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Published: February 4th 2008
Africa
Our travel companions Hello All
Corinne and I have had an unfortunate incident which I will summarise here. During our tour with Wild Dog Safaris in Namibia we were camping at the Okajima/Africat complex about 200kms north of the capital of Windhoek.
At 3am local time on the 2nd of February our camp was attacked. A group of men with guns and knives slashed our tents with knives and then pulled all of the 9 people in our group and the 3 guides from our tents and dragged us into the middle of the camp and pushed us to the ground, a few of us including me were punched and fell and had minor injuries like cut feet. A gunshot was fired in the air. Most of us were half naked and dazed and lights were shined in our eyes we were given instructions in bad english. Our attackers were black and spoke an African language between themselves but we couldn’t see any details in the dark and they told us not to look at them. We were robbed of just about everything at gunpoint, money passports, camera gear clothing etc, even took peoples wedding rings. They also ransacked our tents and went through stuff on the tour truck.
They loaded the Wild Dog truck with all our gear while we lay face down in a pile on the ground, everyone was terrified they would execute us when finished. They started binding us up but decided they didn’t want to waste the time. Then they must have all jumped in our Wild Dog truck and left. They had terrorized us for about 25mins all up. Have to say it was the most frightening experience of my life.
As the truck pulled out of the campsite Corinne sprang up to run to the main lodge (several kms away) to sound the alarm. I quickly pulled her back down as I was not sure all the attackers had left the area. After waiting and checking the area we started checking everyone. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. Corinne found her mobile phone in our tent, most of the phones had been taken and with the head guide they rang the owner of Wild Dogs to sound the alarm. We huddled together and tried to stop shaking surprised we were actually still alive and started a fire to keep warm as it was dark and cold and most of us had lost our clothes. After about 25mins a vehicle arrived from the lodge with two armed men.
Basically when the sun came up they moved us to the main lodge and the police arrived and took our statements. The lodge people looked after us and accommodated and fed us as none of us had money or passports etc. The lodge is run by Afrikaaners and they were pissed that their land had been invaded and guests had been attacked. They set about tracking our attackers. If they had caught them I am sure the Afrikaaners would have shot them.
The trackers from the lodge found the Wild dog truck abandon and we later recovered some possessions, just mostly some clothes and things our attackers didn’t want, but they carried the rest of our gear to the main road and were picked up by another vehicle and escaped. The police responded with road blocks and seemed to move fairly quickly given the hour and the remoteness of the location but they have not caught them as yet and as several days have now passed I am not hopeful of getting any of our stuff back.
The lodge people looked after us for that and put us up at their exclusive Villa property.
Wild Dog brought us back to Windhoek the following day. Corinne and I have lost all our money we brought for our 7 week Africa holiday, our credit and cash cards, our passports and visas, all my camera equipment, laptop etc. I lost all my photos from the first four days of our trip. Fortunately we have most of our clothes but that is not much consolation.
Liz from Wild Dogs Safaris has given us some money so we can eat for the next few days. Our parents have helped out canceling stolen cards etc and paying for our accommodation here in Windhoek. The staff here were we are staying have been very understanding.
Corinne is pretty traumatized by the whole event as you could imagine. The whole episode was terrifying for everyone involved. It is kind of unreal that it has happened to us.
We decided to try and get back to Australia as soon as possible. This has proved more difficult than one would expect. There is no Australian consulate in Namibia. We have to get a Commonwealth travel document from the Namibian government to leave Namibia, then we have to get a VISA from the South African consulate here in Windhoek to enter South Africa and then once in Joburg we need to get to Pretoria to get an emergency Australian passport that will supposedly allow us to make it home. We are still waiting to get a police report so we can get these travel documents, the police have it but refuse to release it, the red tape is very frustrating and the African officials are difficult to deal with. We have spent hundreds of dollars on phone calls and have the Australian consulate in South Africa assisting us. Until we get the documents we cannot arrange flights. All extremely frustrating on top of the trauma we have all ready gone through.
Today our story made the front page of the “The Namibian” paper.
So basically I am devastated at this point after planning the trip for so long and so carefully. We have been extremely unlucky. That lodge we were staying at has operated for 16 years and has never had an armed attack like that before. Namibia as a whole is considered a relatively safe place to visit.
Anyway we are alive and hope to be back in Australia by Friday though it could be longer depending on how much more we get dicked around by officaldom.
Brett and Corinne
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Raylene Varone
non-member comment
Hi, I found the link from the paper you mentioned. http://www.namibian.com.na/ Hope to see you on Friday, take care and get some sleep. xx