(Mokoro trip on the river: the poler is using the old-school standing style but the overlanders just want to get the hell away from a pod of hippos, Okavango River, Namibia)

We take the de rigueur Okavango mokoro trip this morning with the British overlander group which definitely adds to the fun. Our guide Cosmo, a priest in training who has returned to his village, relates the dark tale of the "Nearby" Lodge (named after the children of the original owner). According to our guide -- the lodge keeper was a suicide after catching his wife in flagrante delicto. This is the introductory portion of our tour of local custom and superstition – much of which seems to involve the theft or seduction of married women. For instance: the placement of a certain species of bird’s legs on their hearth will cause the separation of a married couple. This is quite interesting – a much better tour than I ever imagined. Cosmo takes us to a Hambukushu village where the local agricultural practices are explained and how this all relates to the way the structures are arranged in a kraal. Fences are for keeping animals (including domestic) out of the food stored inside and the mahangu (pearl millet) plot. Also answered is how ownership of individual cows and goats is determined as the small individual herds commingle on the shoulders of the roads and the open veldt – land which turns out to be the tribal grazing commons.

(How this system of agriculture works: inside a thatched roof granary in a Hambukushu kraal, Okavango River, Namibia)

Our mokoro oarsmen and polers laughing for much of the journey (no doubt at us tourists and possibly? Cosmo?). We pass a pod of hippos who assign two large sentries to chase us away. The sentries accomplish this in short order – a mokoro is no match for a hippo being much bigger and much faster than these traditional dugouts. Several in the group subsequently inquire if hippos can be eliminated from the rest of the venue but Cosmo is nonplussed and says simply that there are more on the river ahead and thus unavoidable. Well – they are dangerous and all of this is not making the other person in my mokoro any more comfortable. These dugouts are tippy and he is very, very large. (I fell asleep – better here in the mokoro than behind the wheel of the Hilux.)

(Just like home in the American South: an ancient Mercury Comet "up on blocks" near a Hambukushu village, Okavango River, Namibia)

After the mokoro trip, we set out for the Caprivi Strip and Katima Mulilo having packed earlier, settled our account and said farewell to Beth Phillips and her family.

The B8 is notable here for its loneliness and its numerous Elephant Warning signs. Will voices suspicions of an old VW Jetta with tinted windows that sticks with us for many kilometers. We are checked at the various police roadblocks but the Jetta’s license plates do not match familiar Namibian labeling schemes (but what-the-hell-it’s-Africa) and maybe because we border Angola and Zambia and Botswana here in this part of Namibia. We are also not that far from Zimbabwe.

Suddenly the “Low Fuel” indicator lights up on our gauge and we are now focused on what our GPS calculates is our remaining distance to a fuel station. We cut our speed to slow consumption but when we refuel in Katima it suddenly jumps to “Full” without taking the expected amount of fuel. Previously we had not let it drop below “One Quarter” so we note this idiosyncrasy in our truck and this is a minor thing. Best of all we hear a strange unearthly music from a nearby car, the rhythmic tune with drums and flute built around the sound of a baby crying – very compelling. We ask the fuel station attendants about the tune and they say only that it is “Zambian". The car playing it pulled away before we could ask but it must be a hit because we hear it floating in the air in Katima again and again. We find the Caprivi River Lodge just at dark -- once again the GPS is very useful -- especially in the last kilometer or two.

Labels: Katima Mulilo, Ngepi Camp

¶ 9:58 PM