Somewhat Unexpected

If you’ve been following along for a bit on the blog, you may recall that I wrote about the lack of adventure in my Namibian life a few weeks back, and my need to remind myself to allow a sense of wonder to adorn my experience here.  Well.

I live not far from the town of Swakopmund, a tourist mecca on the Atlantic coast.  The center of town, where I buy groceries once or twice a month, is actually the southwestern corner.  If I stand on a street corner there and look east, I can see more town and maybe a bit of the desert where I live.  To the north I see the town spreading – it’s growing; people come from all over Namibia to look for work here.  To the west there’s the ocean.  To the south, there’s desert, too, but not my desert.  This is the beginning of what will become the world-famous Soussvlei dunes:  just sand.  No scrubby bushes, no low-lying succulents, probably a bare minimum of hares or skinks.  Maybe some of the nice chuckling birds whose evening chatter I enjoy so much around sunsets.  I spend a lot of my Swakop time in shops; a good bit in the Indian restaurant, and a reasonable amount on the beach.  But I’ve always meant to step a bit to the south and check out those beginner dunes.

The methi mutter malai redefines sublime.

So a weekend or two ago I had Peace Corps trainees for guests, and after showing them all around my town (“Lutheran church.  Roman Catholic church.  Office, library.  Dreamland Garden.  Grocery store, markets, sunset.  Done!”) for three days, we crammed our four selves into a taxi and headed to Swakop.  I pointed out the key landmarks (“Fruit and Veg for fresh produce; really good fresh produce!  Ocean!  Book store, movie theater, coffee shop, Indian restaurant, brew pub...”) and they set out to explore for themselves.  Our hostel was just two blocks from the southern edge of town, so it made total sense for me to use some of my unaccustomed hours (I usually need to be in a cab back home by 15:00 or so; they stop running once the shops close) to check out the sandy bit.

Looking south from residential Swakopmund

At the end of the two blocks there was cluster of horse paddocks, a few horses nibbling each other in that friendly horsey way and a woman working one on a lunge line.  How I yearned for my breeches.  But the sand looked pretty good, too, and I slid off my sandals, plunged in and headed west, toward the ocean.  (As in Oregon, they keep their ocean on the west here; a very silly and confusing habit.)  There was a good bit of greenery where the Swakop River would be if there were any water now (four years of drought in this part of the world; there’s not much water anywhere, though the Swakop apparently runs a bit underground), so I sauntered just up the bank of that.  I saw footprints, horse-hoof prints, dog-paw prints, a few of the thin lines skink tails make, an occasional poo – dog or human, mostly.  I strolled under the big B2 roadway, and saw some weird hoof prints – rounder and lighter than horse, so maybe some kind of antelope?  But antelope are very unlikely at the edge of a big town, at the edge of a big desert, or at the ocean, and at the confluence of all three?  Probably not.  So maybe small horses in non-standard shoes?  Hmm.  There was also a new kind of poo – not horse, dog, human, goat or other small stock, rabbit... so we’re back to antelope?

Bigger than rabbit; smaller than horse.  Maybe I'll go back and try to find
a hoofprint to photograph, too.

A bit further along, curses!  Someone had built right on the beachfront and fenced off my path.  So I had to scramble down into the reeds of the currently-underground river, which were cut through with crazy-quilt paths.  I followed the paths that would take me most directly to the ocean, keeping a careful eye on the ground and just above, in case of snakes.  Eventually the zigs and zags zugged me into a big, path-blocking thorn tree.  Curses!  So I backtracked to one of the bigger clear spaces and gazed up and around to try to get a sense of whether it would be worth the effort to try a different path, or would they all just lead me into thorn trees.  I noticed a slight noise; the breeze had gentled from that morning’s powerful east wind, but it was still sloughing through the bushes and trees.  As I gazed beach-ward, however, one of the dryer, tanner bushes moved, and turned into a camel.

Actually, more than somewhat unexpected

No, they’re not indigenous to Namibia.  No, there was not a circus in town.  No, it is not local custom to use dromedaries as draft animals.  No, it is not a comfortable feeling to be two or three meters from what was actually about half a dozen camels, grazing in the reeds, with no human in sight.  (Although the reeds would easily have hidden a human, so maybe...?)

They have big, weird faces, supercilious expressions and lots of teeth.  They have, according to signs in zoos and circuses, a reputation for getting nasty when disturbed, kicking and biting.  They are also adorable, but I backed away discreetly, laughing inside (I did not want to startle the camels or dromedaries with unexpected noise), and feeling that sense of wonder well up and flood.

That's pretty well camel-flaged (ha ha ha!), right?

There’s a camel farm about ten or twenty kilometers east of the town, but why would their camels be in Swakop, grazing away?  A couple of locals told me sometimes there are dromedaries involved in some of the town tourist attractions or activities, but again why a clump of them, down in the reeds by the beach but well-screened from any tourists who might have wandered that far south, and apparently unattended by humans?

I realize this is the kind of thing that really could happen anywhere – Provence, Sarasota, Phuket, wherever – but, really – when’s the last time you almost banged into a herd of semi-feral camels on the beach?  I’m calling it an adventure.

I like them better when they are not eye-balling me with attitude.

This is actually rather unexpected, too; the sky over the ocean is usually
very cloudy in Swakop, and there's just some pinkish mist for sunset.