Fish River Canyon – Namibia

Rock from Fish River Canyon

 

By Marlene Reid

I had always wanted to go on an overlander trip and when the chance came I grabbed it.  An eight week trip on a truck; starting in Zimbabwe, passing through Botswana and into Namibia, where most of the trip was to take place.  It was interesting to see life from the ‘other side’.  Truckers were not welcome on many sites and had a bad reputation for being filled with unruly, noisy people.  Our first night stop at the Great Zimbabwe Ruins was point in fact.  We arrived at sunset, jumped out and started to put up our two man tents, right next to a caravan outside which was a man sitting having a quiet drink which on seeing us arrive he swallowed quickly, folded his chair, jumped in his car and towed his caravan to the far side of the camp site.  Most camp sites had a special parking place for truckers!

In Namibia on of the places we had on our itinery was Fish River Canyon.

Fish River Canyon is in the South of Namibia in Southern Africa.  It is the largest canyon in Africa as well as the second most visited tourist attraction.  It features a giant ravine in total about 160 kms long and as much as 27 km wide in places and is about 550 metres deep.

Fish River is the longest interior river in Namibia and cuts deep into the plateau which today is dry and stony, sparsely covered with drought-resistant plants.  The river flows intermittently usually flooding in the late summer and the rest of the year is long narrow pools.

At the lower end is Ai-Ais a hot springs resort and camp site where we camped in our truck.  The hot springs were heaven, several of temperatures but most importantly there was plenty of hot water to wash some of our less than fragrant clothing.

It is one of the most popular hiking trails in Southern Africa and has a 2km descent into the floor of the crater.

In the very early morning we had to climb up to the view point to catch the sunrise which was about 4 30 a.m.  This was the most marvellous sunrise I have ever seen.  Unfortunately I only have it on slides.  A climb in the evening to see the sunset was equally marvellous.  The colours of the rocks in the Canyon were hi-lighted and seemed to take their rich colours from the sun itself.  I will never forget it.  This stone which I picked up from the top of the canyon reflects to some degree that range of colours I remember.  I have it on my windowsill as a constant memory.

October 2017

 

 

Making Butter with Mammie

By Venie Martin, October 2017

Daisy and Dolly are their names, our two Fresian cows: mother and daughter.   Shiny black and white coats and soft black eyes like ladies from Arabia.    Morning and night Mammie brings them from the home field to the byre for milking.  In the stall, they chomp on chopped up turnip at one end while Mammie sits on her three legged stool and squeezes out the milk  with her nimble fingers from the swollen udders.  The rhythm of milk squirting into a white enamel bucket is music. In the bucket it collects slowly, warm, white and frothy.

Sometimes as treat, Mammie squeezes the milk directly into my mouth.  Sometimes she misses and we laugh together at the milk dripping down my chin.

When the two buckets are full, the milk is divided.

Some for the rangy farm cats, to supplement their kit-e-kat on legs from the barns.

Some for the little calves.  This is my important job, presenting a small bucket of milk to each calf in turn.  The calf presses its mouth and nose into the milk, coming up for air with a ring of froth around his face. As the bucket is drained, the calf pushes its head downwards and then dunts it as if to say “more, more”.

The rest for the family.

Family milk is taken to the dairy, an outhouse with thick stone walls and a small window covered with a net curtain.  It is a cold place, even in mid-summer and large black beetles (bum clocks) live under the table.  Mammie has improvised a strainer, from an old tin can and two layers of muslin, tied on with a piece of knicker elastic.

The warm milk is passed through the strainer, removing cows’ hairs and bits of grass, as it drips into another large enamel bucket below.

Three pints of strained milk are transferred to Granny’s old delph jug with the picture of Pan playing his pipes to some milkmaids, on the outside.   This is for the house – for drinking, for tea and for making rice puddings.

The morning and evening milk remaining in the large bucket is placed in the separator.  This device has a large steel vat, under which sits a complicated system of funnels and two long curving steel exit pipes.  Mammie  turns the handle and the milk sloshes around in the vat.  Faster and faster.   Sometimes, when she was not too busy, she lets me turn the handle too but it is quite hard work and I get bored after a few turns.

Suddenly liquid appears from the exit pipes, one pouring out cream and the other skim milk.  The cream is thick and gooey and comes out in a slow, oily stream dropping into a large crock. I am allowed to dip my fingers in the stream of cream and lick them. The skim milk is watery and pale blue coloured and collects in a small bucket.  Nearby in their sty, the pigs grunt hysterically as they hear the separator and knew the skim milk is for them.

The next ritual is to wash and sterilise all the utensils we have used.

First we wash them in soapy water and then scald them with boiling water, carried to the dairy in two large black cast iron kettles , kept constantly boiling on the kitchen range.  When they have cooled a little I am allowed to take apart the ten little funnels inside the separator and wash each one. Then I arrange them in a pyramid to dry on the window ledge – four in the bottom row, three on the next, then two and then one.

When she has collected three or four days cream, Mammie is ready to make butter.  First she transfers the cream from the crocks into a large heavy glass churn.  Inside the churn are three flat paddles of steel which are attached to a rotor underneath. Mammie turns the handle and the paddles in the churn rotate.   It’s hard work as the cream is thick and resistant.

Through the glass we can see the cream flushing past the paddles and creating whirlpools.  Very suddenly, a few curdles of bright yellow butter appear, and as the beating continues, these are joined by more and more curdles floating on top of the buttermilk.  Granny always warns Mammie there is a critical point at which the beating has to stop, or the butter will be spoiled.

Then she takes the lid off the glass churn and lifts the butter carefully out on to a specially sterilised wooden board with little drainage channels round the edges.  She presses it with her knuckles, like kneading bread, and as she does this, the buttermilk between the curdles is pressed out.   Sometimes she added salt at this point.

When there is no more moisture in the butter, she divides the pile into pieces about the size of a fist, ready for the butter mould. This is a wooden cylinder with a disc inside it which can be pulled up and down by a handle on one side of the disc.   On the side of the disc with no handle, there’s an engraving of a thistle flower and two leaves etched into the wood.  Mammie presses the butter down into the butter mould tightly so that the oily butter goes right into the grooves.

( the original mould has been lost; this one is from E-bay – 77 pounds!)

 

When the mould is full, she leaves it sit for a few minutes while we share some buttermilk and Marietta biscuits.  There is no conversation. There is no need for it.

When the butter has set, she turns the mould upside down and presses the butter out on to a sheet of butter paper.  The best part is when she removes the disc from the butter and displays the pattern of the thistle on the top.  If a thistle leaf is broken and she has to sculpt a replacement.

If the butter is to be sent to the village shop for sale, she does not use the mould.  Instead, she uses two wooden paddles, like miniature cricket bats.   They have ridges on one side so that she can make lines or criss-cross patterns on the butter surface. She turns the lumps of butter into ingots of gold. Each one is wrapped carefully in butter paper and placed on a tray for sale.

Father takes them to the village shop in his old Morris Minor car.

My father always said Mammie made the best butter in the county.

 

Venie Martin, October 2017

 

 

The Namib Lucky.

By Tom Adair,  October 2017

Namibia is vast, an empty land crammed with birds of passage.

It lures the eye. Its countless migrations–of precious and rare endangered lichens, of tiny flowers in a vastness of desert, of spores and seeds, of birds and peoples—is a kite ride of swirling adventures. Its dozen tribes are mostly nomadic. The breezes of centuries have taken them where they will. Territorial disputes are even scarcer than the rare Damara tern.

First day in Swakopmund. First light. I lie in bed as a grainy grey shadow crosses the thatch of our nest-like chalet which teeters stork-like on rickety stilts above the reeds of a lagoon. Beyond it, visible, are the freezing Atlantic ocean and Walvis Bay. I watch as pelicans drift in pairs on the watery glass of the sheltered lagoon and think of the sailors who died on the proximate Skeleton Coast, wrecked and thrashed by belligerent storms, washed up and baked by the merciless heat, their lonely bones picked bare by birds, and parched so white they disappeared like powdery ghosts in the sand-blown brilliance of the desert.

“So, where you come from,” asks Lucky, flashing his melon-slice smile, bringing us breakfast. “Ireland’s north coast,” is my wife’s quick reply. Lucky thinks about this as if looking for hidden meaning. “How many tribes you got there?” he says. And when she answers “Only two,” he looks disappointed, as though we are seriously deficient. We change the subject, asking advice about where to go.

The small town of Swakopmund is Namibia’s premier holiday spot with strong echoes of its German colonisation during three decades, covering 1884 to 1914. Bavarian architecture rises up impeccably to dominate the tight grid of quiet streets which are nowadays a shopping opportunity filled with galleries, cafes, restaurants and bijou hotels.

The place has an alpine look. We will save it for afternoon. Our morning lure is Walvis Bay, due south on a road of such sinuous curves and racetrack smoothness that it tempts me into recklessness. Lines of breakers, white, tempestuous, crash on the beach and claw at the edge of the Namib Desert. My wife doesn’t speak. Perhaps it’s my driving. But something trancelike has occurred, absorbing the disappeared horizon, the merging soft grey of sky and sea.

In just ten minutes, we spot a flock of migrating flamingos, already high-stepping through tidal glitter. Aloof, precariously balanced, they dip to feed. Leather backed turtles are known to come here, to feast on jellyfish shoals, and on calmer days, farther out, far beyond the ribs of abandoned boat wrecks, kayaking tourists sometimes feast too, on winter sightings of killer whales.

Coarse sand is flung against our windscreen. I cut the wipers. We stop. Take pictures. Run for cover. In my mind I imagine I hear two bemused flamingos, nodding sagely in our direction, saying “Look, the first human beings of the season. Did you see them get back in their shell?” And then we drive off.

Deterred by the weather we make for town, take lunch in a tea shop then wander the streets: the Banhof, Woermann Street, then Bismarck Street, past the Secret Garden Guesthouse–ah the potency of names–to the ocean-view Schweizerhaus Hotel where someone in uniform casually mentions Peter’s Antiques at 24 Moltke Street. “The very best shop in Africa for artefacts,” they say. I’m a sucker for souvenirs. My wife knows where we are headed.

Outside, a thick mist has sneaked in from the ocean, making a ghost of the Lutheran church spire, dulling the green and cream magnificence of the Hohenzollern Building, but not quite obliterating the sign just across the road for Peter’s Antiques.

We enter tentatively. Africa fills our vision. These first impressions suggest an emporium of grot. An Aladdin’s dumping ground of objects from which the genii must surely have fled. The middle aged owner introduces himself: “I am Manfred.” He speaks stilted English with a clipped, almost Afrikaans accent. “Look around. View every room. If it’s too big to carry we can mail it to you anywhere in the world.”  He leaves us to lose ourselves.

On the walls are dozens of masks, leering, inscrutable, some are goat-like with raffia beards, others inward. Hardwood spears and lethal-tipped assagais stand in corners. Body length shields, oval or ribbed, some with carved decorations look recently used. There, on the spatulate end of a blow pipe I finger small teeth marks. All around us, in every room, in each alcove or cranny, shelves and tables hold hundreds of objects: functional pottery, neck garlands, ankle bells, musical instruments, tiny figurines carved from acacia wood or ebony, metal animals, rusted, decorative, looking at us.

I stare towards the shadowy ceiling. Manfred thinks I am looking for cameras. “Yes.”–he addresses my unasked question. “People kept stealing things. Too easy. All these small items. Taken away to foreign places. It had to stop.” He sidles towards us. “We had a witch doctor in. A day was all he took to give us protection, to curse each thief. He didn’t come cheap.” He directs our attention towards one wall on which there are envelopes and letters, with many international postmarks, stamps from all around the globe, and there, from those sometimes crumpled letters as we read them, doing our best to decipher smudges, shaky scrawls, in different inks, a few of them typed, others printed, many in English, Spanish, Italian, one in Finnish, and some we can’t read, comes the same crie de coeur: the sender’s confession. I took this or that. I am very sorry. I am returning it herewith. Since the day I stole it from your store bad luck has followed me.

Some told stories of wrecked careers, broken relationships, sudden illnesses, a car crash, the loss of limbs, a terminal unexpected illness, all on the heels of their misdemeanour. “Now,” says Manfred, “nothing walks.”

We wander in silence for maybe five minutes. Touching the merchandise with care. My wife lifts a tiny metal bird. It is priced at a pittance. “I rather like this,” she says. She places it in my palm. It stands there wobbling. Lost yet impudent. Beady eyed, its body protected by a studded metallic shell, the undersides rusting. “It has a story to tell,” she says. “And it makes me smile.”

When she mentions the smile, I think of Lucky. His African charm, his disappointment at our tribal deprivation. And I smile too, and even Manfred is smiling, broadly, as she pays him, holding his hand out.

And this is the story told by Lucky, the name we gave him. He sits by my fireside still looking querulous, not to be messed with, a little unsteady. Namib Lucky, bringer of smiles.

Tom Adair.     October 2017