Living for Disco

We have been driving for five hours, along roads that were created specifically so that people had somewhere convenient to dump the big rocks cluttering up the scrubby landscape. The car has not responded well to the uneven road surface, and I have worried constantly that one or all of the wheels will suddenly fall off, leaving us stranded. Failing that, my arms will be shaken out of their sockets, and people will have to dress me, feed me and type notes for me for the rest of the week. In addition to this stressful situation, sweat mixed with dust does not a clean and fresh-faced person make.

So when we pull into Khorixas, a town as bug filled and dusty as it is unpronounceable, we are ready for a shower and a beer, and the luxury of sitting on a chair that doesn’t rattle the teeth out of your head. Fortunately for us, there is a lovely lodge there that puts our staff up for free, because they are angels of mercy and light.

We enter the airy reception area, which is eerily deserted, a little like the Marie Celeste. The computer is on, the fan is whirring, but people, there are none. I lean over the desk and coo “helloooo?” a few times, but the effort is futile, and so I go in search of humans. Fortunately, I don’t have to look far – I step outside, and see the staff of the lodge sitting around a thatched guest room, watching two men hit the roof with sticks. I wave, and they wave back. Then, to my relief, one of them runs over to me, and begins to check us in.

“I’m so sorry”, he says, tapping away at the computer. “There is an alligator stuck in the roof, and we are trying to get it down.”

“Where on earth did it come from?” I ask, surprised and alarmed. I have enough trouble with mosquitoes at night – the last thing I want is to have my toes bitten off in my sleep.

“The river bed.” He waves his arm vaguely to indicate the direction.

The river bed is dry. It has been dry since at least May. I didn’t even think alligators existed in Namibia, except in the Zambezi, which is about a thousand miles away, and even so, I thought they were crocodiles. Do alligators bury themselves in sand and wait for the rains? Do they roam vast distances, like elephants? I don’t know. I ask if it is dangerous, but he says no, it is only a baby.

I ask after the alligator the next morning, once I have checked that my toes are all still attached. A brave member of staff pulled it out by its tail and threw it away somewhere.

I tell everyone about the baby-alligator-in-the-roof-drama, because I think it’s a very exciting story that will elicit gasps of wonder, but, tragically, no-one will believe me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 11:16 am and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.