We disembarked the ship at 8.30am for the short drive to the airport to board our Cessna single prop aircraft for the 2 hour flight NE across the dessert to Makuti Airstrip that is located on the eastern edge of the Etosha National Park where we were to spend much of the next 4 days exploring the water holes on safari in search of abundant wildlife of all kinds. As you will have gathered from my mobile posting this was to be the trip of a lifetime with some truly magical encounters with the ‘big five’ game – a term that I will explain more about in due course.
Before I begin that story, however, perhaps a short introduction to Namibia would be appropriate. As the title to this posting indicates the Namib is the oldest desert it the world and the word ‘namib’ means ‘place of emptiness’. This is a country of 824,268 sq.km. and a population of 2.1 million so 2.2 people per sq.km. of which 240,000 live in the capital Windhoek. The official language is English but some there are 16 languages and dialects spoken representing 13 ethnic cultures. The adult literacy level is 85% that compares favourably with the poor record in the UK.
Today Namibia is a multi party democracy with an economy based on mining, fishing, tourism – the fastest growing - and agriculture. Diamonds, uranium, copper, lead, zinc, magnesium, cadmium, arsenic, pyrites, silver, gold and lithium are all mined here.
Namibia shares its borders with the Kalahari Desert in the east and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west, with Angola in the north and South Africa in the south. Walvis Bay is the main harbour and was discovered by the Portuguese navigator Diaz in 1487.
An arid country with large tracts of desert, Namibia was made a protectorate of German South West Africa in 1884 – the Germans being rather late in their imperial conquests this region was all that was left since it was thought that there would be little to exploit in this desolate area they were rather left to make what they could of it. In 1920 it was mandated to South Africa by the League of Nations becoming known as South West Africa. South Africa, despite international pressure, continued to administer the country after the ending of the UN mandate in 1964 and only finally agreed to withdraw after several years of fighting by SWAPO guerrillas. Namibia became fully independent in 1990.
The German influence is still strong in terms of the architecture and naming of towns – Swakopmund some 31 km to the north of Walvis Bay is described as “a slice of Germany on the edge of the desert”. It is a seaside resort resembling a Bavarian tone. German and Dutch were rejected as the official language in favour of English to underline the new independence.
The photo is of Dune 7 the largest of the sand dunes that are a characteristic of the area around Walvis Bay but more about the desert in my next posting.
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