We have finally reached South Africa. (Late March)

We pulled into South Africa on Monday evening of this week. My parents arrive in four days. The team will split up for a few weeks of work/activity/family holiday and then reconvene in Cape Town for a drive up the coast via Swaziland to Mozambique.

More details and a review of the Human Rights Film Festival of Botswana coming shortly.
* posted by Nathaniel at 5:38 AM  —  1 comments

More of Botswana (March 2006)

We'll be staying in Gaborone for a few extra days because a human rights film festival is beginning tonight that screens previously unreleased movies from Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, etc. It is an excellent opportunity; I'll probly change the tune of the blog for an entry or two in order to review the films and the festival.

Also, Mike and I attended an "interfaith" forum on how faith based organizations can better respond to HIV/AIDS. We have follow up meetings today with a high profile minister and the fledglingly local chapter of BONERELA, an association of religious leaders living with or personally affected by HIV.

For those of you who do not know, Botswana has the second highest HIV infection rate in the world--pushing 40%. Only Swaziland has surpassed that unfortunate figure. Regardless, the city looks normal and healthy and populace--though my own age group seems somewhat under represented.
* posted by Nathaniel at 2:30 AM  —  0 comments

From Namibia to Botswana (Early March 2006)

On Monday morning, I set off with Mike to interview The Rainbow Project, an association for Namibia's lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people and Sean set off to address the growing problem of our car's pathetic and increasingly inaudible sound system. The interview went exceptionally well and The Rainbow Project totally impressed both Mike and I with the scope of its mission and the skill of its staff. Sean found a new radio for just over ten American dollars and a set of cheap tweeters; he then began "installing" them in the parking area of our hotel. His botched attempt to pimp our ride lasted for two days, necessitated the help of a passing electrician and resulted in the complete failure of our power window system-a major security problem considering that the driver’s side window was stuck down.

In truth, every time there was a further delay with the vehicle, on balance, I was pleased. Windhoek, its options, the atmosphere of our hotel, the growing number of friendships that we made there, the relative affordability of things and my growing sense of comfort enabled me to learn about Sean's electrical complications with a non-concern that bordered on contentment. Additionally, it always becomes easier for me to write and be productive after the hectic effects of rapid travel have been allowed to wear off-when I start to feel at home.

But as Thursday rolled around, I remembered that I have historically been the person who bears the unspoken responsibility of shoving our team out of ruts, of dislodging us from comfortable places-I also remembered that Mike, despite his dependability and strong work ethic, responds to agreeable circumstances by growing inert. It was not my pleasure to ruin a lovely morning by urging my teammates to roll their roots up and pack the car. Whenever their own attachment to Windhoek rendered them inactive or, in Tuuli's case, when an inability to believe that the rest of us would actually depart made her reluctant to begin packing, I felt a strong gravitational pull emanating from my bed. Our 10am appointment with an electrician named Alfie contributed the time pressure that made our departure possible.

The next morning, we were crawling out of drenched tents in a Botswana thorn patch, looking for proof that any "screaming animals" had been "near our tents." Evidence was lacking, obliterated by the heavy rains. We set out through the drab and unspectacular flatness of the grassy Kalahari for Botswana's capital, Gabarone. We stopped for lunch at a town called Kang. At the concrete "liquor restaurant" there were a handful of young teenage girls stumbling drunkenly to the amazingly loud music of the store's massive speakers-they knew every single word to every single song and mouthed them passionately.

The counter tender had to lower the music for each of our interchanges, which drew irritated looks from the men, drunk on the concrete benches. For less than five dollars we all ate fried chicken, Russians (sausages) and chips. We were all smiling. It felt obvious that we had returned to Africa. In hindsight, it seems that we were nearly bewitched by the shopping malls, chain restaurants and middle America feel of Namibia, that we were perhaps a few days away from being transformed into pigs. In our own ways, all of us expressed a gladness at returning to an environment that springs naturally from its black African inhabitants.

We continued driving and then snapped our alternator belt. This should not have happened to us twice in the last three thousand miles. The spare did not fit and without the alternator belt, the fan belt would not rotate. Our car began overheating within minutes. Thankfully, we were near a town: Mabutsane, into which we rolled looking for Stefan, who we were told to seek for assistance. He had three massive truck belts and a shop otherwise full of edible provisions; we were probably directed to him because he is white. That was Friday. It is Monday morning and I am still sitting in front of his shop, not unhappily.
* posted by Nathaniel at 2:32 AM  —  1 comments

Delays and Adaptations

Angola was cruelest to our brake system and suspension. One of our brake disks broke completely from its housing and fused itself to the pads; the other is worn thin past usefulness. With minimal assistance from a mechanic at the only shop in white Windhoek who was willing-after emotional blackmail about hospitality and the reputation of white Namibians-to allow our car to be so much as parked on the premises, we completely dismantled and removed our rear braking system, which involved cutting and stopping lines for brake fluid, laboring for seven hours under the car and duct taping the dangling cables to the undercarriage. With new front brake pads-a much easier fix-we set out with the intention of soaking up some of Namibia's famous natural beauty.

The roads are interminable; Namibia is huge. At the end of our travels we found more ghost towns cringing away from lively but somewhat menacing townships. We found a fish tank called the National Aquarium, some average beaches and busloads of elderly tourists. The natural beauty deserves all of this attention; but the scramble for photographs and the hustling of list checking visitors diminishes the atmosphere.

On our way back from the largest sand dune in Africa, which plunges down towards a muddy salt lake in the midst of dunes that look significantly larger, our car made an unfriendly noise and began reeking of burnt rubber. We had demolished a shock-the same shock that we replaced in Douala, which, as it turns out, had already been much welded and much abused. Without the shock, the car simply rests on its rear tire, chewing the tread away with the rough degraded metal of the wheel well. Removing the shock was difficult. There was only space for one eighth of a wrench revolution where the shock's rusty, dusty, bending screws attached themselves to the narrow space beneath the rear windshield.

Some kindly local truck drivers (white guys who pushed around their San-bushman-employee in a way that did not leave him much of the dignity he deserved for being twenty years older than them) gave Sean and Tuuli a ride back to the tiny outpost of Solitaire where they were supposed to present our wounded component to a skillful welder. This man drew our attention to the degraded quality of our shock and reluctantly performed a quick fix that he intended us to use only for returning to Solitaire (wrong direction) where we were expected to wait and send for help.

After installing his handiwork, Sean and I drove cautiously back to town, escorted by a friend whose acquaintance we initially made in Windhoek. On the way we tagged a rabbit and threw it in a plastic bag-having badly missed the taste of bush meat and having failed in our illegal attempts to hunt ostriches with the bow and arrows given us by Mike from Angola. The following morning, full of confidence in the dodgy shock and empty of desire to wait in a town that consisted of a petrol station and a truck stop, Sean and I dumped Mike and Tuuli with much of our baggage and set out, gingerly, with the car-hoping that Mike and Tuuli would be able to hitch a ride a few hours later and see whether or not we were stranded on the road.

One third of the way across the scarcely populated and mountainous desert, the shock gave way on the first slanted hill that pushed the weight of our car onto the weakness of the shock. It was 11am and extremely hot. We constructed a shade shelter out of a fraying blue tarp, fuel bidons and bungee cords. Then we set about removing the shock for a second time. Since the metal housing of the shock had almost ripped itself completely free from the solid body of the car, it was considerably easier. We twisted and turned the casing until the whole piece fell out—no need to unscrew the miserable bolts.

We expected to give Tuuli and Mike the dozen or so pieces of scrap metal that previously constituted our rear suspension with instructions to have bars bolted all around the severed frame and to return with a new shock, a few new spanners and the power tool necessary to bolt the thing back together. At 3pm Mike called to announce that he and Tuuli had already arrived in Windhoek, by way of a road that was previously unknown to us. Sean and I had seen at most four or five cars-one of which, piloted by a German couple, was kind enough to offer us two frosty cans of beer, bless them-and were not optimistic about our options for getting the wreckage safely into their hands. However, an employee of a private telecommunications company agreed to deliver our package to our friends on the following morning.

Sean and I waited. We threw stones into a cup as a drinking game of sorts, we played machete beer can baseball, we speculated about leopards and fried our road kill rabbit, eating the whole creature over the course of the late afternoon. We thought about trying to fix our miserable stereo system but were overwhelmed by heat and the unwelcome thought that since the following day was Friday it would be difficult to organize our rescue and we would probably be camped beside the Stingray for several days with an unexciting selection of canned goods to consume.

The following day news of our options began to arrive. Sean and I were adamantly opposed to tow-trucks and fairly convinced that we could do the work ourselves-now that we have special workman's outfits, a spattering of experience and a dawning awareness of how easy the work was that we paid to have done to our cars in the past, we are attracted to the underside of the vehicle and are becoming territorial. However, our idea of bolting with power tools was roundly denounced by every professional with whom Mike and Tuuli spoke and it became apparent that it would be necessary to send for a welder. While Sean and I read Knut Hamsun, Nietzsche and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, occasionally passing out in the obnoxious dry heat of the Namib desert and taking turns asking passing vehicles for water, Tuuli made the acquaintance of our deliverers.

She arrived, intending to surprise us, with a cackling German who is a welder and car mechanic by profession. He and some rented welding tanks were driven three dusty hours to our breakdown by Eddie, "Man of Action" who spoke ceaselessly about the opinions that he formed while fighting for the independence of Namibia over the course of many, many years. Eddie was confrontational about our nationality and informed us that, with his tactics, he could easily kill us (us as individuals and representatives of the American military machine, for which he prophesied many dooms). He also told us that Americans do not smile from the bottom of their hearts and that they are liars; he let Sean and I know that he would never confide to us any information about his country and though we had shared our water and food with him upon arrival, he would not share what he pushily extracted from the few cars that passed us while his companion yelled "attack!" at our car and nearly ignited our gas tank. Eddie did not listen to anything that I said to him and continued his aggressive and smirky behavior; to avoid ruining the atmosphere I ignored him and attempted to help the German by holding glowing metal plates beneath his torch or fetching water when he lit something on fire. I made sure that I would be in the company of the welder for the drive back, which Sean and Tuuli, whose patience was greater than mine, were wonderful enough to accept the interminable self-important rant of our expensive chauffeur. (Incidentally, I have no problem with Eddie's politics, especially considering that the C.I.A. deliberately destabilized fledgling countries to which Eddie felt allied during the nonsense of the cold war and American armed and trained troops routinely tried to kill him and succeeded in killing many of his brothers in arms. I simply resent his inability to draw distinctions between the Americans that fill with pride at the notion of ruining Angola or "beating the communists" and those of us who fill with shame.)

I provided the welder with a pint of pastis to satisfy his thirst-after he demolished a quart of rum-and he drank the bottle dry while shouting over the gravelly road about how he "comes from Rommel." At the height of his gaiety he told me of the time that he and two German friends had netted the alpha male baboon of a troop in South Africa for the sole purpose of spray painting it red. He said the others would not recognize its scent and it would be compelled to fight its way back to the top. He did not have photographs of the fighting but he said there was one shot of the beautiful savanna a troop of baboons and one shining red monkey. He was laughing so hard that I scarcely understood him when he shouted, "It is the best picture evAH!" I will try to get my hands on this work of art and post it to our gallery.

Holger told a long string of stories about fugitives from the law, spying and nuclear technology, dodgy work permits, a Bordello in Windhoek, the impossibility of marriage for a man of his character, the impending collapse of South Africa, the popular joke about having sex with Robert Mugabe's wife and how to escape from Communist East Germany. I also learned how to talk about killing rabbits in German-a language that I have mostly forgotten.

The drive back opened new cracks in the welding job-I was being urged to "attack!" the winding mountain pass as darkness fell. These fissures were fixed up the following morning along with the parallel damage to the other side of the car. The welder is opening a technical school in Windhoek-along with Eddie "man of action", who is happy to use his government connections to advance this particular business (and to enlarge his collection of vehicles, domiciles and showy clothing)-and was glad for the opportunity to help. His generosity and thorough work are the only reason that Sean and I are not currently eating baked beans and begging for water in the abandoned desert dust beside our damaged car.

To improve the patchwork nature of our repairs it will be necessary to spend still more time in Windhoek, about which none of us are disappointed. If this random sickness that woke me up at 5am this morning does not decommission me for the beginning of the work week, I should have the opportunity to meet with an unusual organization that will round out our treatment of Namibia's situation with regards to the AIDS epidemic-it is delightful to conduct research in our native tongue with skillful speakers.

Also, because I was in the middle of the desert with no credit on my cell phone, I was unable to wish my sister her quarter century birthday in a warm and timely fashion. Happy Birthday Annaliese~! I hope it was memorable. Thankfully, I will be seeing her and the rest of my nuclear family during the first week of April in South Africa-thanks to the generosity of family friends who fly frequently, to whom I extend my own heartfelt thanks.

That means, incidentally, that if any of my indie rock acquaintances wish to send audio cassettes (yes, tapes) of music to freshen up the soundtrack of our traveling, they need only to ask me for my parent's address. I am fiending for Possum Dixon, the Violent Femmes, Lou Reed, early Silkworm, Slick Rick, the new Strokes and Franz Ferdinand albums, Arrested Development, Frank Zappa, DJ Shadow, early Flaming Lips, Mos Def's first album, Helium, Dirty Three, Joe Tex, Good Blues Music and did Kriss Kristofferson only cut one album? Just a wish list. More credit to Ben Morgan, Alex Marchute and Will Schofield, who have kept me in the music that I love.
* posted by Nathaniel at 11:43 AM  —  1 comments

What's to like about Namibia? (Late February Early March 2006)

For the first time on this trip we found ourselves at a genuine hub for young and budget conscious travelers. At a place like this it always feels like a party. The short term visitors from Europe, the longer haul hitch-hikers, the itinerant odd job workers, local pick up artists, friends of the staff and those who enjoy the company of travelers congregate around the bar, the swimming pool, the public kitchen and the billiard table, keeping things lively. The turn over ensures that someone has always just arrived with interest or information. This was an enjoyable though disorienting place to be stranded whilst the Stingray proved itself unwelcome and stigmatized as an "import" (as if there is a single vehicle manufactured in Namibia).

Many of our co-lodgers would be much more comfortable on ski slopes in Europe. They pay large amounts of money to ride on quad buggies around the dunes of the Namibian desert (South of Windhoek the country begins to resemble the Sahara; shortly we will be visiting the largest pile of sand in Africa) or to chase dolphins in speed boats. Others rent four by fours to be driven by affable and encyclopedic locals into scenic places where spots of obvious beauty receive the relentless short admiration of expensive camera equipment.

We began to enjoy Namibia when we started to take advantage of the network of friends provided by the impish, sociable, captivating and untiring bartender of the youth hostel, along with a few of her select patrons. It was refreshing to meet with Namibians and Namibian university students who actually know where the Gambia is, who can speak about politics and culture, who are in no hurry to travel to Western countries and who are not consistently discussing their suffering or our place in their satisfaction.

I can tolerate the affront of glitzy consumer culture when it is sufficiently populated with well educated, politically active and independent people. The black Namibians who can afford to be most isolated and complacent seem, in many cases, to have retained awareness of their country’s struggle and of its place within the larger context of unfortunate people. That means they have the broadness of vision and the personal attachment to moving forward that is often lacking in other places developed to the same degree.

It will take a while before I figure out how to locate myself in this more complicated, more judgmental and less obviously needy sort of place. My initial adjustment has also been retarded by our reunion with the above mentioned Michael Breece, with whom I had much catching up to do

We readjusted our crampy vehicle, ditched a respectable amount of clothing, books and other equipment and earned a suitable amount of passenger seating. An analogous sort of reorganization has been underway within our group dynamic and with parallel success. I, personally, am delighted to have our ranks swollen by the Breece, who, at the time of our first meeting nearly three years ago, seemed likely to be my enemy. Breece and I became good friends during our final year in Gambia; he brings a stability and familiarity to this point in our trip that I am only now beginning to realize that we sorely needed. He has also attended and instigated a number of interviews within the last week while proving especially gifted at getting things that are stuck together (car parts, stackable cups, arguing people, etc.) well separated.
* posted by Nathaniel at 11:34 AM  —  0 comments

From Mine Fields to Strip Malls and Small Town America (Late February 2006)

I doubt that there is a border crossing anywhere on the entire continent of Africa more jarring than the one between Angola and Namibia. Most people who deal with culture shock when moving between first and developing world countries typically experience many hours of intervening luxurious though inconvenient air travel that numbs them and insulates them from the brute force of scenery change. Between Angola and Namibia is a rope with flags on it held by multilingual cops in poorly chosen camouflage.

The Angolan infrastructure is as degraded and unreliable as possible; the number of destroyed military vehicles rusting and acquiring spray paint by the roadside is difficult to estimate and the mine field markers are omnipresent. Trash strewn areas full of raggy children sprinting between ruined sputtering transport vans with junkyard toys must give home to 80% of the urban population. Namibia feels like a first world country. Instantly, the roads are flawless. Suddenly, there are western restaurants like KFC and Wimpy Burger, tucked beside Shoprite or Woolworths. Street vendors disappear: I can no longer find an instant shoe repairman, purchase rip off sunglasses or trick sandals; there are no all night sticks of ready to eat grilled animal, no shacks for the tea pouring omelet men. Nobody is even having their hair braided on the street.

This makes me uncomfortable and less enthusiastic about continuing southward. It stopped feeling like Africa and the signs of unusually entrenched and defensive white land ownership makes even the roadside forbidding. Racism is much more obvious and we can no longer feel at ease wandering into black areas unguided or unjustified. There are tourists all over the white areas, often listening with dropping jaws to accounts of the savagery of black Africans or the robberies and violence suffered by visitors.

In the first town, at a somewhat costly establishment catering to backpackers, we spent two days washing every garment, sheet and tent accessory that we dragged with us across Angola. The only internet café in Tsumeb-a highly developed cookie cutter mining town-cost five American dollars for an hour and had a horrible connection speed. In the struggling and slandered, West and Central African countries we have never experienced so much difficulty finding an affordable connection.

Sean and I tried to see what was in the city at nighttime and became familiarized with the Namibian ghost town phenomenon, during which a handful of cranky establishment owners wait amongst their empty chairs for closing time to permit their disappearance by vehicle. Since we occasionally clapped eyes on young people emulating the pre Kanye West style of hip hop clothing, we asked one where people with energy went to drink at night time. When we arrived at his recommendation at perhaps 9pm that evening we heard a great deal of shouting from behind a barred gate under a "private bar" sign. We stood around looking confused until someone sidled up to the grating and asked if we’d like to drink. They let us in to the all black, football fixated, male dominated establishment and permitted us to purchase tasty Hansas. I sought orientation at the pool table while a series of people approached Sean to assure him that we were safe, to introduce him to the owner and the off duty policeman. They repetitively assured him of our safety, promising that they would not make problems. This welcome was a bit unsettling, as nobody has ever bothered drawing such immediate and intense attention to our color or well being.

A few weeks and a couple of towns later, it is evident that we had walked into the miniature township of Tsumeb. The concept of a township is not radically different from the idea of a ghetto-of either notorious variety of ghetto. They are almost entirely black. They are almost entirely poor and, originally at least, underprivileged people were expected to live or coerced into living within their boundaries. Also, most white and wealthy people are scared of them.

These lively and slightly more threatening areas are not on the map. After a few days of wandering around Windhoek's uncanny, rounded, pastel, fresh-faced, Indianapolis district for the well-heeled and visiting, I began to wonder where the black people lived. I had seen them in great numbers at "the black club" shortly after my arrival; but they weren't in evidence and I'd been almost everywhere in my guide book map during my interminable search for helpful car mechanics.

Nearly two million people live in Windhoek; but it felt like a city of two or three hundred thousand. People spoke of Katatura from time to time-usually when suggesting where we could have some of our low quality items fixed or replaced or when frightening new comers away from an ill-advised stroll. Katatura is the township of Windhoek. That is where African life continues in a recognizable way and it is not on my guide book's map of the city. It is not in any map of the city that I have found; neither are any of the townships of any of the other Namibian cities on the other maps. Guidebooks do not even reference them by name or suggest what could be found there.

There are predictable and defensible reasons for this; but it is creepy to suddenly emerge into what feels like an upper middle class white country after all that we have been through. I've started and destroyed a stack of blogs on the subject of our new situation and still have trouble finding a way to focus. If we stay within the campsite of this youth hostel in the nice part of town-the beautiful scenery loop-we could travel for the next three months without connecting to the enduring—though temporarily suppressed-real life of this continent. Thankfully, we can't really afford to stay within that segment of these countries. What causes confusion is that we can no longer just drive into the shadier parts of town and find a flop house motel, park our car and walk around. There is too much evidence of car jacking, mugging and other street crime.

We delighted, over the past eight months, in finding no evidence of white people or tourism for weeks or months at a stretch. We would reliably turn away from a bar or a restaurant or a hotel that was full of white faces. Now our guts flow in the other direction and the appearance of white faces on the street can easily feel like a reassurance of safety, like confirmation that we have walked in the right direction. I hate this.

When I try to write about my recent experiences—seeking mechanical help for a car, walking around the shopping malls of the first world, conversing with low budget travelers from all sorts of countries, discovering the difference between clubs for black people, clubs for coloreds (usually a Portuguese plus Bushman mixture that looks Latino), clubs for whites or clubs for everyone-I realize that I am still too unsettled by this obscene focus on color and by this obvious partitioning of cities to narrate events or discern my own point of view.

For nearly a week, I was sure that Namibia was a terrible foretaste of much of the Southern African region. I talked about turning around and driving back through Central Africa; I began to doubt our decision to linger for any length of time in this area. The idea of tacitly declaring a racial allegiance every time I walk through a door or enter a conversation began to nauseate me. But Namibia has been growing on us. We even talk about moving here. How did that happen?
* posted by Nathaniel at 11:23 AM  —  0 comments

Coming soon: A warm welcome to Michael the Breece.

Please keep your eyes peeled for the first contributions of new team member, Michael Breece who is a capable and efficient worker, a nascent specialist in the interests of African children, a charming and well groomed man and a good friend. Michael and I both taught in the Gambia and got to know one another there. For Christmas in Guinaeu Bissau, I gave him a package of m & m's. For spring break in Sierra Leone he gave me guidance and distracted a vicious mob so that I could escape. He will be stabilizing our harried trio and making it easier for us to get everything done. Welcome, the Breece.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:47 AM  —  0 comments

How Many Days Have We Spent in Angola?

Angola occurred in brief setting-determined episodes and distinctly memorable stretches of grievous road. Our relentless itinerary quickly made it difficult to remember which day was which and made it seem as if we had been in the country for ages. Anxiety about defaulting on our stingy fifteen day transit visa pervaded the slow going, car damaging days and propelled us to drive far later into the night than we ever enjoy. We woke with the sun, ate dinner's remains in the first hours of morning and drove in six or eight hour shifts, stopping, sometimes, to cook a quick lunch of canned meat, canned vegetables or some other unpleasant thing-we passed one affordable restaurant or food stall in the thousand and whatever grueling kilometers that separate the extreme northern border of Angola from the onset of suburbia, where Namibian self-containment begins.

Falling asleep was never a problem; the full moon was a blessing until it disappeared somewhere around Huambo, right about the time the roads decayed into the most appalling, chassis pummeling slippery stretches of earth that I've ever seen. The usual side-escape routes were fewer and harder to find on account of the abundant mine fields surrounding the gauntlet.

We were all torn between sporadic outbursts of bitter resentment towards those Angolans who possessed everything nice and insisted on charging the moon for it (hoteliers, restauranteers, shopkeepers, tire repairmen and profiteers) and the welcoming, gracious and colorblind people who accepted our sudden arrival on a nightly basis, or gave us roadside assistance and direction along the way. The time pressure and difficulty in communicating meaningfully with the Portuguese language kept our contact with Angola fairly skin deep; but the necessity of traversing the entire thing at least enabled us to witness which areas are well looked after and which areas deserve their reputation for natural beauty.

I recall, in perhaps slightly jumbled sequence: the village of exceptional palm wine, flatulent, space-invading children, gregarious elders, a chief's daughter named Fifi and an exhausting uphill kilometer walk from the pump; the three hut village of the nice blue tarp where they are unexcited to be given half a bottle of gin; the village of the random roadside Pygmies, exploded mustard jar and explanation of the Tsetse fly trap; the village by the river rapids after the creepy military outpost into which we should not have accidentally driven and also after the sealed mining community into which we were not welcomed; a night at a bar in a minefield where we waited for a costly ferry boat, watched Chinese movies and were allowed to camp indoors; a village in the high corn fields (lost by Dondo, after chickening out of bush camping, after checking for mines in the dark) where the Stingray was bathed in vegetable curry; a tiny village of woven straw mats, whispering children and the industrious man who chopped all the stumps down that might have caused us to stumble or puncture a tire-the same man dug an ample dike around my tent to protect it from the reliable nighttime rains; then, also, the village of the abandoned chief's compound where we were left in amazing solitude; a night under Mike's pick up truck on a wet blanket in the mud, shivering next to Sean in the high altitude chilling rains; and a final night in Mike's village in which resides only Mike and a handful of incurious drunken minions.

These places were separated by sections of road that live in my memory as distinct and hostile creatures. Sometimes muddy, surrounded by equatorial rain forest and full of painful and persistent tsetse flies, sometimes 33% tarred and 67% stricken by deep jagged potholes, slowing our progress so that tsetse flies could enjoy greater access to the vehicle-they are fast and durable; we smashed several of them two or three times only to catch them gnawing at the soles of our feet minutes later. Respite came with a smooth gravelly section along the coast heading to Luanda, though it filled our machine with dust and fooled us into believing that we had covered a healthy distance and put the real struggles behind us. Fully developed highways on either side of the capital further increased our hopes and set us up for the brutal sand paper for cars over which the Stingray could cripple step at 3km an hour.

When we hit the most degraded stretch in the center of the country, near the annihilated provincial capital of Huambo-where I saw war damage surpassing most things in Beirut, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau-we began to understand why the immigration officials near Luanda had told us that we would not be able to cross their country with the days remaining on our visas. On a daily basis we cramped up from the stress of jerking the steering wheel back and forth to dodge the fatal road pits and then my inflatable sleeping mat decided to spring an unlocatable slow leak that leaves me on solid ground every two hours or so. Each of the car's tires began to voice its own unique rebuke, we stripped the two front ones down to their dangling wires and discovered that we couldn't find spares anywhere. Only the promise of flawless Namibian roads and available parts made us comfortable driving the last two or three hundred kilometers badly under-prepared for serious tire damage.

As it turned out, we were able to cross the country in about ten days, thanks, predominantly, to several fourteen or fifteen hour drives and the helpful assistance of a truck driver who showed us a short cut near Ondjiva. We were already considering driving straight through the night and camping at the border when we were delayed for a day and a half by a friendly and hospitable black South African named Mike who wanted us to see and enjoy his adopted Angolan region.

No comments from anyone in a while?
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:18 AM  —  3 comments