Hippo's, Croc's and lovely people

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October 19, 2006

The time has come to leave Namibia. We have the spent the past month here and have become quite attached. The country is so huge with so many different landscapes and things to do, you would never get bored here. Namibia can also be a very easy African country to travel with all the amenities of home if you want them - well almost all - efficiency is not yet an option, nor is luxury. It is hard to tell what makes it so different than home because you have everything you need yet it is only really half there. They have internet but it is very slow and not available on certain days. In certain towns you can not get it at all. They have decent grocery stores but they are only open until 6:30pm and around 1 pm on Sundays. The grocery stores have all the necessities but nothing more than that - selection is limited and looks like someone packaged it in their basement. The post office is there and functional but it does not even have an electronic scale, it has the old kind that you used to weigh babies with. There is an old wooden desk like they used to have in a school in the 50's and the walls are bare and dirty. Everything is still done by hand and without any gadgets, they even issue you a hand written reciept. To mail a parcel takes just under an hour. You can find a furniture store, no problem, but it is full of furniture that Vancouver would have sold in the 70's or 80's. Everything is at your disposal, it just all lacks sophistication. I guess that is it, it is like Canada was 30 or even 40 years ago....the amenities are there, just not updated. The best part about Namibia is that you can leave all of the amenities behind and take yourself to far away places that are so remote and removed you can forget that modern times exist at all. It felt strange pulling out of the parking lot that doubles as the bus depot across from the Supreme Court Building, the same parking lot we arrived at so long ago, or so it seemed. It was funny comparing the feeling of pulling into the parking lot for the first time with the feeling I had leaving. How we had gone from feeling uncomfortable and out of place to familiar and at home. I will be sad to leave Namibia, however, I am totally ready to move on to Central Africa - the Africa I imagined in my daydreams.



We're finally on our way to Zambia with only one stop before we arrive in Livingstone and that was Ngepi Camp on the Caprivi Strip. We had booked a treehouse in the middle of nowhere right near the Zambian border on the Okavango River. The Caprivi Strip is a region that was full of strife during what amounted to a war and the occupation of Angola by the whites of South Africa back in the 70's and 80's and the area has never lost the stigma attached to it. People are funny......there was this girl from Rwanda beside me on the bus who really kept to herself the entire first half of the trip. The bus left at 5pm and she had not even so much as looked at me by 10pm when I fell asleep. Well, the bus stopped at 2:30 in the morning which woke everybody up. I don't know what happened to her between 10pm and 2:30am, but she must have had some life altering experience in her dreams because she was ready to spill her guts, admit all her sins (including the affair she was having) and give me the low down on what is wrong with Africa, including the Caprivi Strip. She told me of bandits and robbers that stop buses to pilfer through them, of men that treat their women badly, how the way I was holding my purse gave too many clues that there were valuables in it, the skyrocketing incidents of thievery and how the man that was talking to Jordan was very suspicious and not to be trusted - if there had ever been a problem, she certainly knew about it and was trying to pass this information and paranoia on to me. Great.



Our stop for Ngepi Camp was at 5:00am in the middle of nowhere, which is actually this village called Divindu. No problem though, the people from Ngepi camp would be there to meet us at the bus stop aka: the closed Shell gas station miles from anywhere. I had taken a gravol for motion sickeness so I was really groggy and out of it when I opened one eye and saw the sign that read "Divindu". Holy crap. We're here. Too soon. Jordan was still sleeping beside me and our stuff was all over the place. I was having trouble waking up. As the bus stopped, I was scrambling to wake Jordan up, collect our things and get off the bus, all half asleep with the gravol still making me blurry. As I did all of this I looked outside and there was no one there from Ngepi to collect us and take us to the camp. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to get off the bus, not after what Mrs. Theskyisfalling had been filling my head with. I really didn't know what to do but our tickets were only good to Bagani which was only a few miles down the road and we still had nowhere to stay in Bagani either. Off the bus we went with all of our luggage on the side of the road in a remote little village in Northern Namibia near the Zambian border at 5 in the morning with no one around. Luckily the people that watched over the Shell gas station (who spoke very little English) had what resembled a hut on the side of the road and they were kind enough to allow us to put our luggage in there so we didn't get mugged. It was an eery feeling watching the bus pull out and carry on without us.



About 40 minutes later, a land rover came flying around the corner with Eve from the Ngepi Camp driving. She still had sheet marks on her face and had obviously slept in. I had never been happier to see anyone in my life - or angrier. I must say that the lovely couple that had the hut at the gas station did make me feel better. The man had a good energy about him and he made me feel like he would keep us safe. Still, it was nice to see our western contact and it was hard not to act irritated with her for leaving us stranded in the middle of Africa with everything we own on our backs - what good would it do to be mad at her, which is what I felt like doing. Instead I just sat and had a coffee with her. It was now close to 6 am and I was ready to go rest in our treehouse.



Arriving at Ngepi camp was fantastic. They were right on the Okavango River which is full of crocodiles and hippos and the lands were tropical and lush. It was like a garden of eden. The sound of the parrots alone made you feel like you were in a movie - or at least an avery. Our treehouse was the coolest thing I had ever seen, other than our outdoor bathroom. You walked up these stairs and there was just this big open room with two beds that looked out onto the river. There weren't any walls and you could wake up in the morning and see hippo bathing and at night you could hear the hippo cross through the camp to graze and go to the bathroom (something they won't do in the river). They really were in the middle of nowhere. They heated our water with what they called "donkeys", which were just big steel barrels over the fire. There was no electricity at all but they did turn on their generator around 4pm so they could have some lighting. During the day everything was cooked over gas and everything about the place took you back in time. They had this great dog named Slim. Slim had a brother named "Fat boy" at one time but he was taken by a croc while chasing a monitor lizard along the banks of the river. Now he has a brother named Shady - would the real Slim Shady please stand up. I hated the story about Fat boy.



The first day we did nothing but lye around and watch the river from the fantastic patio that hung out right over the water. Their swimming pool was a cage made of steel that was submersed in the river so you could swim safely right next to the hippos and crocodiles - it was pretty neat. At night Jordan fished off the dock side by side with the hippos and we slept in the open air of our treehouse with our mosquito nets covering us - this way when we heard all the sounds of the huge insects buzzing around us, including the malarial mosquitoes and poisonous spiders, we could just lay there in peace and laugh at them all. I saw a Western Green snake on the way back to our treehouse the first night and Eve showed us a picture of the Spitting Cobra she had found in the office just two days before we arrived. I didn't like the thought of that.



The second day was a little more eventful. Right next to Ngepi Camp was Diveye Village. It was exactly the sort of village you see when they show African villages on tv. Actually, from here on they all are. Jordan and I decided to go through the village with a guy that lived there named "Cosmo". He was a really neat guy and seemed to know a lot about superstitions, witchcraft and black magic. It was a real eye opener to go through and learn how the people in African villages live.



The livelihood of the Diveye people lies in the Okavango River. When the white people from South Africa took over, they set up army posts along the river to ensure that no black people could utilize it. They would shoot any black person found on the river which took away the villages only means of survival. The old army posts still stand today as a reminder of how life used to be.



Today the people of Diveye flourish with the use of the river. "Flourish" being a subjective word. Sitting in Canada I would not say this destitute village flourishes at all, however, when you compare it to living where they are without the use of the river, you then begin to see their world as flourishing since they are able to use it again. The Diveye people eat the exact same thing everyday. They have porridge every morning without fail, they drink milk in the afternoon and eat fish for dinner - every day, their diet does not change. Because of this, the people of the village develop at a very slow rate. Babies do not walk until two and sometimes three and the full grown adults are very small. Jordan was the height of a 17 year old boy. They do have cows in the village but they are saved to ascertain a mans' status and to use as dowry's for marriage. If a man does not have enough cows, he may not be able to marry the women he wants. The women's family sees him as honorable and able to care for their daughter the more cows he can offer. How can you make a woman feel like an 8 cow woman without any cows? Another status symbol is how many crops a man has cultivated. The more crops, the better able to care for her again.



Marriage is a strange formality in the villages of Africa. Cosmos was almost at the point of marriage and I asked him if he loved his wife to be. He said he did but not like we do in the Western world, he knew the difference and was able to tell us that it was not like that in village life. I asked him if his heart ever fluttered when he saw her and although he understood my question, he made it clear that that kind of emotion was not a part of their world. It was a womans job to make sure the man was happy and if she did not own up to her part of the bargain, she would be held infront of the elders to be condemned for being a bad wife and he would then be able to leave her there in shame, having to fend for herself. That is the penalty of not making him happy. Women also spend significant time in hard labour prisons' for having affairs, even today.



When the man has determined that a women is suitable enough to marry, it then becomes the womans' fathers' decision if the man is suitable to join his family. The man must then live with her and her parents for four years to prove he is a hard worker and that he would be able to sustain her and their offspring. He must cultivate a certain number of crops in this time and gain enough cows to the parents statisfaction. If the man passes the parents approval after four years, the man then gets to decide if the woman is still worth marrying. The cost, or dowry, for marriage is 25 cows - she'd better be worth it. : ) ?



The marriage ceremony itself is quite something. Each side of the family give two oxen to slaughter and hundreds of people gather from all the villages to watch the ceremony. Since the people do not get to eat meat as it is used for status, the slaughtering of 4 oxen is to be rejoiced and shared with all for miles around. Four of these animals can feed hundreds of people. During the day of the ceremony, the couple to be married stand absolutely still in the center of all the villagers. Not the slightest movement of a muscle is allowed - this is a very strict rule. If either of them are seen moving, they will be fined $N200 ($25 Canadian - which is more money than they could imagine) and an elder could actually contest their marriage. At the end of the day, if the couple were able to stand still, there would be a huge celebration and feast. After the rituals and traditonal dancing, the couple would be considered married.



The people of the village are very superstitous and believe heavily in witchcraft and magic. They use root medicine to counter everything from the common cold to snake bites. There is a belief that if you get attacked by a python (of which there are many and grow up to and above 13 feet long) and nobody is around to kill it and save you from it then you must have been a bad person and deserved to die. If you deserved to live, there would have been someone there to save you. In times gone by, if you got sick, you were to eat something made of beeswax that had a hole in the middle. In the middle hole they would put a drop of black cat blood mixed with powder made from the root of certain plants. When you ate this concoction, it made you go temporarily crazy and the deal was that you must either kill a man the night you take it or you yourself will die. I asked Cosmos if this really worked to cure people and, without hesitation, he said "yes". I asked him how this worked in a day and age that was much less traditional with the new system of western type courts and jails and he told me that now they did not go kill the man with their bare hands but instead used witchcraft to kill him. He said that the police knew this had happened but could do nothing about it. The people of the village always knew who had died from a curse from whom - it was never a secret. Witchcraft is the mortal enemy to all in the village, much more so than the lions they live amongst or the crocodiles and hippo's they share the river with. Not to say that lions are not a mortal enemy, they village had had nothing but problems with lions lately. Four of their cows had been slaughtered and eaten by lions in the past few days. Considering the value of cows to these villagers, it was a devastating problem.



Although all the villages are slowly moving towards a more modern system of law with courts and jails, it was not too long ago that they were still using traditional punishment. If they had their way they would still be using the traditional system, but the international community will have none of it. In the old system, if someone was caught stealing or raping, or even murdering, three men would take him to the river and tie a boulder between his legs right at his groin. They would take him out in the mokoro canoe and dump him over the edge to drown amongst the hippo and crocodile. If the crime was less serious, say he only insulted someone, they would take him to the river, tie a smaller stone to him and lye him down on his back in the river up to his chin so he could still breathe. They would then put a mokoro canoe over his body to protect him from predators and come back three days later. If he survived, the gods had decided he was a good enough person to be allowed to live. If he did not survive, he deserved it.



I learned a lot in the village that morning. It was really fascinating. The terrible part is that because Ngepi camp does not have electricity, I could not charge my camera or take any pictures. I was sick about it because I was so enthralled by the village. Luckily, the manager of Ngepi turned the generator on very early and I was able to charge my camera when I got back to camp. After about an hour charge, I packed it up and headed on back to the village by myself. I must say, at first I was quite weary heading over there on my own. First off, you have to walk through long grass in a desolate area - what if I got attacked by a python and nobody was around to save me? Then the village would think I was evil!!! Wouldn't want that. Kidding aside, I was scared of snakes walking through there. Secondly, it really was like entering a different world. I was told by the people of Ngepi, who have lived there for many years, that the people of the village were welcoming and that I was safe to go on my own, so any uncomfortableness on my part, I decided, was a product of my own head.



As I arrived in the village, I first ran into Cosmos' wife to be. She was very drunk. The villagers' make their own beer and sit around the community hut to drink it. Any villager that can afford the 2 Namibian dollars (which is equal to approximately 20 cents), buys the jug and goes and sits in the circle. The people each take one sip and pass it around until the jug is empty. It is unheard of to drink a jug to yourself, it is a community thing. The beer there is handmade by villagers and sooooo strong, you can tell just by the smell, and Cosmos wife had a little too much. Nonetheless, she was very friendly (overly) and really into taking me around the village. I eventually met her daughters and sister and spent a couple hours just hanging out with the family and being shown around. Her daughter Justina, who was 5, was an angel - I really believe that. She was so full of love and happiness and it was hard for me to see the conditions in which she lived. She was so accepting where other villagers really looked at me strangely at first. Not in a negative way, just in a, "Holy smokes, that person is white!" way. As we were walking through the village, she just walked up beside me and started holding my hand. As she grabbed my hand, she looked up with me with the biggest, warmest smile I have ever seen that seemed to say "I am so glad you are here" Augustines' other daughter was just as warm and captivating. She was beautiful and full of laughter. She smiled all the time and made me feel so welcomed - we joked a lot and had a lot of good laughs. Even though I lived worlds' away, we were still just person to person and really we are all the same. I was invited into their home at one point and was astounded at how they live. Mud hut, dirt floor, door made out of sticks. The interesting thing was that they had a modern bed in this mud hut and a modern mosquito net. It is always mind boggling to me when I see those two worlds meet - especially somewhere so remote. It was the experience of a lifetime.



When it was time to go, some of the women of the village that I had been hanging out with gathered and walked me back to Ngepi Camp. It was about a ten minute walk and there were women from the village, babies being carried and middle aged kids all walking with me. It was amazing - they didn't speak English and I obviously didn't speak the local tribal language, but we managed to communicate just fine. They walked me right to the steps of my treehouse - it was such a cool feeling. Saying goodbye, however, was really awful. There was an inherent guilt in saying goodbye as I went back to my world of privelage, enought to eat, medical attention, no raging rate of disease and everything else that comes along with being from Canada - and they went back to their porridge and milk, death everyday, witchcraft, black magic, poverty and filth. I had to remind myself that it was not my fault, but somehow that did not make it seem any better.



Later that evening Jordan and I went out on a sunset cruise. We cruised beside a bunch of hippo which was quite intimidating. They travel in families and are quite a nervouse animal known to become aggressive if aggitated. There must have been about 35 of them clustered together and we watched them from about 25 feet away. They have been know to tip the boats on occasion but usually let the people swim to shore which is only about 10 feet away. The down side to this fact is that there are also crocodile in the river. Can't win for losing.



After a very long day and dinner later that night with everyone from the camp, Jordan and I went to bed in our treehouse. Although it was beautiful, there was an obscene amount of insects, and getting changed, putting the mosquito nets around our bed and finally getting into bed proved to be quite the job. Lots of screams coming from our treehouse that evening. Finally off to a much needed sleep. We had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to catch our bus to Livingstone, Zambia and I was exhausted. It was about 1:30 in the morning that I was rudely awoken to the sound of a lion roaring right under us. It sounded like the MGM lion that you hear before a movie but much louder. I cannot describe to you the feeling I had - total and complete fear. Remember, our treehouse did not have any walls and there were stairs leading right up to us - no door. All that was between us and the lion was whether or not he decided to come up there. I was hoping he was still full from those cows. I have never felt so mortal or insignificant.



4:30 am came very early, especially because I did not sleep well again with the thought of lions wandering around underneath us. There was no electricity so I had to pack up in the complete dark with the thought of bugs and lions. It was a frantic, confusing morning and we reached the bus just as it was leaving. Phew - or so I thought. All of a sudden I remembered tucking our passports under the matress and not collecting them again....... I could not get on the bus to Zambia and cross the border without them. I could not really go back to Ngepi because they were full for the evening besides, one of the villagers had died and Eve was going to pick up the body (didn't really want to go along for the ride). My goodness, what have I gotten into? Eve and I were trying to figure out where Jordan and I could stay, in the middle of nowhere, when I picked up my black bag to retrieve my bus tickets. PASSPORTS!!! In the black bag - I did not remember getting them in the confusion.



We were finally on the bus on our way to Zamiba - a new country, always exciting. We had been up since 4:30am, were exhausted, hungry and most importantly I hadn't had any coffee yet. The bus finally stopped in a village with a small store around 9:00am and it was a welcomed stop. Jordan and I headed in to try and get some breakfast (which we didn't end up getting) when we discovered a kitten. A most stress-relieving, welcoming sight after our past 24 hours. We spent quite a few minutes petting the kitten and trying to find anything edible at all. With our kitten fix and breakfast in hand we finally felt good and relaxed. It was short lived. As we walked out of the store we saw our bus pulling out and leaving us in this tiny village. We were still about 500 feet away from the bus, much too far for them to hear us.



"HEY!!!! STOP!!!!!!! " (us yelling and running with bags in hand) "HHHEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY..........WAIT!!!!!!" (bus still pulling out) "NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOO" (as bus slowly starts driving down the road) as loud as I possibly can: "HHHHHHHEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY" (bus starts to slow down and we continue to run after it). (Us getting back on the bus and the bus driver and passengers (all locals) laughing at us.)



The joys of travelling.

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Comments

[Stephie]

ROAR!
Your Lion story reminds me of the pic of the "smiley lion" from one of your earlier blogs? Are you sure you didn't make him angry??? LOL