cross the Red Line the landscape changes dramatically. We thought we were prepared for it but we weren't really. Withing yards of crossing through the first control point the roadside changes from empty countryside to group after group of mud and stick huts inside a wood corals. What we really weren't expecting is that excluding the larger towns that this type of housing would be the norm for virtually the remainder of our journey through Namibia and Botswana. Many of these huts actually had electricity and some even had satellite dishes but in Namibia especially they were still sharing water sources and walking many miles from their villages for water. I have attached a few roadside photos that we took in the first few miles after moving over the Red Line. These images were repeated literally tens of thousands of times and it was a little bizarre that something so basic at first very quickly became the norm to us. What was particularly odd was to see the occassionaly vehicle parked up outside the mud huts!

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Photos

House Goat
I can't remember his name but this guy is a house pet. Apparently he eats anything and everything and sleeps in bed with the lady of the house. I asked if he is house trained and aparently he is unless he isn't allowed to share whatever you are eating. In which case he will show his disapproval ...