As a result, I can now show photos both of pink hair, and of our halloween party, which was a roaring success, by the way.  So I’m told.

We carved a pumpkin, drank many bloody marys, ate ghost shaped crisps, made our guests sick on additive-packed chewy skull shaped sweets, cut our feet on metal confetti shaped like pumpkins, and made everyone who turned up without a costume paint their faces.  Most people’s initial reaction to this was “get away from me, crazy bitches”.  However, as you can see, this soon changed to “Paint me more! I want a spider too!”.  It’s amazing what booze can do for your inner child.

And by the way, I made the red witch’s hat myself, out of facing and red satin, with my own two hands (and my sewing machine).  I am thinking of buying it its own stand.

This time last year, I had just fallen headlong into a love affair with my ex-bloke, who, although a Kiwi, was invited along to the function.  Because I am clearly a disgraceful unwashed plebian, as the country director of a British NGO he felt that admitting that the two of us were an item would damage his reputation as a fine upstanding member of the commonwealth, thereby rendering him incapable of doing his job.  He arrived without acknowledging me, spent the afternoon flitting about being important, and then tried to sidle up to me unnoticed to whisper in my ear that he was about to leave, and could I leave it five minutes before following him out.  God knows why I put up with such ridiculous behaviour in hindsight.  Ah, love is blind.

This year no-one will be able to sidle up to me unnoticed.  I have made sure of this by dying my hair pink in a fit of barefaced stupidity at the weekend.  I don’t know what came over me – I think I just needed to do something I’ve always wanted to do at a time when it wouldn’t much matter.

I think I like it; most people I know like it (including, rather surprisingly, my boss) but the effect is rather startling.  I hope they let me in.  My identity crisis could do with a G&T right now.

I put the mouse on the table with the rest of the animals, took a swig of wine and began a series of dispiriting attempts at fashioning swans.  My triumph with dogs, giraffes and mice made me convinced that this was not outside the limit of my balloon modeling capability.  How wrong I was.  Half an hour later, traumatized by balloons repeatedly exploding in my face at critical moments, I just decided to drink more and forget the swans.

The orphans are going to be so disappointed when they rock up at the fun day demanding swans, or parrots, or bicycles, and I can only bring forth armies of rodents.  All is not lost though – lots of other people at the balloon workshop/Sunday afternoon excuse for a piss-up were much better than me, producing complex masterpieces that wouldn’t look out of place in the local art gallery, so I may just stick to face painting, like last year.

Shebeens are endemic here. Usually small, one room structures with outlandish names, they crop up like mushrooms across urban and rural landscapes. My friend in Opuwo says that there are two sorts of building that are constructed on an almost weekly basis there – churches and shebeens, and there never seem to be too many of either for the general population.

There are two sides of the shebeen story. They are the major form of small business, and believe me, there isn’t much else in the way of enterprise going on. The unemployment rate is extremely high, and for the owners, shebeens pay to feed their families, and to send their children to school.

However, they do contribute considerably, of course, to Namibia’s alcohol problem. They are also considered to be a major factor in the spread of HIV – people go out, they get drunk, they meet someone, they have sex, too drunk and reckless to think about protection. There was a recent outcry in Walvis Bay because children were running to the Mayor’s office to complain about the noise from the shebeens. The question was raised – where are their parents? Well, where do you think?

So in the name of tackling the problem of alcohol abuse, the government has decided to crack down. As the Namibian has pointed out, however, what is the difference between the alcohol consumed at legal shebeens, and that knocked back at illegal ones? It’s widely held that the matter of liquor licenses is simply a revenue-generator for the government.

I don’t know why the shebeen owners who are facing closure can’t go and get themselves a license. They’ve had since 2002 to do it – four years’ notice doesn’t seem unreasonable. Also, it seems to me that this would solve the problem, pretty much. However, they seem to have taken the whole thing very badly, and have made the pilgrimage to Windhoek to protest, spending the money they could have spent on a license on the travel costs. I’m all for the right to protest. No problem there. I just don’t think they have a case.

They have now been camping outside the parliament building for two weeks, during which time, presumably, their businesses are bringing in no money, the local alcoholics are undergoing cold turkey, and their children are going shoeless to school. I drove past them the other day, and they seem to be having lots of fun, shouting, doing laundry, and sitting about in the sun, drinking beer.

Things are getting a bit fraught now, though, because the shebeen owners appear to be treating the parliament buildings with ‘disrespect’, and this is not going down well with the population in general. Bear in mind, this country is relatively newly independent, and its institutions of power are held in high esteem, even if those wielding the power are not.

So, in the opinion of many, Thursday’s slaughtering, dismembering and braaing of a cow on the lawn outside the chamber of representatives was a meal too far.

The view, except for a distant salt pan shining white in the glare of the winter sun, is of scrub and thorn trees. Seen through the filter of ever present grey dust the thorns look as if they are covered in pale blossom. Close up, it’s as if you’re standing on the surface of a deserted but hostile planet.

In the centre of this emptiness stands a building. We pull up outside, and realise that it is a shebeen and liquor store. As I get out of the car, I hear loud voices inside. English voices. Curious, I wander inside, to find a gaggle of San people of assorted ages, ragged and drunk, glued simultaneously to economy size beer bottles, and to the BBC Food Channel. They are learning how to make hazelnut waffles.

As we set up the ’stage’ for the show, people wander over from the shabby collection of huts and corrugated tin shacks that shamble together in the distance. Two mangy dogs lie in the pathetic heat of the sun. I watch as a woman stumbles while pouring neat vodka from a height into the waiting mouth of the man standing next to her. I learn later that he is the representative for this San community. He is staggering drunk at 9.30am. This is the man to whom I should give condoms, and the UNICEF education materials on alcohol and AIDS that I have brought. While thanking me, he drops the papers repeatedly, and they start to blow across the landscape, catching in the thorn trees like so much useless litter.

As the group perform their show, two drunk women wander onto the stage. One of them has left her baby in a pram next to a pile of broken beer bottles the size of a small house. It starts to cry, but I have to give all my attention to a man who repeatedly tells me that his name is John, while tugging at my elbow. I introduce myself several times, each time wishing more fervently that I could leave this place.

I’m not the only one. After the show, a girl in broken shoes approaches me and begs me to find her a better life in Windhoek. She is 16. Her parents are dead, and her uncle will not look after her. She gives me her number and asks me to call someone in the city who can help her. Her name is Lydia, and I don’t know what on earth I can do to help. I wonder if she is now going to be waiting for a miracle that will not happen. As we leave, a fight breaks out. Over the shouting, I hear the rounded vowels of the BBC presenter promising a review round up of London’s best restaurants.

I’m sure that Aminuis is not the most desolate, or depressing place in the world, but it’s the most desolate and depressing place I have ever seen. There is nothing here but poverty and alcoholism. There is no way out. I arrived in my Berghaus fleece and Merrells, looking in from an outsider’s point of view, and even though it breaks my heart, I do know that there’s no way I can hope to understand the crushing hopelessness of life in this place.

It makes me want to cry every time I think about it.

I walk into the deli. When the lady behind the counter turns to me, I smile, and say ‘May I have a bottle of water please?’.

Simple, no?

No.

She looks confused. ‘Pizza?’

I struggle with nausea at the thought of pizza, and thankfully I am triumphant.

‘Water. Please’.

‘Water?’ She looks at me, clearly baffled. I start to wonder if I am asking for something strange.

‘Yes, please’, I say.

‘You want a glass of water?’

‘No, I’d like a bottle of water. From your fridge.’

She smiles at me as if I am an escapee from an institution for the mentally unstable, and disappears into the kitchen. While she is gone, the other lady approaches.

‘What is it you want?’

‘Water please, a bottle of water.’

She immediately goes to the fridge and fetches me a bottle of water, for which she charges me N$5. This makes me very happy, not least because I can rest in the knowledge that it is not me that is deranged.

I open the water with shaking hands, and sip the cold, life-giving liquid. I feel it dribble deliciously directly into my brain.

When I open my eyes the other lady has emerged from the kitchen with a polystyrene cup of tap water, and is standing before me, seemingly at a loss. I raise my cold, cold bottle of water to her, and stagger out into the daylight.

I used to work in the Lebanon. If you’ve never been there, please go. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and people are unfailingly hospitable. As you wonder along Beirut’s crowded corniche of a soft and springlike Sunday morning, you can watch the old men fishing peacefully from the rocks below, or playing chess in the shade of a beach umbrella. Under the palms, the pretzel sellers push their carts, and couples walk arm in arm, a slow romantic promenade. Far off in the distance, above the rising blocks of flats, the mountains range, stately and snow capped. You can be up there in just a few hours, snowball fighting amongst the ancient cedars.

It’s a country of hidden idylls. Bcharre, the birthplace of Khalil Gibran, is a treasure trove of mind-boggling views, situated on the edge of a huge chasm, the terraced edges of which are a miracle of agricultural perseverance. Countless small streams and waterfalls reveal themselves within the wild vegetation. Small, whirling flocks of blue butterflies cluster around tiny flowers. Flock of goats graze under olive trees. There are even a couple of hermits hidden in the hills. The air is so fresh it hurts.

One of my favourite things was sitting on the castle walls in Tripoli, watching the boys train pigeons over the tiled roofs of the ottoman old town, and listening to the bustle of the market below. The pigeons wheel and turn on the tiniest flick of the red flags, eventually being brought into land.

Anyway, I used to take my groups wine-tasting on the edge of the Bekaa Valley. We’d troop down out of the mountains, and wander up to the vineyard. They never minded uncorking a few bottles, so we would sit getting gently drunk. Then we’d all go and spend a fortune in the shop. Especially if you were me, and had to look forward to a week of traipsing through the oenophile’s nightmare that is Syria.

It’s difficult enough to find Lebanese wine at the best of times, and to find one from my very own pet vineyard made me deeply happy with nostalgia.

So we drank it*, against the backdrop of a very fine looking barman. And it was good.

*Yes, yes I know. No more booze. Frankly, I failed.

Twenty minutes later, flushed, sweating and covered in beer and bruises, and was washed up onto the bar, where I flopped happily. I recognised a bloke standing next to me – I saw him at a party a couple of weeks ago, where thanks to some mild mind-altering substances, I was convinced that his dredlocks were the hybrid offspring of a pineapple and a coconut, and was transfixed for hours. I felt the need to explain.

“Hello”, I said. “I saw you at a party the other week. I was a bit stoned, and I thought you had great hair”.

His face froze in shock. “I’m sorry?”

“I thought you had great hair! I was a bit stoned!” I was starting to feel embarrassed, and not a little stupid.

His expression didn’t change.

“You were at a party, and you gave me great head? I’m sure I would have remembered that – are you sure it was me?”

With a fresh insight into the inner workings of the rumour factory, I went back to the dance floor, and surrendered myself to the Cure.

“Ooh,” she cooed, as I walked into the meeting room. “That shirt would make a nice pair of pajamas”. My lovely boss took one look at me and said “Is that a comment on Rachie’s unprofessionalism?” Oh, happy day. Can I go home yet?

Now I feel rumpled and messy, and this is not helped by the presence of what looks like a large grease stain somewhere near the hem. It must have come from my lardy scrambled-egg-and-spinach-muffin breakfast.

So here I am, a professional, 30-something woman, trying to look the part, but failing. Today I have hair that, frankly, wouldn’t look amiss on a crazed, scimitar-wielding homicidal maniac, a long pink crumpled shirt with a stain on it, a big red spot on my cheek, and last night’s red wine still clinging grimly to my lips. The only way I have discovered to get it off is my scrubbing them with a toothbrush, but I was in a desperate state this morning, and couldn’t quite make the effort.

Still, it’s Friday, I’m about to have sushi for lunch and there is a plentiful supply of chocolate biscuits in the office biscuit tin. Things are never as bad as they seem.