Living for Disco

I’m going to see the Vagina Monologues tonight.  I was a bit worried that the tickets might sell out, because one of the actresses was Namibia’s recent contender in Survivor Africa, but there were plenty.

Anyway, that’s not the point of my story.  My point is that I was cycling to the box office to pick up the tickets, and I had to cycle down the stretch of road that borders President Pohamba’s residence – State House.  Sometimes this stretch of road is closed off, but today it was open, so I zoomed in through the gates with all the rest of the traffic, and started freewheeling down the hill.

Suddenly, a policeman is stepping out into the road, white gloved palm held up, stern expression on his face.  I couldn’t imagine for the life of me what I was doing wrong.  Cyclists in Namibia get away with all sorts of nonsense, and I was complying with the law and wearing my helmet, much to the amusement of several lorry drivers who leaned out of their cab windows specifically to laugh at me (told you, comedy gold).

Anyway, I came slowly to a halt, my front wheel resting in a pile of pink bougainvillea flowers that had been swept dustily into the gutter.

“Yes?”  I said.  “Why have you stopped me?”

“Hello, how are you?”  he replied politely.  Oops.

“I am fine, thank you, how are you?”

“Fine.

I waited.  He looked expectant, and then realized that he was going to have to explain.

“You cannot cycle here.  You must cycle on the other side of the road.”

I have often seen cyclists in Namibia cycling the wrong way down a main road, and it always strikes me as a foolhardy and dangerous thing to do, given the maniacs on the road, and so I said so.

“No, you must cycle on the pavement.”

I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on just how much bile is expended on cyclists who have the gall to cycle on the pavement in the UK.  For those who don’t know – it’s a lot.  There are whole websites dedicated to the elimination of cyclists who do this.  I have been conditioned over several years not to cycle on the pavement, EVER.  The very thought of it brings me out in a cold sweat, as I think of the ire that will be burning in my direction the minute I get up on the kerb.

Anyway, it turns out that actually, I only have to cycle on the pavement on the other side of the road when I’m cycling near the President.  The big red line apparently should tell me this, according to the policeman. I thought it meant no parking, but you live and learn.

It’s difficult, adjusting to new rules.

My belly full of sushi and beer, I hugged my friend goodbye and clambered on board my beloved purple bicycle for the journey home. It was late, and I was nervous – I don’t much like being out and about in Windhoek at night on my own. The streets are deserted and eerie. Everything is still, apart from the odd piece of rubbish blown by the breeze, which feels like the breath of old souls on your skin. Drunks occasionally lurch from the shadows into the bright puddle cast by a streetlamp. It’s like a ghost town; a menacing one that means you no good.

I came up the hill and around the roundabout by the barred up, darkened windows of the Pink Panther Videorama, hearing shouting and the grumbling of pool tables from the Casino gambling shop next door. A group of toothless girls, past their prime, sat outside on the steps, drinking whisky out of a plastic bottle and sharing their cigarettes with the Ausspanplatz amputee – a scarred and twisted man with one leg and half an arm, who drinks all day in the shade of the shop awnings, and never seems to sleep.

As I came around the corner, the nearest girl leaned off her perch, stretching the bit of her skirt that was trying to keep her arse in check to the limits. She was staring at me with her eyes squeezed half shut, as if this would help her to see me more clearly. She looked as if she had spotted a potential meal on the run. I almost expected her tongue to shoot out and grab me by the leg. Slowly, her arm came up. She pointed, mouth agape, at my approaching figure.

“Look! Look at that!” she shrieked in mirth as I cycled past. Her friends all fell about laughing. I advanced down Independence Avenue, their cackles swallowed up by the silence behind me.

Two minutes later, a car full of girls pulled up beside me at a stop light. It only took once glance, and they were instantly incapacitated by the hilarity of me.

I don’t know what was so funny. I even got off my bike to check the back of my skirt, to see if it was tucked into my knickers, but it all seemed fine. I came to the only conclusion I could: the essence of comedy runs through my veins. I am instantly amusing to everyone who sees me. This is quite a burden to have to bear, especially at this stage in my life, when I want to be taken a bit more seriously. Still, we all have our crosses.

I bet I’m worth a fortune on Ebay.

Finally, winter is on its way out.  It’s starting to spring.

In Windhoek, it’s surprisingly hard to tell when winter ends and spring begins.  For the last four months the sky has been a perfect vastness of blue, the only clouds the occasional grey smudge clinging to the horizon’s edge.  The trees have largely remained green; only a few lost their leaves.  The bougainvillea still splatters the city in scarlet and hot pink, as if the seasons never changed.  What reminds you is the sudden bitter cold when the sun sets, and in the mornings a cold nose and the horror of stepping on chill tiles in bare feet after the alarm has been set to snooze for the last possible time.

It’s strange to me that spring here feels just like spring at home, everything and everyone just beginning to crack a smile after the pinch of winter.  There’s something different about the way the birds sing in the morning, and how the breeze feels kind on my skin when I cycle through the city to work.  The light seems to glow in a different way.  In the early mornings a gauzy mist blurs the distant hills, and the air smells of creosote, fresh smoke and clean dust.

My cycle route takes me rushing through a neighbourhood packed with talent – Beethoven, Strauss and Mozart Strasse flash by on my way to work, and I labour up past Haydn, Wagner, Bach and Brahms on my return.  Church spires gleam clean and white in the sun, the smoke from small brush fires lingers above the jacarandas.

I pass a broad-pathed cemetery on my right, packed to bursting with new graves, the oldest ones crumbling by the roadside.  The road is lined with poplars in banks of pale baked grass that, for some reason, bring to mind the sunflower and corn fields of central Europe. I have a good view of the scrapyard to my left, men in blue overalls swarming over truckloads of rusty waste, shouts and clashing of metal leaking through my headphones.  Bakkies rush past me with blue clad labourers in the back, their heads no longer wrapped in enormous blanket turbans to keep out the merciless cold.  They point at me and laugh.

We have had no rain since April, and most of the rich grass is now yellow and brittle; but, thanks to the municipal sprinklers flouting the drought to come, an expanse of grass near where I work is still green.  Someone has taken advantage of this, and established a shabby red snack caravan, selling pies and chips, and Vienna sausages in a bun.  People come there during the day, lying with arms flung across faces, battered work boots turned to the sky, slumbering in the shade of stubby palms.

It seems that in the last few days, as the weather has started to become more generous, I have started to appreciate all over again how beautiful this city is.

Perfect spring cycling soundtrack:  Manu Chao.

I’ll stop with the cycling stories soon, I promise. Now that I have some way of getting out and about, I’ll find something more interesting to write about. Like the huge baboon I saw this morning on my cycle into work. It just lolloped off into the scrub as if it was perfectly normal for a baboon to be scratching itself by the side of the road. Which, I suppose, it is here. I keep snorting with laughter just thinking about what would happen if a baboon appeared to cyclists on their daily commute in London.

Anyway, I shall be seeing much more wildlife over the next week, I should think, as I’m off up to Oshakati, in the hot and dusty north, for another week’s training with VSO. Whenever I say I’m going up there, people puff their cheeks out and look troubled, or just laugh as if to say “Rather you than me, mate”. Apparently last week it hit 40 degrees up there. I was talking to someone last night who bought some sweets from a trader from Oshakati a few days ago. He said they were so full of sand, they made him ill. I seriously can’t wait - I’m itching to get out and see some more of Namibia.

So, I have much to look forward to, apart from access to the interweb, so these pages shall be silent again, at least for a while.

You’ll have to excuse my dishevelled appearance… The damp and matted hair; the red and sweat drenched face; the haggard countenance; the uncontrollable wheezing…

I have ice hot needles inside my lungs. I had no idea that cycling in this climate would have such an immediate and catastrophic effect on my pulmonary system – I feel like I got up this morning and smoked forty fags. According to the man in the bike shop around the corner from my house, where I went to buy my helmet, the air is so dry, and so full of dust, that this kind of reaction is normal. He didn’t even crack a cynical smile as I staggered to the counter, gasping and flopping in the manner of a beached pilchard.

It’s the hills, man. The hills are going to be the death of me. The journey itself is quite short – the whole thing, including a 15 minute detour to the bike shop, took 45 minutes, and I walked some of it. What I’m worried about is that one day I will simply slow to a crawl on my way up an incline, and keel over by the side of the road to wait with gratitude for death to take me. Ach (as they say in these parts), at least I will be fit.

My bike, by the way, is a gem. It practically rides itself. It’s by far the best bike I’ve ever owned. And I do love cycling. My favourite part of the journey today was coming over the brow of a hill, and seeing Windhoek laid out in the valley below me. The town is completely surrounded by mountains that are covered in brush and empty of habitation. I don’t know how anyone ever chose it as a site to build a town, but it’s certainly spectacular.

The traffic is not a problem either. For most of my journey it’s very light – traffic in Windhoek isn’t exactly choking up the thoroughfares at the best of times. There are only 250,000 people here, most of them don’t have cars, and the roads are smooth and wide.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter that I feel absolutely battered - I’m free!!!! Wheeeee!!!