Isabel Bradley may be known to some of our readers, as she is [or was,
until her
sojourn in Namibia] the Principal flautist in the Randburg Municipal Orchestra.
She and husband Leon went to Namabia on a three months contract and this
is the
first part of her interesting and colourfully written record of the adventure.
A
message from her continues
send on the saga of our first two weeks, followed
by our trip to Luderitz. I tend to be long-winded, because I take notes
of
almost everything as we go, and it breaks my heart to leave out anything
that I've found interesting!
ON OUR WAY TO NAMIBIA
After six months of delays, of waiting for Leon's work visa, and being "ready
to leave with two weeks' notice",
and after several deadline dates came and went, maddeningly without anything
happening, eventually it all
happened extraordinarily fast. The visa was faxed to us on a Thursday morning,
and by the Saturday we
were ready, packed with enough gear to keep an army on the move for a year,
let alone two Bradleys
comfortable for three months! The car was loaded - like an intricate jigsaw
puzzle - by Leon, and at nine-
thirty in the morning, we drove out of the gate of Goldcrest Estate. At
last we were on our way to Namibia.
For the first half of the first day we were both so keyed up after the hectic
two days of packing and finalising,
that we didn't notice too much. We'd planned our trip with two overnight
stops, the first at Kuruman in the
Northern Cape. The first thing that I noticed, about an hour out of Jo'burg,
was the cosmos blooming in
glorious swathes, patches and stretches alongside the road. Like a petticoat
of pink and white lace, it skirted
an ugly mine-dump, where a sign read - "We are Proudly Gold Fields
- WE ARE NOT FOR SALE! Hoot if
you support us!" A sign of the times.
A long time later, as we were driving out of Ottosdal, I noticed a large,
rather neglected building. It held two
signs, one for a funeral directors' business, and next door, in large yellow
letters, were the words, 'Comfort
Zone Coffin Manufacturers'!
The pot holes, in some patches of the road, were deep and close. Leon manoeuvred
the car around them
with great expertise. He also managed to stop at least twice to wait for
herds of goats to amble across the
road.
In Kuruman, our Guest House, Klipwerf, was easy to find - right on the main
road, opposite the Spur Steak
Ranch. This was next to AVBOB, more Funeral Directors; we wondered if there
was any connection. After
parking the car, and unloading only half the items on the back seat (two
trips of heavy tog-bags, cooler bags,
book packets and shoes), we decided that a walk would be just right to stretch
out the tensions of the last
few months. Leon and I set out to see The Eye.
The Eye is an amazing spring of water that provides 20 million litres of
clear, sweet water a day. I was rather
disappointed that I couldn't see the source of this spring - just the clearest
water in a rather pretty pool, in
which swam catfish, goldfish and koi - each visible from the tiniest, newly-hatched
to great old-man giants.
Surrounding this pool was an attractive park, with grassed banks and willows
washing their hair in the water.
We spent about an hour wandering around, then sat on the banks to make a
few phone calls telling people
we'd finally left Jo'burg.
Ambling back to the guest house, we decided to explore one of the streets
further into town; we found a
supermarket, and bought some chocolates to see us through the hours before
supper-time. As we walked
further, we saw yet another sign worth noting: 'Tombstones at Factory Prices!
- Peace of Mind Tombstones.'
Hmmm.
After a time spent reading our books with our feet up on the very comfy
guest-house bed, we crossed Main
Road, Kuruman, and entered the Spur Steakhouse. I have to share a secret
with you. Leon does not enjoy
Spur. The food, he will admit, is wonderful if you like steak or fish. It's
the 'waitrons' that really get to him.
"Good evening," the young man said in a heavy Afrikaans accent,
"I'm Koos and I'm your waitron for the
night!" Leon had predicted this response earlier - Koos was word-perfect.
I giggled.
Koos had great difficulty understanding my drink order. "You want a
sherry - an Old Brown? Do you want
Coke wiff it?"
"Er - no, thanks, just the sherry, in a sherry glass."
"Oh. You want a double or a single?"
"Er - just a single, thank you."
Leon ordered red wine. It arrived with a side-dish of ice. My sherry arrived
- impressively, a single serving of
OB's, in a real sherry glass.
We placed our meal orders, and waited for the food. Again right on cue,
Koos paused, most solicitous, at our
table every five minutes or so, asking if "everyfing is in order?"
The food arrived, and was even better than
I'd expected. Leon and I pigged out on rich, red meat, chips and onion rings.
Then we added insult to injury,
and filled our stomachs to bursting point with chocolate fudge brownies
(Leon), and waffles and ice-cream
(me). That night, we slept well - after tipping young Koos handsomely for
his performance, of course!
Next morning, we left Kuruman fairly early, after being woken by the roaring
of massive trucks beginning
their Sunday's drive immediately outside our bedroom window. About thirty-five
kilometres from Kathu, we
drove up to a high point on a pass and looked out on a massive plain leading
to high and ragged hills in the
West. Leon reminded me that in total we would be travelling about a thousand
kilometres West - but that as
we were driving and not flying, I had NO excuse for suffering from jet-lag
due to the change in time.
The countryside was green and gold with autumn-ripe grasses and rain-rich
bush blowing to the southern
horizon in a strong wind. The sky was huge, scuffed with clouds of all shapes
and sizes - feathers,
streamers, dirty rags, puffs and piles, billows and swirls. Thorn trees
were covered with hard, white seed-
pods. Gradually, we overtook each of the trucks that had woken us earlier.
Then the car started to make a really strange noise. As Leon slowed, there
was a puff of smoke from the
back of the car. We stopped. My love looked under the bonnet, but couldn't
see any specific damage,
though he thought a drive-belt on the fancy climate control's air-conditioner
had snapped and burnt off.
Bravely, we drove on - without a cooling system, as the clouds drifted away,
suddenly uninterested in
keeping the temperature comfortable for us.
The previous day, I'd noticed many tree-skeletons, their arms writhing to
the sky in fantastic shapes. These
were all pointed out to Leon as "blasted trees", and he remonstrated
with me about my language a couple of
times. On this huge plain there were many blasted trees. The road ahead
and behind was a long ribbon of
yellow and white striped tar. Rachmaninov's first concerto poured in all
its glory from the car's speakers.
Sishen appeared on our right - machines and house-size shovels, a water
tower and flat-topped dumps
looming red over a massive red scar on the earth. At the side of the road,
there was a clump of red, dead,
blasted trees. We must have driven, at a hundred and twenty kilometres per
hour, for at least twenty minutes
with the mine-dumps and the huge open pits continuing at our side. Thirty
or more years ago, Leon worked
on diesel-electric locomotives built for the railroad from Sishen to Saldanha
Bay, the only route that carries
the iron ore from the mines to the port for onward shipping to Japan.
On the main road in Olifantshoek (Elephants' Corner) we passed the concrete
elephant with its red glass
eyes that stands in front of the municipal buildings. This village is built
amongst the hills called Langberg, or
Long Mountain. It took less than a minute to drive through the town, then
we were on the open road again.
We overtook a truck carrying a load of logs, which had been treated with
bitumen. The pungent smell poured
through our open air vents and window.
We passed the turnoff for Witsand Nature Reserve, somewhere I definitely
want to visit - maybe on our way
home in July. Around us, the country was thickly wooded - described in a
pamphlet we had as Acacia
Forest. Lots of dark green thorn trees, though none too tall.
For my fiftieth birthday earlier this year, friends Pearl and Gordon gave
us a copy of Stephen Fry's
Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music. As we drove onwards, through
a patch of golden grassland,
sparsely dotted with low, dark bushes, I read the Foreword of this wonderful
book out loud to Leon, with
many chuckles.
There were mountains on the left, splodged with cloud-shadows. Three or
four vultures circled lazily over the
car, perhaps sensing that we were slowly melting of heat-exhaustion inside.
We noticed increasing numbers
of huge hanging nests on the telephone poles at the roadside, looking like
thatched roofs over empty space.
Their builders, Communal Weavers, fluttered in and out of the entrances
under the thatch in great numbers.
Suddenly, in the middle of the increasingly arid countryside, we were surrounded
by grape vines. We'd
joined the Orange River Wine Route. Just on the other side of Upington,
there were lovely splashes of
yellow autumn flowers carpeting the ground.
Before we left home, Leon contacted some old friends of his, friends I'd
met once while we were on
honeymoon. Mike and Daphne Timson live on Kanoneiland, an island in the
middle of the Orange River and
in the heart of this unexpected wine country. They are raising their granddaughter,
Tyla, whose mother died
about eight years ago. When he spoke to Daphne, Leon arranged that we'd
arrive there to visit them at
about two on Sunday afternoon. This would, Leon explained to me, be after
the church services, which Mike
led with such dignity and pride. Mike is a lay priest in the Catholic Mission
on Kanoneiland.
We arrived just after one, and decided it was far too early. If Daphne said
"two o'clock", I thought she'd be
inconvenienced if the Bradleys, for once, appeared well before the appointed
time. So we drove up and
down Kanoneiland a little, Leon pointing out the many huge concrete floors
laid for the drying of the grapes
for the raisin industry. Eventually, at about ten to two, we drove into
the yard of the manse and parked in the
shade of a large tree. As we climbed out of the car, we felt as if we'd
been steamed!
Daphne greeted us both with warm hugs, and looked a little startled when
Leon gave her a bottle of wine to
put in the fridge for Mike. Tyla was a little shy. She's twelve. Last time
we saw her, she was five and just
about to begin "big school". We moved into the lounge, where a
portable air conditioner blew coolth into the
room. After chatting for a while, Leon asked Daphne, "Where's Mike
- still taking a service?"
Daphne hesitated. "You don't know, do you?" I went cold. She continued
quietly, "Mike died three years
ago." What a shock.
We said all the right things, then Tyla went off to the kitchen to make
tea, and brought it through and poured
for us, and Daphne told her gently not to pour the tea first, it must be
milk first, and we caught our breaths.
Mike, a diabetic and a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in May
three years ago. He went to
hospital in Cape Town for treatment and chemo-therapy, went into a diabetic
coma, and died in the July.
Adding to the grief and pain of losing another much-loved family member
was the fact that he left Daphne
and Tyla with no income.
The Bishop allowed them to return to the mission station on Kanoneiland,
where they live rent-free, and
where Daphne helps with the administration. Unfortunately, this arrangement
will end soon with the
appointment of a new priest, who needs the house. They'll be moving to Port
Elizabeth to be near Daphne's
brothers, sister and mother. She's hoping her two surviving daughters will
help her financially. Later in the
afternoon, much saddened by the news, yet warmed by Daphne's and Tyla's
warm welcome and happy
smiles, we left them with promises to keep in touch.
The next town we passed through was Keimoes - a very pretty spot, where
we stopped to photograph the
water wheel. We spent Sunday night at a marvellous guest-house called Vergelegen,
just outside Kakamas.
The room was spacious and modern, with a wonderful bed. The restaurant was
marvellous, with the most
amazing menu and delicious food. We ate dinner with a Dutch couple, Kys
and Gemma, who were staying
there for a few nights while visiting Augrabies Falls and other places of
interest in the area. Perhaps, in July,
we'll spend enough time in this area to visit the falls ourselves. Breakfast
next morning was wonderful. We
left on the last and longest portion of our drive to Oranjemund, which is
just over the border the Orange
River - in Namibia. We'd been riding roughly parallel to the Orange for
almost two days.
Monday morning saw us driving through scrub desert, with more of the tiny
yellow flowers at the side of the
road. Leon spoke of the Mission Station at Pella on the Orange River - still
many kilometres to the west of
our current point. A German Catholic priest travelled to this spot in the
middle of nowhere, over a hundred
years ago. There he found a tribe, settled down with them, began to educate
them in the ways of the white
man, and built a church on the banks of the river. A year or two later,
it was washed away in one of the
periodic floods. He rebuilt his church, rather further from the high water
mark, and it and the mission still
stand and function today. Leon says the church is beautiful - sparkling
white, and reminiscent of the
churches of Spain. Perhaps another place to visit - when we're in a car
that enjoys gravel roads!
We drove towards a dirty cloud-blank on this straightest-yet stretch of
road. The weather report that morning
said it was raining in Springbok the town where we would take a right
turning. Leon said that Simon van
der Stel, one of the earlier Dutch Governors of the Cape - around 1800?
(more correctly, about 1678, this
must be a slip of the finger. Ed) - had mined copper in and around the Springbok
area.
Donkey-powered trains - on a properly-laid, narrow-gauge railroad pulled
the ore wagons all the way to
Port Nolloth. At regular intervals along the journey, there were resting
points, where teams of donkeys were
exchanged. Several of the twin-towered resting points were visible from
the road much later on - as were
the remains of the railway itself. Poor donkeys.
The landscape on either side became increasingly bleak - occasional tufts
of dried grass on sand. "What are
those black things on the desert?" I asked Leon. It was a herd of black-faced
sheep, their bodies merging
into the background, just their faces showing like blotches on the dun earth.
The clouds became ragged and
untidy, dragging under the sky, heavy and muddy. Twenty minutes or more
would go by between sighting
another vehicle.
The road surface was excellent. It was straight, it was boring. On the wide,
flat country around us were
occasional hills and mountains dotted on the barren landscape. Ahead was
a range of ragged mountains,
which the road gradually rose to meet. There were odd formations like huge
cairns of black stone, some with
one or two large rocks balanced precariously on top. Thousands of years
ago, they'd been outcroppings of
solid rock, which through the centuries, with the rain, the wind and the
extreme temperatures of this desert
climate, gradually fractured into the many pieces we saw that day. Leon
said he'd once driven this way with
a colleague, and casually mentioned that the farmers around this area worked
really hard to get all the rocks
together and make such huge piles. His colleague believed the tall tale
for a moment or two!
Amongst the rocks, the occasional patch of scrub, the sand and the sparse
and yellow grass, we saw one or
two lone farmhouses, stark and white, each with their metal windmill, blades
turning in the wind. The land
looked tired and worn. It was hard to believe that this is the famous Namaqualand
where every spring - after
"good" winter rains (about seventy millimetres for the year) -
the wild flowers cover the landscape with a
carpet of colour. Something I've never seen. It won't be this year that
we make that trip, either!
All my life I'd heard of the town of Pofadder (Puff Adder). The signs counted
down the kilometres to
Pofadder - 60, 40, 20, 10, and then we were on the other side having hardly
seen a house. On our right
were mountains, each fold and crag starkly lit in cold, white light by the
morning sun sneaking under the
clouds. There were road gangs out, cutting the long grasses.
Next town was Aggenys, pronounced Arg-en-ace - the g being almost a clearing
of the throat! Leon laughed
- he said his mum referred to this mining community as "agonies",
after an old radio programme that my
parents also used to quote regularly, which contained the seemingly hilarious
words, "agony, Ivy"! As we
approached Aggenys, black mountains rose around us - with an occasional,
startlingly white one in between.
The plain was now covered by waves of tall, pale green grass. Aggenys is
built around Black Mountain Mine
- which we think mines manganese ore.
After Aggenys, it began to rain. The automatic climate-control in the car
decided to switch on the air-
conditioner, as it is meant to do when damp, cold conditions dictate. A
sudden, ghastly grinding began in the
engine compartment. Leon pulled the car to the side of the road, leapt out
and opened the bonnet as the
noise crescendoed to a loud BANG and a nasty smell of burning rubber poured
through the car! I didn't
realise the engine was still running, and thought the whole thing had seized.
I scrabbled for my cell-phone
and AA card, dismayed by the fact that there was no signal at all on the
phone. For some scary moments, I
thought we were stranded on the road-side, with no communication, and other
vehicles only coming past
once every forty minutes or so. Leon got back into the car, closed the door,
engaged the gears and pulled
back on to the road.
Whew. The incident the previous day had been the aircon compressor seizing;
today with the unit switching
on, the compressor wouldn't turn, so the main pulley was wrenched off. The
dashboard was lit with warning
signs - "ABS brakes!!" and "Alternator" - and a few
others. Carefully, Leon nursed the wounded beast forty
kilometres on to Springbok at eleven in the morning, where it was, indeed,
raining and very cold, particularly
in the great, draughty workshop of the Mazda dealers. I sat in a slightly
less cold office with my book and a
cup of tea. Leon oversaw the replacement of the destroyed pulley and drive-belts.
Two hours and, two
thousand rand or so the poorer, we left Springbok on the last "leg"
of our journey to Namibia.
We drove north to Steinkopf, about sixty kilometres, then turned left and
west again, heading for Port
Nolloth, in and out of the rain, glad of the cool weather. Occasionally
the sun tried to peer through the wet
mist, causing a painful glare. Leon negotiated Anenous Pass in the rain
and the mist, and we found
ourselves on another straight stretch of road that eventually led to Port
Nolloth on the Atlantic Coast. The
country around us gradually became true desert, running into scrub-covered
beach.
We did a quick tour of the docks, where diamond-dredging boats tossed at
anchor; saw the DebMarine yard,
noted a pretty wooden house, then we were out on the open road again, heading
north. Next stop -
Alexander Bay Border Post, then, Oranjemund, Namibia.
But that must wait for another day.