Living for Disco

When my friend Heidi rings to ask me if I want to go to the braai I am fast asleep. It is 2.15pm, and although I didn’t drink that much last night, a combination of a late night and a very early morning has taken its toll. Nevertheless, I am actually quite excited; I like to feel that I am part of things, and if they break the record, I know I will feel proud. I really hope that they will manage it.

By the time we get to the stadium, I feel as if all the blood has drained from my head. There are hundreds of people milling about around the stadium: barefooted children, girls in heels in midriff tops, boys in baggy pants and gangster shirts, as well as dignified Herero ladies, and the odd tourist. The queues stretch off in many different directions, disorderly octopus tentacles sweltering listlessly in the afternoon heat. I forgot my hat, and I am starting to feel it, even before we get through the turnstiles.

The two men in front of me are turned away – their nails have been stained with purple marker to ensure no double counting. We pay our dollar, and go through the entrance, for which I am grateful. All I want is to sit down, and put my head between my knees. Alas, it is not to be. We are shunted through, the four of us, into a heaving mass of people who shuffle forward expectantly in a seemingly never ending line. I don’t like being crowded at the best of times, and especially not when I am feeling ropey, so I try to make some space around me by remarking loudly to Heidi that I am trying not to be sick. No-one appears either concerned or amused.

After an interminable amount of time, during which I am proud to say I manage not to vomit over the pregnant woman next to me, we reach the sausages. All my hard work is almost immediately undone. Despite the fact that my piece of sausage has been cut directly from the 8.3km length of boerwors specially made for the event, I cannot eat it. In fact, I can’t imagine eating anything, ever again.

I clear a space in the carpet of abandoned coke cups and attendance certificates – ‘have a braai-lliant day!’ - and lie on the grass watching people go by. Two girls stand aloof a small distance from me, attracting boys like wasps to candyfloss. I can’t help but admire their looks of utter disdain, as, one after another, the boys strut and crow around them. These girls have class.

Eventually, the cast of Egoli, a super-popular South African soapie arrive on stage. Everyone goes crazy. “Hello Namibia!” shrieks the first woman to get her hands on the mic. “Are you all tanning? I hope you’re wearing sunscreen!” I look at my friends in disbelief. As far as I can tell, we are the only white people here, apart from two girls I saw earlier in the queue in front of us. I can’t imagine the majority of attendees will be at all bothered about getting a tan, or that prohibitively expensive sunscreen is high on the list of things many people here spend their money on, but I am willing to accept that I could be wrong.

When it is time to leave, we meander towards the exit, with about a thousand other people who have all decided that enough is enough at the same time. The pushing and crushing is annoying, but seeing as they guys on the exit have to mark every single thumbnail with a purple pen, I can understand the delay.

However, the attendant on my side of the queue seems to have put the cap on his pen, and is leaning over the barrier, chatting to his friend. All of the thumbs around me remain unmarked. I wonder whether this will matter when it comes to verification of attendance. I also wonder whether to mention it here, as clearly so many people read this that eventually the scandal will reach the hallowed halls of Guinness, and I may find myself unwittingly putting a spanner in the works. I am not sure whether I will be able to live with this.

Having read the news this morning, however, I know it doesn’t matter. Namibia missed achieving the world record by only 152 people, when they had to close the gates at around sunset for safety reasons.

Even with any double counting that might have occurred, it was still an amazing effort, and I am disappointed that we didn’t make it. Tch.

Still, as they’re already talking about a second attempt, there’s always next time…

This weekend promises to be very exciting for Namibia.  The country is attempting to build on the publicity it garnered from the patronage of Brad and Angelina and their celebrity foetus earlier this year, and is going to try to secure a place in a Most Illustrious Publication – yes! Namibia will, with any luck, soon be in The Guinness Book of Records.

For, you see, tomorrow is the long anticipated World’s Biggest Braai.  It’s been in the paper almost every day for the last few weeks, under headlines like “Preparations underway for World’s Biggest Braai!”  This morning, the day before B day, the Namibian front page features a beaming woman in full catering garb holding up an enormously long boerwors as if she’s about to sling it round her neck and dance triumphantly through town.

What they’re attempting is quite a feat.  The previous record was broken in Sydney, in 1993 when 44,158 people attended a barbeque. The thing is, Sydney has a population of 4 million – more than double that of Namibia in its entirety.  To put it in perspective, in order to beat this they’re going to have to persuade about a quarter of Windhoek’s residents to show up.  Mind you, there’s cheap food on offer, so they might not have a problem.  I can foresee trouble if people want second helpings though.  A bit of sausage and a can of coke isn’t going to fill anyone up, and there may be mutterings about whether it can really be classed as a braai if you don’t get to adorn your plate with a bit of chargrilled steak.

Another thing I’m wondering about is the organisers’ decision to have President Hifikepunya Pohamba wheeled in as the 44,159^th guest.  What if they don’t make it?  Is he just going to stand outside the turnstiles, fruitlessly waiting, waiting, waiting, until finally they tell him its all over, and he gets back in his fleet of limos for the drive home?

I’m quite nervous for them.  I hope they manage it.

As your roving Namibian reporter, I will, if I can muster the enthusiasm to schlep to Sam Nujoma Stadium tomorrow, provide an exclusive report on Monday…

When I arrived in Namibia, almost exactly a year ago, I arrived to a hot spring of burnt blue skies and brittle grass.  Everyone was waiting for the rain to come, but clouds that did appear were wispy and weak, no match for the sun’s laser eye.

The first rains came in late October, and then returned with a vengeance in January, battering the country with a ferocity that incited the rivers to rise up and sweep away whole towns.  The rains were supposed to stop in March, leaving us refreshed and clean of dust, but they kept on, and on, until almost the end of April, when everyone was tired of being continuously wet.  Rains like that haven’t been seen here for fifty years.  The country blossomed.  Everything, for lack of a more appropriate word, was lush.  As a result of these rains, the Namib desert is knee deep in grass, and the dry valley at Sossusvlei is sporting a largeish lake, complete with cape teals and avocets.  Cattle and game grew replete, reminding me of a childhood story my father used to tell me, in which the tawny, scrawny lion became ‘sleek as satin, fat as butter, and jolly as all get out’.

And then it got cold.  I was so looking forward to spring, to the early, bearable heat and the flowers, the endless sunny days of September, and then the release of the rains in October.  But no.  The freakish weather systems that seem to be running roughshod over the world’s climate have other plans.  Climate change, something I always thought (hoped) would be so gradual that it would be unnoticeable, is brazenly flaunting itself, in the outrageously hot summer the UK has just endured, and in the weather here in my corner of Africa.

Yesterday the rains began, over a month early.

One thing about life here that does annoy me occasionally is the culture of the missed call.  I’ve never come across it in the UK, and the first few times it happened here I thought my phone was faulty.  But no, missed calling is a national pastime, second only to eating meat.

Your phone rings, and, if you’re me, you get all excited because Somebody Loves You, and then you realize that some idiot wants you to spend all your phone credit calling them, even though they want to talk to you.  The disappointment can be crushing.  Crushing, I tell you.

There are some instances when a missed call is acceptable.  If you work with someone, for example, and they want you to call them back on the office phone.  Or if you’re letting someone know you’re outside their house, and can they come out and let you in.

I don’t like it, however, when someone I barely know calls me and hangs up, and then expects me immediately to return the call.  Because, boy oh boy, if you don’t call back within half a nano-second, they will call you again.  And hang up.  Again.  And again.  I once had seven missed calls in a row from someone I’d called by mistake.  “Sorry, wrong number!” I said cheerfully, but that wasn’t quite enough for him, obviously.  If I’d known who he was, I’d have hunted him down, put the phone on vibrate, made him insert it up his back passage, and then spent the next hour ringing him.

It’s just bloody cheeky.  Just because I’m white doesn’t mean I afford to yak on for hours to some almost total stranger any more than anyone else. If you want to talk to me that badly, then pay for it yourself.

And if your house is, in fact, on fire, and mine is the only number left on your smoke-logged phone, then you might just have an excuse, but if you’ve got enough money on there to ring me, then you’ve got enough money to yell “Help!  I’m burning!” into the receiver before expiring.

So.  Missed calls.  The only thing more annoying is  a mosquito in your undercrackers.

December 2005.   My friend Dan is over in Namibia for a visit.  We go to Etosha National Park.  The conversations go thus:

Dan:  Why can’t I get out of the car?  Where’s the wildlife?  I want to see elephants.  Where are the elephants?  Is that an elephant?

Me:  What’s that tiny black speck over there near the horizon?  Is it an elephant? Pass me the binoculars… Oh, no it’s a tree. Sorry.

August 2006.  My mother is over in Namibia for a visit.  We got to Etosha National Park.  The conversations go thus:

Me (excitedly):  Look, another big poo.

Mum:  Oh yes.  And another one.  Maybe there’s a rhino near here somewhere.

We follow the large piles of excrement hopefully, and come round the corner to find yet more enormous elephants lounging nonchalantly amongst the foliage.

Me:  Oh.  It’s just more elephants.