Road Kill and the Road to Tsumkwe:
Monday, December 18, 2006
(Not Hansel and Gretel: that was our chalet -- this is a last fond look at the restaurant and bar at Roy's Camp, Namibia)
We leave the B8 for Tsumkwe – the tribal administrative center for the San people. Initially when the trip was planned, this plus its remoteness are the draw. Later Will becomes interested because he wants to look at the school. The San make up a significant percentage of his village and classroom. Tsumkwe is about a four hour drive (at our speed) from Roy’s. We cross the veterinary fence line (to control the movement of animals and therefore foot and mouth disease) and enter “eastern Bushmanland”. The road runs east as “straight as an arrow” with the only major features being two large dips in the road as we pass the turnoff for Kano Vlei. Before we reach the vet fence we see the entrance gates of the large cattle farms that characterize much of rural Namibia. Past the veterinary fence a national forest and the open Kalahari.
We arrive at Tsumkwe which is a desert crossroads settlement. We find the Tsumkwe Lodge http://www.namibiareservations.com/tsumkwelodgee.html in short order and are admitted by a young San employee at the gate and very quickly by Estelle Oosthuysen who owns and manages the Lodge with her husband Arno. Will’s temporary Namibian “citizenship” opens the door for us again. Arnot and Estelle are interested in him relocating to Tsumkwe and teaching at the school there. He has played with the idea a little because of his interest in the San but the distance to Tsumkwe is an insurmountable difficulty. It is U.S. government policy to forbid Peace Corps volunteers to own or operate motor vehicles in Namibia. And that would mandate a five hour hitchhike to Grootfontein – the closest market town. Arnot and Estelle also shop in Tsumeb – adding another hour to the journey. hitchhiking in Namibia actually means sitting for hours under a particular tree and waiting for rides to happen along. These typically are the kombis that operate as public transport (gypsy cabs) and which are in various states of repair but always driven at high speed on the tricky gravel roads. Single car accidents – rollovers – are all too common as drivers misjudge their speed and traction. Actual collisions exact a high toll too. Just the week before we drove the same route a terrible accident on the B8 to Rundu involving a heavily loaded kombi and an army truck towing a cargo trailer with a chain ended 17 lives.
Estelle calls the Head of Department for the satellite schools that are established in the San settlements that are outside of Tsumkwe. These schools include Grade 3 with the village school on Tsumkwe ending at Grade 9 – the exit point for most San learners here. We are taken on a tour of the village school by this young man who himself has risen further in the educational system (in terms of qualifications) than any other member of the San.
The Tsumkwe Self-Help Store, Tsumkwe, Namibia)
The San themselves, like many “aboriginal” people, are hammered by the impact of alcohol. This is a big part of why driving at night is unwise: people use the roads for pathways because it is easier to walk on the roadway – particularly if you are tipsy. Tsumkwe was an administrative and recruitment center during the Bush War (Namibia’s war for independence from SA control0. The South African Army used the San as scouts and trackers in their war against SWAPO. Grootfontein was the major staging area and air base for military operations in the area. We are very close (by air) to Angola where SWAPO based itself along with Cuban and Russian troops but in fact the entire area to the north saw military operations to a greater or lesser degree.
Secret base “Omega” is to the north (in the Caprivi) and the San scouts were billeted there in order to participate in the clandestine operations mounted against bases in Angola.
The San found themselves on the wrong side of this history – but the entire story of their contact with the outside has been tragic. So the war introduced a cash economy and further undermined their “hunter-gatherer” lifestyle. Our guide translates our apologies to the many people who want to sell us crafts when we return to our truck but their disappointment is a low point.
Another long war waged against the tide of inevitability and weight of logic. In the words of one of the veterans (we are beginning to meet and spend a lot of time with men like “K” in Alexandra Fuller’s Scribbling the Cat http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts-Literature/zimbabwe_2922.jsp) “We must have been crazy to think we could dominate a majority [of people] like that. It was doomed from the beginning.” There was universal conscription – the transformative impact for the men of military age reminds me of my own (South East Asia) and my father’s generation (World War II).
And so the social and cultural reverberations continue: forced migrations and continuing dislocation; life cheapened to nothingness; psychological scarring that will never really heal. And what is modern war of national liberation or the very latest imperial misadventure without a civilian population that suffers a disproportionate amount of the force delivered by modern weapons yet whose allegiance is the ultimate prize?
Once again we are treated to great hospitality by the Oosthuysens. We learn to our discomfort that they returned from vacation to the lodge to accommodate us (as once again we are the only guests). Estelle spends much time with us and recounts the story of the Laurence Marshall and his first expedition to the area. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/11/05/RVGPGLVUOS1.DTL&type=books
Estelle introduces us to Leon whose father worked with the Marshall family. Leon guides us to the giant baobob trees. The oldest, “The Grootboom”, has recently perished but there are others as huge. Leon himself typifying why the San fascinated the Marshall’s, indeed so many other outsiders who have encountered them. Leon is friendly, tolerant of us, taciturn but eloquent in his hand gestures to local “hikers”, pedestrians, and to direct me to the correct sand track toward the baobabs we visit.
(The Holboom(?): one of the giant baobabs we saw this day, south of Tsumkwe, Namibia)
(Massive survivor: baobab located south of Tsumkwe, Namibia)
(Will "chimping" with his camera: some welcome shade in a baobab tree south of Tsumkwe, Namibia)
Back to Estelle’s patient hospitality. She is a sort of model host in her beauty and intelligence. Arnot is now working on other lodge tasks leaving Estelle to the chore of teaching us from her great store of local history and ethnography in a voice and delicate accent I can still hear. So unexpected in such a remote location but someone who nevertheless is very much of this place. Will and Estelle discuss San learners – their difficulties with arithmetic possibly a result of the language not having a counting system above the number “4” (and 4 is expressed as the sum of 2 plus 2). Both note both their gifts as linguists and as artisans.
A horse belonging to our hosts spends the night quietly on the covered porch of our accommodations. Probably the safest way to stable the horse is not to confine it too closely (giving it the ability to avoid any hyenas that might sneak into the lodge compound at night). But this is a little mystery in a place that is at once comfortable but also not immediately understandable to us as tourists and outsiders.
(End of day: near Tsumkwe, Namibia)
Labels: Base Omega, Tsumkwe
