Living for Disco

The bus left late from Windhoek, and so we drove south into the dusk.  It was dark long before we reached Rehoboth, although I’d seen the smoke from a good way away. Once darkness fell, the eerie glow on the horizon looked like a doppelganger sunset - the sign of a bushfire raging somewhere ahead.

Namibia is extraordinarily dry, and starting a fire is the matter of a mere second of carelessness.  Carelessness like this costs millions of dollars worth of damage, destroys animal life and livelihoods, and causes untold devastation.  I’ve seen the aftermath of fires before - telegraph poles hanging footless in the air, straining at the wires; acres of smouldering, stinking ash; stumps of acacia trees sitting forlorn in the charred emptiness.

We smelt the devastation before we saw it;  a heavy, dry and smoky smell that filled the bus.  As we drew nearer we saw where the fire had been.  Embers glowed in the hollowed out carcass of a huge tree; the bottom three feet of a telegraph pole burned prettily in the blackness; small fires still soldiered on in the cinders of what yesterday was cattle farming land, looking like the lights of a strange and dancing city.

When we caught up to the fire, it was devouring the brittle, dry grass up to the road. Flames rose to heights of ten or twelve feet, encouraged by the wind to hurry onwards.  We passed within two feet of the edge of the blaze - fire out of control is strangely exciting, yet appalling to watch.  The sight stayed in my mind’s eye for days.

When we reached Rehoboth, we got off the bus to buy water.  A hot wind blew dust into our eyes and hair, and as I blinked and rubbed the gritty dust into the sweat on my face, I watched an old man, his beard stained with nicotine, strike a match into the bowl of his pipe and flick it, unheeded, onto the forecourt of the petrol station.