Arriving at the guest house

Flying into Windhoek airport was a strange experience. The runway was out in the middle of the savannah and it was totally deserted. There was literally only one other plane on the tarmac and we taxied right up to the terminal to get to the passport control. We just had to walk about 20 meters over little zebra crossing and through some glass doors. Since this is “German Africa” everything was spotless and well organized

The night I arrived there was an unseasonal thunder storm. Wet season is usually November and December so the locals were a bit mystified as to why it would be raining in September.

The whole drive from the airport I had the usual “first day at school” nerves. What will it be like? Will they like me? Will they be weirdoes? Will I be welcome? What if I make a bad first impression with my jet lag and fetid stench from two days without washing?

I arrived at the guest house around 7:

30pm and was greeted warmly by Leon, the assistant manager. It was already dark as he showed me to my room which turned out to be an annex to the saddlery. I would call it a “stone hut”. The walls inside and out are raw river stones held together with cement. It’s perfectly nice and a little rustic, but has a modern bathroom and lovely hot and cold running water and electric lights. The guest rooms are much posher, but I’m not spending $200/night so I can’t complain. I then went to meet the folks for dinner at the main house. They were thankfully very welcoming and I was introduced to Ali (the wildlife volunteer) and a couple of the staff. The bar/lapa/dining area was beautiful, dimly lit with hurricane lamps with a long table set up for the 16 guests to enjoy a communal dinner. The bar is a gorgeous, organic space using raw wood with a three foot high statue of an elephant (which is a little strange because we don’t have elephants around here). In a desperate attempt to make a good first impression I chatted with the guests and tried to ignore the fact that my ankles were swollen and one stiff breeze and I would have fallen over fast asleep. I wanted to jump in and appear useful straight away, so I helped with the dinner service. Moving around also helped me stay awake. This was my first introduction to the Germanity of Namibia. The guests range from skinny young Germans, to pudgy mid-aged Germans right up to really fat old Germans. For dinner we had spaetzel, red cabbage and roast oryx. The entire table was speaking German except for a couple up my end of from South Africa who were speaking English. The South African made a comment that nearly had me fall off my chair. It wasn’t his fault really. He had a couple of daughters in their early twenties and obviously was a protective parent. I was telling him about my trip to The Gambia and he said “how do you stop your parents from having heart attacks when you go away?” I had to stop myself from saying “well, honestly, I haven’t been very successful in that regard”. I finally staggered back to my stone hut in the saddlery around 10pm and fell fast asleep. I still hadn’t seen anything in the daylight. When I finally saw Namibia by the morning light, I was stunned by the view out of my bathroom window. Over my sink is a large picture window that looks out over the stables and past the river bed and onto the Khomas mountains. It is the only window in my stone hut so I am tempted to set up my office in the bathroom. It’s breathtaking. Maybe I’ll just spend a lot of time brushing my teeth and gazing out the bathroom window. Breakfast on the terrace in the main farmhouse reminded me of a quote from Fawlty Towers. No, the owner wasn’t like Basil Fawlty and the guest house is very well run. But the quote goes something like “well, what do you expect to see out of a Torquie hotel window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? Or wildebeest sweeping majestically . . . . “ As I sat and drank my coffee looking over the dry river bed, a herd of wildebeest came sweeping majestically by. Because of the unseasonal rain, there was some water in the river bed and it attracted the animals. It was a fine greeting to southern Africa. Over breakfast I was chatting to a German tourist and we decided to take a hike together to the Andreas dam There are about 20km of marked hiking trails around the lodge. The dam was set up as a water hole for the game animals. The track ran through a gully near and we came across an eland that appeared to have been unsuccessfully shot. There was what looked to be a bullet wound in its rump. It was slowly dying on the trail. There wasn’t much we could do but leave it there and let the owner of the farm know. In the afternoon I went on my first cheetah feeding. As long as there is space in the safari vehicle and I’m not taking it away from a paying guest, then I’m allowed to do pretty much any activity on the farm. The cheetah feeding is the farm’s major tourist attraction. The owner rescued a couple of “trouble cheetahs” that would otherwise have been shot and put them in a large 10 acre enclosure. Those 2 cheetahs then had 4 cubs which are now fully grown. That day a whole new busload of tourist arrived for the cheetah drive so we had three vehicles and about 30 tourists all with their big lensed cameras and safari binoculars. The cheetahs rely on the meat from the people, so they are always happy to see the safari vehicles and prance around the jeeps with no problem. They would literally come within a foot of the jeeps, jump at thrown meat, have little cheetah cat fights over a prime cut and even let the professional cheetah feeder pat them on the head. The tourists lap it up and it is almost impossible not to get clear, close up and impressive photos of animals that are usually allusive in the wild. It really was quite a spectacle. At 5pm when the sun isn’t so hot, I went on a game drive. For two hours we drive all over the farm and try and spot animals. I wouldn’t say the farm is teaming with wildlife, but we did see two giraffes, a couple of ostriches, eland, oryx, warthogs and lots of little animals. The other volunteer is from England and is teaching the local guides how be do a more professional job as wildlife guides. She is giving them lessons but doesn’t think they are putting much into practice. I’m going to spy for her and go on the game drives and take notes on their progress. She knows that if she is there “assessing their performance” they will put on a show but is doubtful that they are otherwise putting her lessons into action. They really do need to learn a lot about enthusiasm and how to interact with the guests. Of course there are cultural barriers where they don’t want some white person appearing out of nowhere and telling them what to do when they have been doing the same job for years and as long as they don’t get fired, they don’t see a problem. I start teaching at the kindergarten on Monday. I heard from Justina (who works in the kitchen) that the kids are very excited to have a teacher again. The last volunteer teacher left 3 weeks ago and there hasn’t been any school since. Part of my “additional project” is going to be writing a genealogy/ethnography of the local staff. They live in staff housing behind the main guest house. I think they will be a lot more fascinating that the hordes of fat Germans who come through here. I am really looking forward to working on that, but first I have to gain the trust of locals so they will talk to me. At the moment they seem a little stand-offish. I think working at the school with their children will be a good way of slowly gaining their trust. I’m also going to do an HR project with the staff. I’m going to get them to set some long term goals. Do they want to get further training? Do they want to move up to a different job? Do they want to go back to school? How can we make that happen for them? Once again I may find some cultural barriers. Maybe surviving and having a decent life is enough? Maybe they simply don’t share the ambitiousness of Americans? And surely there is nothing wrong with that. Maybe I’ll find that there are some hidden ambitions that I can help with. The owner, Johann, is really quite jolly and personable. I thought he was going to be a big of a curmudgeon, but I guess he just came across that way in e-mails. His family has been here since 1942 and his parents are buried in a beautiful cemetery near the river bed. He obviously wants the best for his employees and all their families who rely on him for their livelihood. He even set up the kindergarten for their children because the nearest school is too far away. It does all seem a little be feudal with the lord in the big stone house on the hill and his peasants in “employee housing” on the flat lands below. However, he has built them nice houses (as good as my stone hut), so I guess he is a benevolent feudal lord.