A Namibian Canvas

A NAMIBIAN CANVAS

Julia Stevens

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Copyright 2002-2016. Julia Stevens.

Smashwords Edition.

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ISBN 9780987002556

Published

by

Truth House Publishing

Randburg

South Africa

www.truth-house.com

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Writers and travellers are mesmerized alike

by knowing of their destinations.

Eudor Welty

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 - A Symphony of the Purest Silence

Chapter 2. Life in the Hochlands

Chapter 3. A Couple of Love Stories

Chapter 4. Windhoek Symphony Orchestra

Chapter 5. The Poisonous Shower

Chapter 6. Zebra for Dinner

Chapter 7. A Visit

Chapter 8. The Waterberg Plateau

Chapter 9. The Fire

Chapter 10. Under Thundery Skies

Chapter 11. Hitch-hiking Through the Desert

Chapter 12. The Luderitz Lot

Chapter 13. Goodbye to Alfred

Chapter 14. Nightmare of the Tarantula

Chapter 15. Living Next to a Uranium Mine

Chapter 16. Swakopmund, a Seaside Town

Chapter 17. The Elections

Chapter 18. Fishing For Romance

Chapter 19. Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Chapter 20. Return to Baumgartsbrunn

Chapter 21. Independence

Chapter 22. Ovamboland

Chapter 23. Across the Border Into Angola

Chapter 24. Alien Encounter

Chapter 25. Canvas of Kaokoland

Chapter 26. Caprivi Strip

Chapter 27. The Smoke That Thunders

Chapter 28. Adieu

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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CHAPTER 1

A Symphony of the Purest Silence

‘The rising sun makes no sound. As day breaks on the Great Sand Sea in the Namib Desert, there begins a symphony of the purest silence I’ve ever heard. The notes played out in hues and the rising sun plays its soft tones over the early morning dunes. At first the colour is imprecise, delicate. Suddenly, a line of crimson appears, a dramatic major motive lingers in the air. Then like the string section awakening, the lesser dunes pick up the theme and toss it back and forth, in swirls of deepening colour.’ * Freeman Patterson

SILENT! EMPTY!! THE BIGGEST SKY LINE I’VE EVER BEEN PRESENTED WITH. A big expansive canvas stretching out into the desert. These are the words I write eagerly in my diary. How do I convey the sheer scale of this place to everyone back home. I look forward to the year ahead in this wild desolate sun-baked place. I must remember to drink a lot. The climate is hot and dry and I love it. I love the wide-open spaces and the harsh landscape. I love the dramatic sunsets and the star-studded skies at night. I love the children in the farm school where I am placed.

We are placed on a farm outside Windhoek. That’s the capital of Namibia for those of you who are wondering. The farm is situated a half hour’s drive up into the highlands called the Khomas Hochlands. We, being Jessica, my allotted partner from Project Trust, and myself. All Project Trust volunteers are sent out in pairs and I have been placed with Jessica because of our musical abilities and previous experience living in Africa. Jessica is the brighter one out of our partnership and far more musically talented than myself. She also has the added advantage of playing a much smaller instrument which she is able to carry with her all around the world and regularly practise.

Phew, it survived the journey. No broken strings. The bridge is still in place. This dry atmosphere could be a problem. Do you think the wood will start cracking Julia?

My cello proves far too cumbersome to take with me, so when I play, which is rarely, I have to borrow a cello from a kind elderly gentleman in town. While Jessica is doing backward somersaults on the fingerboard of her violin (or viola when she can get her hands on one) I am scratching my way through awkward notes trying to make sense of the timing.

Jessica is well travelled, having lived in Romania and Ethiopia due to her father’s work for the British consulate. She has the good fortune to have everything in her favour, a public school education, intelligence, confidence and good looks. I’ve forgotten to mention Lotti. I think she should feature at this point, as she is a crucial part of our lives. Lotti is a stray German Baroness whom we found waiting for us on the farm when we arrived. She is also between school and higher education and has decided to contact family friends in Namibia and come over and see what she can put her hand to. She is a dancer by training and sets to work taking the children for jazz classes. I enjoy Lotti. She has a cute German accent and a Marilyn Munroe appearance. Jessica isn’t so hooked.

She’ll go bald before she is thirty if she doesn’t stop backcombing her hair and her eyes are sure to drop out with the amount of eyeliner she plasters on every morning!

Shhh … she’ll hear you. She’s next door

Lotti comes from a very distinguished family and oozes down-to-earth aristocracy, a good upbringing, wonderful manners, and a sense of destiny. She has a very pleasant nature and probably finds us slightly cynical. Her English is coming along well and we’ve taught her not to say … ‘I stand on blondes.’

Lotti, ‘I stand on blondes’ sounds painful. You mean … ‘I fancy blondes.’ The three of us live together. Our little stone cottage ‘Klippenhaus’ (Cliffhouse) is small and compact. Its sun-baked, bleached stone walls stay warm to the touch into the inky black star-studded nights. The air around the cottage shimmers in waves of oily summer humidity giving the place a look of a small ship floating in the sea. Spiky aromatic grass, like a worn blanket, lies over the dry dusty soil. Thick, tough thorn bushes and sharp edged stones. Snakes and lizards. All spread out under a wide clear sky that stretches forever. The canvas of Namibia is so large and uncluttered. Far, far, far away the desert sinks into the horizon under the ever-blue sky.

We are living in the bush. Our nearest neighbouring farm can’t be seen, lying a half hour’s drive away on the twisting dusty road that snakes its way for miles, up and down the Khomas Hochland highlands, in and out of the thorn scrub, giant grey boulders, and rough craggy peaks.

In the evening we hear jackals calling from over the ridge behind the tiny settlement of tin shacks where the farm workers live. In the soft early morning light touched with dew, we see the children walking along the line of land just below our cottage, carrying heavy pails of water back for cooking and washing.

In the afternoons Beethoven drifts down on the waves of cooling breeze, which punctuate the hot dry air surrounding our cottage. Our hosts live in the former farmhouse on the next ridge, a five minute walk across the valley. The main house nestles in the well-watered garden under big acacia thorn trees shading a stone courtyard. Fresh herbs hang drying from the tree branches outside the kitchen door.

Every evening a fresh steaming pail of creamy sweet milk is delivered from the dairy. An ordered vegetable patch hemmed in by wire fencing is also home to a handful of scruffy chickens. Our German hostess roots around lifting stones and weeds out of her neat rows, pausing to brush the stray wisps of white hair that fall into her beady piercing blue eyes, sunk like sparkling aquamarine gems in a tough leathery face. I admire and fear her, steely, thick skinned, a diligent farmer and tough businesswoman, a force of strength to be reckoned with.

A small precise bullet hole hangs like a portrait in the pane of glass of the guest bathroom window. A reminder of the ever-present dangers of the bush, a tribute to Mrs Blek’s rock hard stone paving rather than her shooting abilities! The story goes that Sam and Rachel, our predecessors had invited Mrs Bleks over for dinner. She turned up looking very angry and brandishing a shotgun. They immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion, thinking they had an angry German on their hands, bent on revenge. Their fears were allayed as she shouted out orders for a torch and ordered the cowering garden boy to aim a jet of water from his hose in the direction of an old flowerpot. A shadow moved; Mrs Bleks fired. The bullet ricocheted off the stone paving and through the shower window. A poisonous adder had been sunning itself on the warm stone slabs.

We have been warned about the wildlife and are getting a little bit paranoid. Yesterday, when the gardener turned the sprinkler on Jessica thought the hissing noise was a snake and ran shrieking into the house. Last night I heard a rustling in the leaves and convinced myself through that warped logic of fear that it was a leopard. It was only a small bird! We have been advised that a snake will hear you long before you see it and will disappear. Hence we have taken to stomping around in single file like flatfooted cave women in an attempt to advertise our presence.

I just hope none of them are deaf!

Or plain lazy. I was told the puff adder is so lethargic, it will bite the third person that steps on it.

Great, well I’m going in the middle then.

I have spotted a new type of insect that looks like a fuzzy fluff ball. I call it ‘fluff’ and think it the cutest thing on multiple legs. Unfortunately it doesn’t live long and is eaten by a lizard. The lizard has a strange habit of bouncing off the wall and landing at my feet, then scuttling off up the wall and repeating the whole process. Maybe it’s trying to tell me something!

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CHAPTER 2

Life in the Hochlands

I grew up naturally like the trees and the flowers that surrounded me. * Alberto Moravia– A tribute to Africa

We live like members off the cast of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ Everything is rosy and wholesome. Three young ladies and a little cottage in the bush. Klippenhaus was made out of stones gathered from the cliffs. Which cliffs we do not know. But the idea of living surrounded by walls of cliff is appealing. We’ve found a little nook over the front door in which to hide our key. One morning we leave it shining like a shaft of silver and return after school to find a bird has pasted a mud nest over our crack. It must have worked hard all day building its new home. I peer in the cool dark interior, the nest is empty, a smooth bowl of mud and saliva, our key sits enthroned on the rocky ledge, king of this little empty kingdom.

After long hot days of sunshine, the evenings are cold and frosty. It feels so luxurious to plump up the cushions and read for hours. Snuggling down into a feather duvet I am rocked to sleep by the sounds of Africa at night, an African lullaby.

We teach at the school every day and then drive home late afternoon in the back of the truck with our pail of fresh milk. The truck is referred to as a bakkie. It’s an Afrikaans expression and everyone uses it for their vehicles. A bakkie can be anything from a small pick-up truck to a big four-wheel drive van.

In the cool winter mornings during the first month of our stay we eat steaming hot bowls of porridge and cream laced with honey. We are self-contained and content in our stone cottage. We have no telephone with which to contact any of the neighbouring farms; our only means of communication is a transistor radio. From sunset until about 11pm our electricity comes from a generator that chugs in the field alongside us. During the week when we are teaching we live in a flat at the school, a place to sit down and prepare for lessons during the day away from the cottage. Mr Bleks drops us off in the morning and Alfred takes us home in the late afternoon after the dairy duties are complete.

Alfred tells us there are some bush paintings in the hills nearby. He says he’ll take us to see them one day. Alfred is the German farm manager, an old friend of the Bleks. He is in his sixties. Alfred lives in a cottage on the school grounds, a bachelor with a large, slobbering, angry dog called Andy.

In the flat there is a bed to rest on, it’s often so hot around mid-day that there’s no motivation for anything but a siesta. Every waking hour is filled with the noise of children. The only time I heard them go quiet was when we were introduced to them on our first day. We walked into the noisy dining hall, tin plates clattering and benches scraping. On seeing us the whole place fell silent, you could hear a pin drop. Two hundred eager faces lit up. Every head was turned to look at us. They took a minute to absorb the novelty of a new set of teachers and then the noise resumed.

At lunch we eat with them sitting on long hard wooden benches, clawing with greasy fingers at tough stringy meat caught between our teeth, getting used to the idea of no cutlery and scooping warm sticky mielie pap into a cupped hand. The children are from the different farms in the area. They are children of the workers. They come from an assortment of different tribes. The bushmen have small frames and delicate features. Their hands are tiny, half the size of everyone else’s. Their eyes are a haunting amber colour. I found a little Bush girl scratching in the dirt at the base of an acacia tree today - she was looking for edible roots and bulbs. In contrast the Damara and Herero kids have much larger frames, they are huge in comparison, with smooth ebony skin and wide generous faces. The ladies of the tribes are famous for their high-collared, starchy Victorian dresses under which they wear loads of petticoats, even in the scorching heat of summer. It’s a throw back from the days when missionaries persuaded them to cover their semi-nakedness with European dresses, totally unsuited to an African climate! Nama children have yellowy orange faces. The Basters are a mixed race; they live in their own separate colony in Rehoboth. They are a mix of European and African descent and there’s a lot of interbreeding amongst them. They have Mongaloid features, flattened noses and slanting eyes.

Late afternoons here are spent sitting around and chatting. The two main social spots are outside the headmaster’s house, where Mrs Hippondoka the headmaster’s wife sits resplendent in her Damara dress surrounded by friends and relatives. They sit and gossip while they cook, sew and style each other’s hair. The second social spot is by our flat. Under a tree is situated a wood fire that never dies out. It is stoked all day by whoever happens to be sitting by it. A black pot of tea usually sits on the fire and this is the gathering place of all the workers. I suppose socially the Hippondoka gathering is refined and like a ladies tea party, the workers gathering is more like the local pub.

We are settling in at school but find ourselves on the outside of a tight circle of old loyalties. As we are the only white teachers amongst a mixture of South Africans and Namibians, and added to this, we are the only teachers who don’t live on the school property, we are faced with a feeling of distrust and resentment. Working with the other teachers is an uphill battle in miscommunication. Stemele has been appointed to look after us. This she promptly does by rescheduling all our English club afternoons to cover afternoons she wants off. Recently I turned up at class all enthusiastic and raring to go only to find an empty classroom. Disappointed I thought the kids didn’t like me and were playing truant. I went to confess my failure to the headmaster, Mr Hippondoka, (the name says it all! An apt description of a hippo, piggy eyes and rolling gait) and found out all the kids were taking exams. Talk about a lack of communication. I went to see how they were doing, expecting a group of nervous children, only to find them lined up and singing outside the hall without a care in the world! They hadn’t started and Stemele saw it as an opportunity to get out of work and dragged me in to invigilate…

They had me standing on a chair and dictating at full volume whilst Stemele and Nangula who were supposed to be on duty, gnawed and crunched on a mid-morning snack of chicken’s feet, wiping their greasy fingers all over the exam papers. I recount to the girls, agitated and still speaking at full volume after straining my voice over the dictation. I could hear the bones cracking in my pauses for breath, and then when Stemele borrowed Maria’s compass to clean her teeth; that was it, I felt violently nauseous and had to leave. Jess and Lotti have an ear blasting before I readjust my voice level.

Stemele is supposedly in charge of the sports curriculum. She only visited the storeroom once last term. We finally managed to prise the key out of her hands and found a store full of unused equipment.

Just today the clock moved back an hour without warning. No one told me about the change. My class were stunned and surprised when I strode into their Afrikaans class and demanded they put away their books and then proceeded to teach them. Stemele came back from her ‘loo visit’, to find me wiping all her carefully written work off the black board!

She retaliated later when I was having a particularly rowdy class with 4B. They had only five textbooks between thirty kids! Stemele stormed in and hit six of the kids with a cane, and then turned and walked out. In the staff room at break she informed me the six she picked on didn’t have enough respect for me. Strange woman! I think the power went to her head. Next time she tries that trick I’ll be quicker off the mark.

On Tuesday my crayons go missing from class 4B. I think I am being absent minded and return to the flat muttering You’re losing it girl. Go and find yourself some pills to take!

Back at the flat outside the door is a huddle of boys perched on an upturned oilcan drawing with my crayons. They are so excited and lift up their works of art for me to admire. I am too touched to scold them.

Boxes of old clothes arrive for the kids. We have been asked to distribute them. I am slightly worried about any spiders that might be lurking around inside. Ever since Alfred produced a Tarantula from his bookshelf, completely flattened between two books, I have been extra cautious, tiptoeing into the shower, emptying out my shoes before I put them on.

You have to watch out. They are so fast. They can pelt across the room at the speed of light, nip you on the toe and dash off in a flash before you know what’s hit you!

Oh yeah, who are you kidding. Come on Jules, let’s get this over and done with.

We settle into our teaching duties and look forward to our evenings at the cottage. We are often invited over to the Bleks for dinner and then find ourselves sinking into silence as they draw Lotti into long conversations in German. One evening Mr Bleks announces