Living for Disco

“Can I have a go?”, I ask, as our host expertly squeezes torrents of milk from the udder of an uncomplaining cow. I’m thinking, ‘yeah, I can do that. I was brought up on a farm you know’*.

He sits back, as I kneel and grasp the teat. It is unexpectedly clammy. Imagining how I’d feel if somebody grabbed my boob and squeezed it as if it were a stress toy, I gently pull on the teat. Nothing happens. And again. Nothing. I can feel the teat filling with milk, but whenever I touch it, the elusive contents retreat back up into the udder in horror.

It’s horrifying to realize how extremely hard you have to pull on the cow’s bits to get anything to come out. I failed utterly**. I’m surprised the cows aren’t hobbling around in perpetual agony, their hind legs tucked under their armpits (legpits?) to protect themselves from the onslaught – I’d be bent double 100 percent of the time if I had to go through that twice a day.

However, drinking fresh milk that has just been decanted, frothing and warm, from a live animal, is quite something. I even enjoyed the gasps of horror from my friends, who expected to have to cart me to hospital, writhing in alien-esque convulsions, within the hour.

Pussies.

*A very small farmette, with only 70 sheep, two chickens, two geese, and no cows whatsoever.

**udderly. Hee.

Camping in Namibia is a national sport. However, it can be an expensive one, given the obsession with fancy-schmancy camping equipment that afflicts most people once they’ve been here for any longer than ten minutes.

Realistically, in order to camp successfully in Namibia you need the following:

• A tent (natch)
• Sleeping bag
• Blankets and/or duvets
• Sleeping mat/fold up mattress/inflatable king-size deluxe mattress with vorsprungdurchtechnik and inbuilt jagermeister dispenser
• Pillow
• Camping chairs, with or without camping footstools.  (I kid you not)
• Camping stove, preferably with two burners
• Lanterns/torches
• Plates, mugs, bowls, chopping board, knives, bottle openers, corkscrews
• Coffee filter system
• Water (at least 20 litres)
• Food, inc vast array of spices, tin foil,
• Cool box filled with booze and/or battery operated fridge for those pesky perishables
• Windbreakers, just to make sure that your area remains staked out against the inopportune trespassing of fellow campers homicidal maniacs
• Braai wood
• Potje pot, kettle, pot for rice/potatoes/pasta
• Hot water bottle
• Firelighters
• Matches
• Braai grill
• Braai tongs
• Dead kudu, to strap to the grille to ward off veteran campers intent on ‘helping the tourists’, who will end up setting fire to all your possessions, and crushing your tent pegs into tin-foil buttons with an industrial mallet.

And this is just the start. You wouldn’t believe the things that people take camping. When I went away for Christmas, the family in the camp next to ours had a double pine bed in the tent canvas mansion. And I’m not talking about a crappy MFI put-it-together-and-watch-it-gently-fall-apart effort; I’m talking a proper, old fashioned, heavy motherfucking pine bed.

Anyway, my point is that a number of us planned to go camping this weekend, and five of us had to fit ourselves and all of our necessary camping equipment into a Toyota Corolla. Most people when camping take a fleet of landrovers. I’m not maligning the spaciousness of a Corolla by the way – I was amazed at how much we managed to fit in, but it quickly became clear that we were by necessity going to be both under-prepared and under-equipped. And also our heads were going to be a funny shape from being squashed against the roof of the car for 6 solid hours.

So it was fortunate that when we arrived at the camping area it was overbooked, so we had to stay here:

This place was built for a film set, and it’s like staying in a fairy tale. It’s build all around those big rocks – there are twisty-windy stairways leading to mysterious sleeping platforms in every direction. Our bathroom was equipped with a proper claw-footed bathtub, and was open to the gentle breeze:

Everywhere there were comfy chairs, antique furniture and cupboards filled with treasures - a piece of elephant tusk; a collection of oil lamps; a coffee pot full of what looked like someone’s ashes. Downstairs, sheltered under rocks and the spreading branches of a tree, was the kitchen, complete with swing chair in which to drink your morning coffee in the sun while watching the cow boys race past on their donkeys, kicking up dust into swirly shimmering patterns. At night, we lit the many, many torches, and in their flickering light we drank much wine, and said “Oh my god, can you believe this place?” in varying tones of wonder. Then we fell silent and listened to the distant singing from the Himba village, as the villagers prepared to celebrate their five day full moon trance festival. We even had some Himba visitors, who we entertained with our icons of popular culture:

Oh, and I milked a cow.