In A Pick-up Truck Meant for Two
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Image: Nishant Lalwani
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othing prepares you for Africa. For the thick red dust, the sticky, sultry air that envelopes you, for the white sun that beats down upon every bare shrub, every desiccated branch. Nothing prepares you for how unprepared you will be.
It’s a bit like marriage.
As a little girl, I had been an avid fan of Out of Africa, the film based on the life and writings of Baroness Karen Blixen. The film captures, beautifully, the last exciting time in the last wild place on earth, and it made me feel as if I really missed out on something wonderful by being born too late. I wanted to see the gorgeous vistas for myself, but I never got down to it. Until someone else brought it to me.
Nishant, my then-fiancé, had worked in Africa with the UN, and was intimately aware of her ability to contradict and astonish. We had spirited discussions, in the run-up to our wedding, on how we would do Africa, and we were determined not to be conventional in our approach.
Now he was my husband, and we were here. Him with the certainty that we would “maximise” our Africa experience, by driving 4,000 km through Namibia and then South Africa. Me armed with a Steig Larsson novel, a backpack that weighed more than I did and a firm conviction that he was insane.
At Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, the first thing we did was pick up our gleaming white 4x4 Nissan pick-up truck, who we christened “Walter”. Neither of us had ever driven a vehicle this size before, and we were as terrified as we were excited.
Windhoek sits in a basin between the Khomas Highland, and the Auas and Eros mountains, in almost the exact centre of Namibia. Jonker Afrikaner, a Nama leader, named the area ‘Winterhoek,’ after the farm in South Africa where he was born. Windhoek, or windy corner, is a corruption of this name. It’s home to approximately 200,000 people.
Nishant discovered we had no cable to link our iPod to Walter’s stereo — “Four thousand kilometres and no music? How could this happen?” — and spent the next morning feverishly scouring electronics stores. I took off on a sedate walking tour.
Despite a recent large increase in population, the city centre is clean, mostly trouble-free and full of German-style buildings, a reminder of Namibia’s colonial history. Alte Feste (old fort), once the bastion of German colonists, now houses the National Museum, dedicated to the freedom struggle and independence. You will find yourself remarking over and over, how “un-African” the city is: Wide roads, calm traffic, modern shops and malls, the best hotels in the country.
That evening, we headed toward Etosha National Park, one of Southern Africa’s most important game reserves. Etosha (“Great White Place”) is dominated by a massive mineral pan, part of the Kalahari Basin, the floor of which was formed around a billion years ago. It is vast, barren and breathtakingly beautiful. We camped there for two nights, saw lots of game, and downed several bottles of champagne. Good thing too, because the toilet was outside, in the bush, not something I could deal with sober.
From Etosha, we headed south, towards Damaraland. A short distance down the national highway, we drove through a rather large pool of water. And Walter had a seizure and died. We were in the middle of nowhere. Well, anywhere in Namibia feels like nowhere: It’s twice the size of Germany with one-tenth the population of the Mumbai metro area. You’re alone a lot.
We called the emergency rescue services, and they promised to send help “now.”
Six hours later, we were still waiting.
This is something you should know about Africa: There are three kinds of “now”. The first, most deceptive: “I’ll be there now” (the one we had got); it means “sometime in the next 12-15 hours…perhaps.” The second, which the rescue service gave us on our eighth call: “Just now.” This means about six hours. The version you should persevere towards is the remarkable, double-barrelled “Now now.”
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