What's with the Bratwurst?

WHAT’S WITH THE BRATWURST?

            We finally got a chance to visit Namibia, the country to the west of Botswana that extends all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. In some ways it resembles Botswana (the Kalahari Desert extends into Namibia), but in more ways Namibia is nothing like Botswana: the culture, the history and much of the topography have little in common. Why is that?

            Much of it has to do with history. In the nineteenth century, Germany decided to colonize the area, naming it German South-West Africa. It was not a particularly pleasant colonial period for the native peoples, and one tribe – the Hereros – suffered the loss of tens of thousands from their ranks. The Germans lost the territory after World War I, and the land became a protectorate of South Africa. That meant the swapping of one colonial power for another, and the introduction of Afrikaans as well as German as colonial languages. Not until 1990, after an armed struggle, did South Africa give up, and the resulting nation was named Namibia (after the Namib Desert, which I will talk about later).

            Since 1990, Namibia has been a relatively successful country. It enjoys a number of investments from South Africa and Europe (especially Germany). Mining is a big money maker. Tourism is big as well, especially along the coast. But there is a constant reminder that Namibia had to fight for its independence, and even today there are great income disparities.

            We spent a couple of days in the capital, Windhoek. It is a small but modern African city, with many government, business and shopping activities. We toured the newly opened Namibia Independence Museum, which was built by a North Korean contractor. With its oversized statues and tributes to heroic fresh-faced revolutionaries, it looks like something right out of Pyongyang.

 

The Namibia Independence Museum built in Dear Leader style

            After that, we traveled to the coast for a few days with friends of ours. We stayed in Swakopmund, an old colonial town that looks like it could have been snatched right out of Germany. Streets are named “strasse”, beer halls sell bratwurst and weissbier, and thousands of newly built second homes house Germans looking for an off-season beach destination.

 

Am I lost? Is this Swakopmund or Dortmund?

            From there, we headed about 50 km south to Walvis Bay, a large container port. We hired a driver and Land Rover to take us into the nearby sand dunes of the Namib Desert, which extends along much of the length of Namibia’s coast. It is one of the driest areas on earth, and many plants depend upon fog to get water. Springboks leap across the waste land in search of food. The dune tour was a bit nerve wracking. The dunes are not built up from beach sand, but rather get blown there from the riverbed of the Orange River in South Africa. The Land Rover took us up and down steep slopes of golden sand, and we also got a chance to do a bit of climbing ourselves. If we were more adventurous, we could have gone paragliding off dune cliffs.

 

Stephanie thinks that this is just going to be another day at the beach...
           

Well, she's got another think coming.

On another day, we drove along inland parts of the Namib Desert. There, we encountered desolate moonscapes inhabited by a few lichens and a prehistoric looking leafy ground plant named Welwitschia. There were also uranium mines nearby.

 

This is Welwitschia; it is related to conifer trees.

            Some tourists spend weeks in the Namib Desert enjoying all sorts of activities. It is a very different feel from other tourism in southern Africa, which is based on safari visits to parks featuring wild animals. We liked it because of that: it was very much unlike our other experiences in this part of the world.