Palmwag & Etosha

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Palmwag

‘Look.’ Derick pointed towards my window and there a hundred meters away ambling along was a desert elephant. Brown from the dust they roll in, he (let’s assume he’s a he) looked oddly out of place. His surrounding was anything but a desert. The desert elephant isn’t a sub species, they are just your regular African elephant. They just happen to have adapted to the dry environment by taking a leaflet out of the camel’s book. And the dust, a bit like sun protection.
‘Come closer elephant, I don’t have that much zoom.’ Hendrik was only saying what we were all thinking.
‘Come on elephant, I have peanuts.’
Derick shook his head as watched him walk away from us in the dusky light.

Arriving at Palmwag (pronounce pa-lim-varg, meaning palm oasis), everyone pitched a tent on the gravel except me. I really couldn’t be bothered, so it was a sleeping bag by the truck freezer instead. At dinner we were given the low down on Game Drive etiquette.
‘Once we’re in the park, we have to keep noise to a minimum so no shouting or music. Also no hanging out of the truck. The animals are quite used to the vehicles, so its important not to break the shape of it. So you can stick your cameras out but don’t stick your head out. I will open up the roof and you can stand on the freezer and quickly take a picture but no sitting on the roof.’ Carl was listening to the rules intently.
‘If I know we will see more of the animal later on, then I will keep going. I’m not going to stop, unless it is quite close to the road and will make a good picture,’ he pulled a face and continued ‘I don’t want to hear, ‘but there was a springbok back there’.’ He shook his head and rolled his eyes. Springboks are to Namibia what Impalas are to South Africa. Plague proportions.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I slept just fine. The wind had kicked in and Carl was struggling to put down his tent. After I helped Nicole with hers, I walked over to give him a hand.
‘Its okay, Harald is back now’ he said tripping over the edges of the tent.
‘You’ve got a raw deal, you didn’t even sleep in a tent and you have to help people put them down,’ Anouk commented.
‘Its not that hard. I can do it by myself,’ Alex said, stretched out having finished with his tent. ‘You know, sometimes I see you putting up Nicole’s tent or taking it down and she’s not even around.’ I didn’t comment, I was staring at Carl and Harald struggling to strap their tent.
‘How on earth did they manage to roll it into a sphere?’ Instead of a nice long roll, it ended up in a crumpled ball which somehow they managed to cram and jam into a space not quite conducive for a big ball of canvas back into the truck.

Etosha

‘Should I take a short cut?’
‘How much of a short cut?’
‘It’ll save us about 90 odd k’s,’ he answered. ‘But…’ there is always a but, ‘if its flooded over, it will take us longer.’ Before I could offer any reasoning, he took a sharp left. We were taking the short cut.

Powering on through we reached Okaukuejo in Ethosa with all vital aspects of truck intact. Okaukuejo camp and lodge is built right next to a waterhole which is floodlit at night for prime night game watching, with nothing but a brick ledge separating you and the wild animals. Don’t worry the rhinos and elephants are unlikely to break through the barrier.
‘Once an antelope was being chased by a lion and it jumped the barrier and into the camp. The lion jumped over after it. It lost the antelope and was just prowling around.’
‘It jumped?! The Lion jumped into the camp?! What happened?’ Carl babbled, looking around him.
‘The rangers shot it. I mean they had to. The next day there was a whole bunch of Germans lining up at reception complaining that the ‘Leon was shot, the poor leon!’’ Derick snorted. ‘I mean it was either the lion or you. And if it gets a taste for humans, then it kills again.’
Me or the Leon? The Leon please.

‘Put your tents other there, or over there,’ Derick was pointing to some flatten patches in some seriously long sticky reedy grass. ‘Don’t put them underneath the social weavers nest. They’re kind of noisy,’ he said pointing up to an enormous nest spanning across the entire tree branch. Noise? What about the tremendous amount of shit generated by one hundred plus weavers dumped on your tent in the morning?
‘Oh and I don’t want to have to clean the shit off your tents,’ he said as an afterthought. ‘Once you’re done, set up lunch, I have to do some paperwork. Oh and the toilets are over there.’ He pointed to somewhere far in the distance.

The boys disappeared amongst the reeds, Nicole grabbed the other soft patch and I was left with a piece of rock to set my tent on. Since we have to put up two tents, we normally finish last. Done and dusted, I turned to see the boys had wandered off with not even a thought to setting out lunch. So being the unofficial mother of the trip, I started to unload mystery cold cuts and bread from the truck.
‘What’s for lunch?’ Alex asked.
‘What we have been having for an entire week now, sandwiches.’ And with that threw down some pastrami at him.
‘Where should we set up?’ Harald asked.
‘On the table. Where else?’
‘Should we take out ours or use the one already there?’
‘Why take out our table when we will just have to put it back when there is one already there?’ I sighed. These boys are Norway’s first line of defence if they were ever to go to war.

After lunch, we whiled away the time by the pool before our afternoon game drive. Bikinis should have an age limit on the tag right next to the size. Something like “Size 10, ages 14 to 45”. Sixty plus definitely surpasses that age limit. It doesn’t matter if you have a svelte body, it is an undeniable fact that wrinkles happen, liver spots happen, stretch marks happen and body hair in odd places happen. Clearly no one stopped the peroxide German grandmother sporting teenage hair clips from wearing a hot pink and black bikini. When she climbed out of the pool, dripping wet and all aging bits sagging along with the string bikini, it was a huge blow to Germany’s international relations.

National parks are very strict on the comings and goings of vehicles. Everyone had to be back by sundown. Some twenty zebras were grazing by the road and Derick pulled over for the prime pictures. I was sitting on the opposite side of the zebras being in the front cabin. Watching two zebras on my side flicking their Mohawk like manes, I listened to Derick do his guide thing.
‘All zebras have their own unique pattern stripes, like a finger print. This is so the mothers can identify their own children… you can tell a male from a female by their stripes…’ What? ‘A male is white with black stripes and a female is black with white stripes. The one closest to us is a female.’ That is a load of zebra shit. No one in the back had picked up what he said. ‘Looks like no one is listening to me,’ he muttered just as I spoke up to him ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’ He looked at me and shrugged. ‘The zebra I was pointing to had a dick. And none of them picked up on it.’

With no sightings of predators we attempted one last waterhole but to no avail, we were to be satisfied with wildebeests, giraffes and a whole lot of bokkies. Racing back to the camp, Derick skidded to a stop next to a black backed jackal. Seven digital cameras flashed the poor creature who was probably on the prowl for its evening dinner. ‘Look how everyone is getting all excited. Jackals are going to be everywhere at the camp tonight.’ Then why did you stop?

‘What’s for dinner tonight?’ Nicole asked.
‘Beef Stroganoff,’ I replied while setting things out for dinner.
‘I thought we were going to have a braai?’
‘Changed his mind. Can’t be bothered getting it set up and then braaiing. Probably do it tomorrow night.’
‘I thought it was an own expense dinner tomorrow?’
‘No, I think he’s changing that too. I dunno, he says one thing when driving and then changes his mind when he gets here.’
‘Do you guys just talk about what we’re having for dinner when you’re up in the front?’
‘Yes. That’s it.’ Sense the sarcasm? I sighed, ‘Its been over a week, I spend an average of seven hours with him in the front, do you think we talk the entire time? And if so, about what?’ I continued to cut up the mushrooms for the stroganoff. Thinking about what we had talked about today, I asked, ‘How do you tell a male zebra from a female?’
‘One is black with white stripes and the other is white with black stripes,’ Anouk recited and Nicole nodded.
‘Ah, think about what you just said.’ Then it dawned on them that it didn’t make sense. ‘But he pointed to a female one, it was white with black stripes did he say?’
‘Honey, it had a penis. It was not a female.’ I tried not to laugh as I continued to cut up veges for our stroganoff.
‘Bek, I’m going to marry you,’ Carl announced, looking over his shoulder at me. ‘You can cook for me all the time.’
‘Uh, thanks, I think?’ Soup and stroganoff, my two most alluring qualities, fantastic.

‘Are you going to the toilet?’ Alex asked me as I grabbed my torch.
‘Yes.’ I wonder where this was leading.
‘Could you get my charger? It’s in the men’s toilet on the far side.’
What’s the best method here? Do I waylay another male and ask him to get it? Do I give a shout out before entering? Do I just rush through headlong towards the charger, grab it while keeping eyes firmly averted to the ground? Or do I discreetly peer around the corner to see if the coast is clear, hoping not to catch someone’s eye while they are using the urinal? I went for a combination of two and three. A young Namibian had just zipped himself up as I made a beeline for the charger.
‘Hello,’ he greeted cheerfully. I gave him an embarrassed smile and nodded a hello. He followed me.
‘How are you enjoying your time in Etosha?’
‘Been enjoying,’ I answered tightly.
‘You expect to see a lot of things in Etosha, but first time a girl has been in the men’s toilet,’ he grinned.
‘Hhhmm, errrm, yes, well, it’s the digital age,’ I answered lamely, holding up the charger. He laughed as I scooted back.

If you have ever had the pleasure of being at the end of one of my non-sensical tirades, then you would know I am harmless despite the mad arm flailing and eye bulging expressions that go along with it. Most people just try not to laugh at me, especially when I turn on myself like mouldy old cheese. Day five of being on my anti-malarial tablets, my emotions were all over the place. For no apparent reason, I began clunking metal trays down, throwing in cutlery and slamming down the lid of army containers. Directing which container to put the foil in, Anouk looked at me a bit wearily and unwittingly opened up Pandora’s box, ‘Are you okay?’
‘NO,’ I hissed back. She politely waited for an explanation.
‘I am sick of having to do everything,’
‘But you don’t let anyone get a chance to do the dishes, you bring that on yourself,’ she pointed out before I had a chance to explain what I had meant.
‘No, it’s not that! I am well aware I do the dishes right after dinner. I hate having them lie around, you can’t chill out properly when you know you have a massive pile of dishes to do. I meant, I am sick of thinking for everyone. I mean, hello, just because you are on tour doesn’t mean you automatically stop thinking. Do I have to tell the boys to do everything? They just stand there while everyone is struggling to do things. Where’s the initiative? They don’t listen to what Derick says so then they ask me for the answer. I don’t know anymore than you guys. Just because I sit up in front with him doesn’t mean I get some sort of secret information from him! And what do you mean, ‘do you just talk about dinner?’, what am I going to do? Ask him what we’re doing tomorrow? He’s going to tell me later tonight anyway! What does she expect me to talk about? ‘So where did you grow up?’ It’s not like I’m meeting him for the first time. And you know what? It’s not like we’re going to ask what we did today - we did it TOGETHER! And I am sick of being stuck in the middle with people whinging about one another and then they are nice as pie again 5 seconds later to one another. Also, lunch? What are we having for lunch? Has it changed in the last week? Think about it!!! We were still putting up tents and they just buggered off! Speaking of tents, I’m not bothered that she wants her own tent, but I wake up twenty minutes early so we can put down both tents on time. Does she bother? NO. I am sick of waking up early and she’s not even bothering to consider me, because, what, I quote un-quote ‘snore’ so Little Miss Light-Sleeper doesn’t have to because its my fault she can’t get to sleep?! She is damn slow in the morning, we run late, after I wake up early and then I have to hear about how we are late! I swear, if Vilum was here, he would be pissing himself laughing at me right now and I am tired, and you know what? I was on a trip last year, rougher than this and I wasn’t this tired! And I had three kids and CYNTHIA on the trip!’ I paused for a moment to catch my breath and rest my flailing arms.
‘Cynthia?’ Anouk asked, rather confused and a little shocked at my outburst.
‘Oh, I don’t have time to explain to you about her. You know what? It IS my fault, I shouldn’t have answered the boys questions from the beginning, I should have just said ‘go ask Derick’. I don’t really care about the packing and the dishes either, I think that’s just the Doxy talking. Damn bloody pills. But I tell you what they had better start thinking for themselves because I am DONE. I am too tired, too emotional and I have to sleep on a bloody fucking rock underneath a giant nest containing a stupid amount of birds filled with shit. And you know what? I am going to have to explain to the kids on the last trip that I am not pregnant to a Zimbawean.’
‘What?!’ I had confused her completely by this stage and I could see her inching away from me, probably to inform Derick that I had gone delusional.
‘Oh, never mind. Long story, but thanks for listening I feel much better now, I just needed to vent. I never make any sense and I never really mean what I say.’ She burst out laughing. Every girl needs a rant.

But I was serious about thinking for everyone else. Left alone, I am sure they would be able to cope. In my tent I could hear them asking Derick where everything went in the truck. After what seemed like forever, the questions stopped. Turning off my torch, tucked in my sleeping bag, I heard a rustle outside my tent.
‘Pst, Bek?’ Huh? ‘Pst Bek?’
‘Yes, Harald?’ I answered.
‘What time are we leaving tomorrow?’ For Fuck’s Sake!!
‘Derick wants to be at the gate at 10 to 6am so we’re at the head of the queue to get out.’ I answered.
‘Oh,’ there was a pause but no retreating footsteps.
‘Set your alarm for five twenty, that will give you time to go to the toilet, drop your tent and packed into the truck.’
‘Oh, Okay, thanks! Night.’ And only then did I hear footsteps rustle back into the grass. I stifled some more profanity and curled up on my rock to go to sleep.

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Photos

Desert Elephant
A rare sight - the Namibian Desert Elephant, but where is the desert?

Desert Elephant
Come closer.... I don't have that much zoom.

Giant Social Weaver's Nest
'..and I have to sleep on a rock underneath a giant nest containing a stupid amount of birds filled with shit. '

Springbokkies...
Don't make me stop for every springbok

Springbok
Okay, just one...

Gemsbok
The National Bokkie of Namibia.... my zoom sucks

Zebra
How do you tell the difference between a male zebra and a female.... look underneath...!

Giraffe Drinking
A little awkward?

Wildebeasts
Lost his herd

Black Backed Jackal
Poor fella, blinded by half a dozen digital flashes.