MUGGED IN NAM

IN JULIA'S WORDS

22 January

Katima Mulilo, Caprivi Strip, Namibia: HO HO HO (now slap a sticky thigh in hilarity) H O T, and HE HE HE (now slap the other one) H E A T. Hits me so hard, all I can do is meekly laugh, at this unfunny, beyond the pale, muggy benoud.

We were standing on baked, cooking bricks that surrounded the blue, cooling-cool pool, having just dipped in, so hot that steam came off us when first we plunged in, when I said to Rehana, “I wish for a huge storm – when we’re in our tent at bedtime – the kind of storm that makes you think you imminently face maiming or death, but then the wild thing passes and you’re still okay.”

 “Eahiiiiiaaaa,” replied Rehana, not listening as she slid through the fine becooling aqua-blue water.

This is the pool at the Protea Hotel, no less, which remarkably offers comfortable camping on the banks of the Zambezi river. 

The view from our tent

It’s all starting to feel very South African again – sweetly because we’ve missed what we’re used to, and not-so-sweetly because the yucky limitations of what we’ve been so used to are once again evident. 
Like the décor – whyyyyy? Who came up with the interior design formula for such places that’s so unbearably fusty, uber-naff “Afri-ethno”? Oh yes. Those people. The ones who know best what Mavis and Mike Middle like, give it to them slick and proper, and rule the world because they make pots of money doing it. Sigh. And why the moskos, why?

But back to our damn sticky day. There were sweaty potholed roads through Zambian Greenland, then a sweaty two border posts (but both fairly hassle-free) and then selecting the most shady spot possible on the stretching green grass, right on the Zambezi, on Protea’s very good camping ground. 

So thus refreshed by our dip in the pool, bumping again into our lovely Swiss friends in the Combi, we went through what is now our thought-free drill of setting up our camp: I climb on the roof, hand Rehana a gas cylinder, undo the tent’s covering and then heave it, with Rehana helping at ground zero, until it’s its wonderful Swiss chalet self.
Then we stretch out the awning, unpack table and chairs – all the while witnessing with some trepidation and some slight awe the rumbling and grumpy black clouds of a storm approaching.

As it arrives, I light a cigarette, thinking I will watch the ruckus under the protection of the awning. What a joker! I manage one drag before it becomes quite evident that this isn't so much as storm as a !*!#!^! STORM!*!#!^!
The blend of a thrashing wind, roaring sky and crashing rain sends the table and chairs flying, the awning collapses, and I swiftly retreat with Rehana and my sodden cigarette to drip on the front seats of the car. 

Just a bit later, I decide to relocate to the nearby shelter of the ablutions (such an awful prison-sounding word. This one was more like a lav), the better to see for myself how the tent is faring being rippedslappedthrashed as it is. 
It all looked very touch and go - but then the storm rushed off across the river to tear apart the village there, and miraculously all the bits on the tent held. Rehana, who had remained in the car, later told me it felt as if BRC was being lifted off the ground.

The moral of this story, of course: be careful what you wish for.

Leaving Katima, I began to feel the tell-tale signs of getting sick: the sick of the sinus kind, when chunks and shards seem to occupy what should be clear spaces in my face.
Just to be sure, I did a malaria test, but it was negative (and I was suffering none of the headaches or fever that comes with that). A cold/sinus thing the erupting snots must have been.

And so the lovely Divundu, here on the Okavango River, which floats by like greasy French Onion Soup of the most sedate kind, became my place to lie down to sneeze and wheeze. 
It’s really crap having a cold in such a hot place, but there’s also something tremendous about lying in our stuffy tent feeling blahed with a view of tangled trees through the green gauze, and nothing to do other than to lie around in a half-daze waiting to get better.

Lying up in the branches with the snots and the birdies

Our campsite on the banks of the Okavango River

Best is, in that demi-coma of heat and cottonwoolhead, listening to the birds – the squawk, shriek, coo, chatter, warble, and occasional fish eagle’s outrage, all mixed up  to form an audible skynet over me.
In my half-sleep each of their sounds acquired a colour – a colour from the palate of all the birds around this place, a slash of bright red, gleam of serious yellow, flash of burnt orange, iridescent blue, squirt of lime, every shade of grey. So it seemed as if the skynet was embroidered in a fantastic multicolour display, an incredible dreamweaver.

Mine was an odd dreamweaver, though. If its work was to filter dreams, somehow one starring me as an undercover diver on behalf of some clandestine force, slipped through. A Purdy look-alike was just telling me to take off my sweater in favour of a black bodysuit (ooh, I was thinking) before I got back in the night water with my diving gear to tackle the foe, when a bigger birdy outburst woke me…

Two-and-a-half days of lying down, and I’m as right as rain. The rain this place isn’t getting with the drought it’s going through – apparently in some areas of Namibia for the past four years. 
Reports say somewhere between 400 000 and 800 000 have hit the towns seeking food because of the drought. Other reports are of cholera epidemics in places where boreholes have dried up and shit is mixed up in the puddles people are resorting to drinking.

Last night a big storm harried again our tent (not anywhere near as spiteful as the Katima Wild Thing), so perhaps the rainy season's easing. Inshallah, and the rain goddesses…