Living for Disco

Well, it’s been an eventful week. The discovery that our hotel room had a TV was wonderful – I have felt very out of touch with the world. Unfortunately, I seem to have picked a week when the four horsemen of the apocalypse are trampling all over Mexico, Guatemala, Bali, Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was quite spooky really, as the only other channel seemed to be the God channel: Evangelical southern American preachers belting out the word of God all bloody day (send in your gift of any amount, and you’ll receive this free CD and prayer book, and on top of that we’ll pop a cheapo plastic gem on the altar on the 27 October, so you can try and get your unsaved loved ones’ souls placed in the crown of our saviour before they’re consigned to the fires of hell, amen), and healing people through the TV. If I weren’t so secure in my atheism, I may have been tempted to think that the week’s global events were indeed a series of doom-laden portents.

VSO really turned us into tourists for the week, which was great. My wildlife count for my stay so far now includes a kudu, springbok, eland, ostriches and a solitary warthog. I also think I should count the dead donkey we saw being skinned and divvied up by the side of the road on the way out of Oshakati on Saturday, and the wide-open, emptied head of a cow that rested on the floor in a market that we wandered through. It sort of reminded me of the time I came home from school to find my parents sorting out bits of freshly slaughtered pig into freezer bags on the kitchen floor. There was half a pigs head, eye side up, in our freezer for years. I’d be eyeballed every time I went to fish out a loaf of bread. I’m including them anyway, as these are sights the like of which I’ve not seen for a while, as for some reason, the relationship between live animal, and end product foodstuff seems to be taboo at home. Which reminds me – does anyone know the best way to kill a chicken? I’d go for strangulation, but others in the discussion were opting for decapitation. I’m not sure it’s that easy to decapitate a chicken on your own, honestly, but any thoughts welcome.

Anyway, apparently people really only eat donkey if it’s roadkill, because animals are so extremely valuable here. Literally, your animals are your bank account if you’re a subsistence farmer. Meat’s such a precious source of protein that it makes sense to take advantage of a food parcel like that when it lands in your lap. Mind you, judging from the way donkeys just stand there by the side of the road looking forlorn and forsaken, I’d say plenty of them deliberately keel over into the path of oncoming traffic out of sheer boredom.

I should probably count the mopane worm I ate too. I hadn’t realised I was such a pathetic wuss – I thought I’d find the whole idea of eating fried caterpillars a bit grim, but relatively unproblematic, but it took me at least half an hour to get over my utter disgust at the very idea of putting it’s black, leathery body anywhere near my face. I sat and stared at it lying there next to my mahangu* and trying to look as if I thought it was going to be delicious. I think I’ve been back in the UK too long. I should make it a policy to eat one whenever they’re available, to remind myself that I don’t have to worry about not having anything to eat.

I also went to my first cuca shop. These places, also known as shebeens, are illegal bars. There are thousands of them. Sometimes whole villages seem to consist of nothing more than a couple of houses, a shop, a coffin shop and ten different bars. They are the most common form of small business enterprise in Namibia, but none of them are registered. They all look like they could fit about six people in them at a squash, are called outlandish things like “Kitchen Love Bar”, and ‘Three Sisters in Beer Garden”, and are abundantly stocked with Tafel lager. Every few miles, there’s a massive Tafel warehouse, and delivery vans are out all the time, taking the nectar to the needy. I found out on Saturday night that not only are they plentifully stocked with beer, you could probably buy a lifetime’s supply of pilchards at any one shebeen. Tinned pilchards seem to be very popular up north.

It was great. We danced to South African pop songs on the sandy verge, to the amusement of the local clientele, who joined in, and quaffed plentiful supplies of Tafel. We played pool with the locals, and I was subjected to a strange and generally untillegible, but friendly tirade by a very, very drunk old woman, who kept telling me that her kids had no food, which seemed grossly unfair on the kids, seeing as she was stuffing an entire bag of tomatoes into her face, while swigging from a giant beer bottle. I also discovered that it seems perfectly acceptable to come up to a total stranger and demand that they give you half of their beer, although I didn’t try it myself. And I learned that when the guy from VSO gets worried about the looks the girls are getting from a particular man behind the bar, you leave, very, very quickly. I’m fairly convinced that’s going to be my only cuca shop experience, seeing as in Windhoek they only really exist in the townships in Katutura and Khomasdal, and I’m certain I would not be welcome.

Coming back into Windhoek was wonderful – I felt like I was coming home. Since I’ve been away all the jacaranda trees have blossomed wildly, and when you come down in to the valley, the city seems to be covered in a beautiful rash of purple blotches.

I love it here.

Right. I’m off to Opuwo, home of the Himba people, tomorrow to look at some of the work my organisation is doing, so I’ll be incommunicado for another short spell. This blog is promising to get very dull. Please do come back! I should be back in about a week, with more tales from this fabulous place.

*staple pap made out of maize meal. People keep going on about how horrible it is, but I thought it was very palatable, (if a little sandy), especially with a bit of sauce and some dried spinach (also sandy). Wash it down with some homemade beer, and you’re laughing.