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I was recently asked to name my favorite place to relax and clear my head. In the old days before we moved to Africa, I would have answered immediately, “West Virginia.” But now, there are so many places to choose from. Eventually, I selected just one and it is Spitzkoppe, the Matterhorn of Namibia.
I’ll start by telling you a little about the geology and feel of the place and then you can understand more easily why we like it so much. Bernd and I went camping there this weekend (with the dogs) so we also have some recent photos to share.
The landmass of Southern Africa is very old and particularly rich in mineral resources. About 300 million years ago the region that is today known as Namibia was much closer to the South Pole and was covered by huge glaciers. Tectonic movement of plates within the earth’s crust caused it to move further away from Pole about 250 million years ago and then the ice melted, leaving behind glacial debris in valleys and depressions. The climate continued to change from cold and wet to hot and dry, and eventually a desert spread over large parts of the area known as Gondwanaland. Although the greater part of Namibia became covered by sand, outflows of lava emerged when Gondwanaland broke apart. Over time, heavy wind and water erosion sculpted enormous granite domes, twisted towers, and fissured outcrops all over the area, most dramatically along the rocks of Spitzkoppe (1728 meters or 5857 feet high).
Getting to Spitzkoppe requires a good car and a lot of patience, but it’s worth it every time. For miles you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere, until a huge rocky mountain range appears suddenly before your eyes. Almost tree-less, it looks like the entire mountain has been carved from one giant rock. It looks stark, forbidding, and inviting at the same time. A hotel is planned for the area, but right now the only way to stay overnight is to camp. The cost for camping is combined with an entrance fee that you must pay to the local community that manages the site as part of their communal lands. This concept of locally-run tourism aims to bring people into harmony with nature, by creating an incentive for the local population – otherwise very poor and largely unemployed – to make a small profit while preserving the land from overgrazing and hunting.
Our family comes here annually (previously with our children and now by ourselves or with friends). The equivalent of US$12 buys you the privilege of a clean campsite far away from anybody else, great hiking and one of the best views on earth. The harsh environment contains a unique biodiversity, so you must always be on the lookout for small mammals, birds, lizards and snakes – but you’re allowed to take your dogs with you, so for us this makes for a special treat.
The trick when finding a good campsite at Spitzkoppe is to locate one with shade. We’ve camped at about a dozen places around the area by now, and have several favorites. But ever since the Hollywood filming of 10,000BC at Spitzkoppe about a year ago, when the filming crew introduced several herds of zebra and springbok into the area (and consequently fenced off the mountains’ central valley), some of the campsites have been restricted. So this weekend we had to find a new site and eventually did, though the angle of the rock over Bernd’s head made us think that it could fall over any minute.
We arrived in the mid-day heat, so after unpacking we made ourselves comfortable with a stash of Stuart Kaminsky detective novels that I found in a second-hand bookstore in South Africa. (These make for great reads, intertwined juicy tidbits about the ironic contradictions of life in cold-war Russia.) When it cooled down around 4pm we hiked up the backside of Spitzkoppe, our 12 year old shepherd trailing somewhat behind due to his weak hips. We made it about a third of the way to the top (anything further would have required ropes and a climbing guide), and the view was breathtaking. Looking down, our car looks like a tiny speck of white dust.
Although it almost never rains at Spitzkoppe, we found ourselves greeted around sundown by a cold wind and a wave of fog that rolled in from the coast, 100 kilometers (61 miles) away. Whereas we were practically roasting at mid-day, by nightfall we had donned every article of clothing we brought with us – and still we were freezing. Yet, this coastal moisture is what keeps the Namibian desert alive, though it is rare to be seen so far inland. Desert plants and animals survive by absorbing the cloud-like droplets that land on rocks and waxy leaves, coveting every last molecule as the precious life-source that it is.
We crawled early into our tent, but around midnight nature called and I awoke to find a clear sky and full moon. Night-time under a full-moon is my favorite time at Spitzkoppe, so the dogs and I took a stroll in the moonlight, marveling at the mysterious rock-silhouettes, the height of skyscrapers, which surrounded the narrow dirt road. Bernd got up a few hours later for the same reason, but unfortunately for him the fog had returned.
Allow a short digression: Like many small countries, Namibia makes gorgeous postage stamps and sells them to collectors world-wide as a much-coveted source of foreign income. Elsita started our Namibian collection, and Bernd has continued it: we now have every stamp and every first-day cover that this country has ever issued. (That sounds bigger than it sounds but remember, Namibia is only 18 years old.) At any rate, to mark the Millennium, Namibia issued a dual-set -- sunset and sunrise over the Spitzkoppe. What was a great choice!! Usually we are able to see both of these when we camp, but this morning, all we had left was a cool haze. We took a second hike and returned for a late breakfast. Then we had to leave in order to get home in time to cook for fifteen: tonight is our monthly gathering for the Saving Remnant students. We have a guest speaker – a refugee from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide – who will speak about how to keep hope alive in the face of unspeakable terrors.
Other updates: Many of you have asked about Sergio’s new mailing address. Although we know he is getting trained for the Transport Corps someplace in Missouri, we have no address for him at the moment. Nor does he seem to have frequent access to e-mail. Elsita spent a wonderful holiday in Copan, Honduras (see http://moremotion.blogspot.com) and plans to extend her time in Central America by an additional 4-6 months (through May 2009) in order to get in another growing season for the native corn on which she is experimenting. Bernd and I doing well -- juggling our work, my travel and a busy home-life. (We have also started gathering our old diaries onto a blog: check out http://namibiadiaries.blogspot.com. All of our friends and acquaintances in Africa feel totally convinced that Obama will win (I even saw Obama buttons and bumper stickers in Cape Town); we only hope that they are right.
Work-wise, Bernd is teaching four courses at the Polytechnic and has developed quite a following of students who specifically seek out his classes. I recently co-authored a small book with two Namibian memes (traditional women from the north) that teaches orphans living without adults what they need to know about caring for their property, saving and spending money, accessing local services, and parenting younger siblings. It’s a dreadful sign-of-our-times that our assistance to “child-headed households” has come down to a manual (even one that will be translated into the local languages). But soon the memes will begin leading workshops with the young people on these issues, and hopefully they can be linked – at a minimum – to caring neighbors and volunteers for additional support.
This week, too, Catholic AIDS Action (www.caa.org.na) celebrates its tenth anniversary. Who could have imagined a decade ago, when Sr. Dr. Raphaela Händler and I teamed up together, that this organization would become Namibia’s largest non-governmental provider of HIV-related services? But as an indication of just how distorted local thinking has become as a consequence of our donor-driven focus on HIV, a research study was recently launched in Namibia’s far north-eastern region after it was discovered that some local women in their fifties thought they had HIV, when in reality their complaints (heat-flashes, etc) were all menopause-related. HIV was the only disease they were being educated about, so naturally that’s what they thought their symptoms revealed!
Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done. We wish you well, Lucy and Bernd
