Na, Maybe, Ya!

Namibia is a country I had wanted to visit for a number of years. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, when it was still South-West Africa, a United Nations protectorate illegally occupied by South Africa, I had offered my services to the United Nations in its effort to bring it to independence. And in the early nineties, I was promised a short-term contract there which never came. I had also seen and read about the Skeleton Coast, and the exploits of Des and Jen Bartlett in search of elephants and lions along that famous stretch of desert coastline. So, it was with eager anticipation that I waited to board a Namibian Airlines jet in Frankfurt for the overnight journey from Europe.

“You’ll like it Harry: It’s just like Arizona!” That’s what an American friend of mine, who had completed a number of missions to Namibia, said about the country when I told him over the phone I was going there. He calls me “Harry” as a nickname. He also described Windhoek, the capital city, as “a pretty little town, very Germanic”, because of the country’s German past: for a time before the first world war it was a German colony. Still, until one actually visits a country, it is rather difficult to imagine what it is going to be like. In any event, I arrived at Frankfurt airport for the midnight flight reasonably optimistic for the first leg of my African voyage, the Namibian and South African parts in particular. However, I confess to having had deep misgivings about flying Air Namibia all the way to southern Africa: African airlines in general have a wretched reputation for service, their safety record is nothing to write home about, and there would be no frequent flier points on this trip, whereas with Lufthansa I would have picked up a whole packet of points. But, in the final analysis, I had no choice regarding the itinerary and choice of airline: everything was pre-arranged by my client in Brussels, without any consultation.

I arrived in the waiting lounge at Frankfurt airport naively thinking that I was headed for black Africa. Well, this may have been so, but judging by the predominant colour of the passengers, I really was headed for Arizona. I would hazard a guess that ninety percent of the people in that waiting room were white, including the airline ground staff. It turned out that the plane’s ultimate destination was Jo’burg, with just a whistle stop in Windhoek. I would have thought that most whites would prefer to travel either South African Airways or Lufthansa, depending on their nationality ( and maybe even their frequent flier programs! ), but not this crowd. Later, when I asked a fellow passenger about this, he explained that Air Namibia offered the cheapest fares. And as for the safety element, I was told that Air Namibia was operated by Lufthansa. In this way, I got my first surprise about Namibia before even setting foot in the country.

On the run to Windhoek, which transpired without incident and in relative comfort. My travelling companions were a white South African couple returning home from vacation in Germany. The gentleman was an enormous, good-natured, loquacious chap in his late fifties or early sixties; he was sitting next to me. His wife was a quiet, unassuming lady, somewhat petite. He had emigrated from Germany and she from England about twenty-five years earlier. He told me that they had two grown up children, and that he and his wife lived in the suburbs of Jo’burg. He had his own small business. The man saw his role as one of educating me into the reality of Namibia. To be more precise, he still called it South-West Africa, its old colonial name. Like my American friend Tom, this sweating, out of breath man assured me that I would like it there. He told me I would not like the heat there, which is constant ( in this he was way off the mark ), but that otherwise everything was very efficient, because, in his words, “We are still in control there”.

I could not believe my ears. Who, I thought to myself, is “we”? Was it the royal “we”? Was he referring to white South Africans, or was he perhaps referring to whites in general. I did not have the heart to ask him what he really meant. I did not want to get into an argument with him; nor did I think it really mattered, since I didn’t like any interpretation which could be placed on his words. But what irked me most about his statement was its arrogant assumption that we, he and I and his wife and all the white passengers aboard flight #845, for that matter, were part of some great big club like the Ku Klux Klan. He said it so matter-of-factly that there seemed no point in challenging it. It was almost as if he had looked out the window and said “It’s dark outside”. I could see already that this was going to be a difficult trip, and that the apartheid spirit was alive and well in this man’s heart. The fact that he seemed like such a nice guy otherwise made it especially hard to swallow. He even gave me his busy card and invited me to his home in Jo’burg whenever was in the area. Thanks, but no thanks.

Flying over Namibia in the light of dawn, all I could really see of this enormous land was sand and dry river beds. As the plane touched down on the tarmac, a seven week southern Africa adventure was about to begin.

African airports are very revealing. Namibia’s principal airport on the outskirts of the capital, Windhoek, is a tidy little place, but the slowness of the luggage to appear on the carousels ( at least forty five minutes ), the lack of air conditioning even though you are in the middle of the desert, and the bureaucratic insolence of the clerks at the bureau de change remind you that this is indeed Africa. I have arrived. Standing in line for foreign exchange, a black man jumps the queue; I guess he thinks he is entitled to preference, because this is his country. I protest, for one obvious reason: I got there first. He relents. Welcome to Africa, where dog eats dog, and he who is fittest survives.

A SADC representative ( SADC stands for Southern Africa Development Community, the people we are doing this study for ) is there to greet us. Actually, ‘greet’ is not quite the right term for it. What he really does is pump my hand, grin from ear to ear, and plunk a manila envelope full of briefing documents in my arms. The message here is simple: you are here to work, so let’s not waste time with formalities. The man at the end of the handshake is Ole, a six foot, 70 kilo, beer-bellied, bearded Icelandic peasant around forty years of age, with a booming voice, a good disposition and a drinking problem.. I can see right away that this trip is going to present a challenge. We are then shepherded into two cars for the ride into town. A family of monkeys sits by the side of the road, staring at us with indifference as we pass. I am struck by two things: the cleanliness and the proliferation of English signs. I learn later that English is an official language here. Namibia is also a member of the Commonwealth, alongside Canada, Australia, and many other countries, including black African states with a British colonial past. It is almost as if the powers that be were saying, “Hey, wait a minute! So what if we were not a British colony; we want to be treated as if we were one anyway”.

The peculiar tapestry of Namibia was revealed very quickly when we were dropped off on our ride from the airport at the Thuringer Hof Hotel in downtown Windhoek. This is indeed Little Germany or Little Austria, wherever the owners were from originally . With its cross and timber exterior, beer garden, and bratwurst and sauerkraut on the restaurant menu, one could be forgiven for thinking one was back in the old country. It was a nice enough place: not too lavish and a bit old-fashioned. I thought it was reasonably priced at about fifty US dollars per night, until I found out that a waitress works about 10 hours per day, six days per week, for the equivalent of about seven hundred dollars per year. No wonder one of my breakfast waitresses looked thrilled when I left a hefty tip for her on the last day of our week-long stay. Nor did she seem to mind when I asked her to share it with her colleagues, most of whom were standing idly by. In this institution at least, the staff were polite, and they seemed genuinely friendly, which cannot be said for many West African countries I have visited.

If Ole, our Icelandic minder, was gruff and boisterous, then his black Namibian counterpart, Mr. ?, was formally polite and taciturn. Like Ole, he was a big man of around forty, and he did have a certain amount of bearing. The trouble was, he had some sort of limp, with the result that he was always shuffling along, as if he was dragging some sort of imaginary bag. He told me that he had been a soldier in the army of liberation. I asked if that was how he got his limp, and he said that no, he had had polio as a child. Apparently he had been given this position as a reward for his efforts in the colonial struggle. He certainly was not appointed because of any knowledge he had of the fishery. If the truth be known, Mr. X was totally incompetent. The best that could be said about him was that he get up, walk around and stare out the window during important meetings we had; the worst thing that he slurped his soup, ate like a pig, and was always late for meetings. He also used to like to throw his weight around when other Africans were present. And whenever he thought a black waitress would make a mistake or not bring his food quick enough, he would give her a dressing down which invariably started mockingly with the words “My sister...” It was always “My sister, this is not what I ordered!, or “My sister, where is my coffee? Bring it to me right away”. It was hard to tell if he was joking, or whether this was some sort of greeting left over from the liberation struggle. More often than not, a waitress would just laugh it off. I had to teach him to say please whenever he wanted something at the dinner table, and thank you when he got it. In fact, his ignorance ran so deep it was almost worthy of respect.

And yet, he had his gentler side as well. I asked him if he happened to know a Namibian acquaintance of mine from my years in Geneva. His name was Mr. Waraka, and he was quite a fixture around the Law Library at the UN European HQ, as well as in the newspaper room of the Graduate Institute of International Studies. At the time ( this was back in the late seventies ), Dr. Waraka was what the French evocatively call ‘apatride’, or a stateless person. He was a very quiet individual, soft-spoken, and he had a very dignified air about him. To my astonishment, Mr. X did in fact know him; apparently they were from the same village. I was dying to hear what had happened to Waraka after all these years, because when I knew him he was already in his late forties or so, and that was almost two decades ago. Had he died, I wondered? Had he gone back to Namibia after it became independent in 1990? What had become of him. Mr. X was able to assure me that Waraka had indeed ‘come back’. In fact for several years he had been Namibia’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, and was just now preparing to come back to Windhoek! Mr. X knew all this apparently because he and Waraka regularly spoke on the phone. He said that Waraka was always asking about news from their village of origin. News of Mr. Waraka’s whereabouts pleased me greatly, for here was a man who had wiled away half of his adult life in exile in Switzerland, living in obscurity. And then finally his motherland becomes independent and he ends up representing his country at the UN. Wow!

There was not all that much to see or do in Windhoek; the hottest items in town are the Herrero women from the north of the country who can be seen walking up and down the sidewalks in their colourful costumes, a hangover from the German colonial era. According to Martina, their dresses are in the style of nineteenth century German nannies. Other than that, Windhoek is basically an administrative centre, with every second building housing a government ministry. But it is a nice place in which to work for a while. When I was there in late July and early August the weather was lovely; it was springtime in the southern hemisphere, and the mornings were quite chilly. Every day was filled with beautiful sunshine, and things never got too hot. In my spare time I would go for runs, window shop, or people gaze. Their was an air of real prosperity about the place. About half the people in the streets were white. There was very little evidence of overt racism. Nevertheless, I could see what my South African companion on the airplane meant when he said that “We are still in control here”, for whites seemed to occupy the best houses and drive the flashiest cars. On my early morning runs by the railway station I would see this typically African phenomenon of trucks transporting dozens of black labourers to work; they would be huddled together on the open flatbed of the vehicle. It always seemed to me that they were tied up with rope and were on there way to a public execution.

Every night our group would go the same Texas imitation restaurant for supper. It was called Spur. It was evidently part of a chain owned by South Africans. We found another one of these at Jo’burg airport, with the same decor and an identical menu. Everything was ‘white’ in these establishments, from the waiters to the choice of drinks to the canned music coming through the loudspeakers. Namibia was a fresh, young country, and it seemed to attract a number of young, and some not-so-young foreigners. Most of the younger visitors were South Africans eager to explore a bit of frontier not far from home. Many of the older visitors were foreign investors and Consultants, determined to fill the tremendous appetite for foreign capital and expertise in the drive to develop. Because for all the apparent prosperity of Windhoek, with its paved streets, abundance of shops and restaurants, and neat, suburban-style homes, this was still one of the poorest countries on earth, with an average annual per capita income of around five hundred dollars.

I had mixed feelings about what was happening to Namibia. On the one hand there was an air of tolerance and freedom in the country. Foreign investment was starting to come in, even though the government of Sam Njoma was socialist. But the government did not seem to have its priorities set right. Windhoek itself was testament to a bloated civil service and bureaucracy; there was much pressure to stack ministry payrolls with illiterate former freedom fighters. Unfortunately, I did not see much evidence of a desire to improve the lot of the common man. The country is very rich in mineral and other resources, much of which are untapped. The government controlled much of that wealth, but again, the proceeds had not yet filtered down to the people. Diamonds alone must have filled public coffers to overflowing, and uranium was another big ticket item; but where did all the profits go from these ventures? The country seemed to be in the clutches of corrupt government ministers and officials, in cahoots with a bunch of fast-talking snake oil salesman from South Africa and other foreign parts.

Foreign fisheries consultants, for example, had descended on the country like vultures. Word had got around that Namibia had a lovely climate, beautiful scenery, and lots of fish offshore that needed to be regulated. So, soon after independence, every failed fisheries expert from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Great Britain, Germany and the Nordic countries seemed to be trying to land a cushy, long-term posting in this part of the world. South Africans would have been the natural first choice for an assignment, but South Africans were by and large persona non grata as a result of the deadly war launched against South West Africa by the apartheid regime in Pretoria. Thus, non-Africans gravitated to the region. There were small fortunes to be made here in jobs paid for by the FAO, UNDP, and national aid-granting institutions of the donor countries. The standard of living was high and the cost of living was generally low. Compared to other African countries, crime was insignificant, the education system was adequate, and when you got bored you could always slip over the border into South Africa for a little bit of excitement. Meanwhile, Namibia itself was a touch of paradise, with plenty of mountains for hiking, swollen rivers for kayaking, and abundant wildlife both along the coast and in the interior.

Word about Namibia’s idyllic status was getting out. Although it had only become independent in 1992, tourism was already making a sizeable contribution to the country’s economy. All of a sudden, Namibia was becoming an ‘in’ place to be. South Africans flocked to the beaches in their four-wheel drives to engage in angling, an increasingly popular recreational activity. The country is a vast one; with a population of only two million it is largely uninhabited and unspoiled. In addition, there are plenty of national parks.

I got a small taste of the good life in Windhoek when I went running with the Hash Hash Harriers one zany evening. A vestige of British colonial times, when RAF officers stationed in the Orient would go for a group run and follow it up with a ‘joint’, ‘hash’ clubs are now ensconced all over the globe. They normally meet once a week for a run, which is now followed by a beer. Originally this was an all male affair, but the Windhoek club was an exception, with about as many men as women in the group. I had heard that these runs could be loads of fun, but the one I went on was completely ridiculous. First, it started too late; around six thirty. This gave us only about half an hour of daylight. Second, the object of the running seemed to be to find some object on the ground; once that was found then we would all scurry off in search of another object planted somewhere else. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. So, although I ended up running at least seven or eight miles, it was not continuous running, which I like. But, everyone else seemed to enjoy it. The best part was meeting the group before and after the run.

That particular week the group met at the home of an American named Frank. Frank had his own computer business, and owned or rented this lovely house perched on the side of a hill with a beautiful view of Windhoek and the mountains beyond. Three or four of the other members were Americans as well, including two very friendly secretaries from the U.S. embassy in town. In addition, there was an Australian from his High Commission, a New Zealander in the fisheries business, plus two Germans: Wolfgang, who invited me along on the run, and Jurgen, from the European Union office in town. Funnily enough, we had a meeting with Jurgen on our first day in Windhoek, at which time I found him very stiff and “Prussian”, even though his English was excellent. After hours, however, in civvies ( actually running shorts and T shirt! ) he was an altogether different person. That’s one of the great things about running: it’s a real leveler. Social occasions like these are precious to me on African trips. There is just no substitute for chatting with like-minded people over a soft drink and snacks when you are half a world away from home.

I get terribly lonely on these assignments far from home. The work is what sustains me, but when that is put aside for the day there is usually precious little to do. I go for walks morning and evening, and I read anything I can get my hands on, local and especially international papers. But if it were not for the BBC World Service which I tune in to on my portable short wave receiver, I would go completely nuts. Put simply, this is the best damned source of news and current affairs anywhere on the planet, twenty-four hours per day, free of charge! You can get it virtually anywhere, and at any time of day, in English. In fact, it is so good I use it as my primary source of news at home in Canada. I know I am not alone: a friend of mine in England, for instance, sleeps with the BBC World Service entering his head via headphones, all night long! Apparently, according to his wife, he has been doing this for years. Somehow the couple still managed to have three kids. I am not that outrageous. But when I am on mission in the Arctic or Africa I get really hooked on it; I will often spend a whole evening lying on the bed in my hotel room with the ‘Beeb’ on. I suppose in a way it is my lifeline to the rest of the world; it also helps me to forget that I am in a crummy hotel room in a boring city in a strange country miles from nowhere.

Another thing I am in a habit of doing while on mission is to seek out the local Roman Catholic Church. I believe it was Graham Greene who said he always felt at home anywhere in the world where people made the sign of the cross. I know the feeling. There is something very reassuring and comforting in being able to walk in to a church on a Sunday morning and participate in a mass that is for all intents and purposes being celebrated in other churches around the world, including our own parish of Blessed Sacrament in The Glebe, Ottawa. I have had this same feeling in Morocco on business, and in Brisbane, Australia while on holiday with my wife. In the case of both Brisbane and Windhoek, I was visiting cathedrals, no less! Sometimes I will introduce myself to the priest celebrating the mass after it has ended. I have never actually introduced myself to members of the congregation, but it is nice to know that I could if I desperately needed to talk to someone. The downside to these church visits tends to be that I imagine the congregation all going home to a nice family meal, whereas I can only go back to a soulless hotel room. C’est la guerre, as we say in English.

Ten days in Windhoek veritably flew by. The daily routine of meetings was broken only by a quick, one day excursion to the coastal fishing community of Luderitz. To get there we rented a Cessna airplane. Six of us flew in this noisy, cramped little machine. It was about a two hour flight in each direction. Our chartered plane was only authorised for visual flying, which meant that we could not leave Windhoek until just after sunrise at 7 AM, and we would have to be back by nightfall, which occurred around 6:30 PM. ( It took some time to get used to the fact that the days were so short at that time of year in the southern hemisphere, quite the opposite of what I am used to in the northern hemisphere, with our long summer nights ). This meant that we had a pretty tight schedule in Luderitz, with just about enough time for three or possibly four appointments. The scenery more than outweighed the discomfort felt: it was breathtaking. The pinkness of the sunrise, the grey morning mist over the beige -coloured sand of the Namib desert, plus the mountains here and there which looked like sphinxes, made it all a memorable journey. One and one half hours into the flight the outline of the coast appeared, the dark blue waters of the south Atlantic meeting the sandy shoreline.

From the air Luderitz reminded me very much of an Arctic community; no Arctic community in particular, just any old Arctic community. There are, for instance, thirty-four Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic, and all but one of them is on the coast. Luderitz could have been any one of them. What Luderitz and the Arctic have in common, in addition to the coastal aspect, is the barrenness of their location. Most of the Arctic is, in fact, a desert, and a sizeable portion of the region is called the Barren Lands. Well, in Namibia, same thing: barren lands virtually everywhere. The lack of trees, in particular, is something I could never put up with in either the Arctic or parts of Africa like this. It makes me feel naked. Funny thing is, the coastal waters off both the Arctic and Africa are teeming with life: the cold waters in both regions support large quantities of a relatively few species of fish. And like the Arctic, there is a significant seal population around Luderitz. Not only that, but seal hunting is an annual activity in these parts. I could not see seals first hand in the limited time I was there, but I got some nice postcard shots of them lying on rocks.

Luderitz is a very special place. As you fly in we saw numerous fishing boats in the cape-shaped harbour. Right by the airport is Kolmanskop ghost town, an abandoned mine site that looks like a relic from a Hollywood western. The town itself is replete with German period architecture, and the main street is called Bismark Strasse! We were here to talk with the regional fisheries inspector, visit the big Pescanova fish processing plant located on the outskirts of town, as well as the maritime training institute. I was looking forward to these meetings after ten days talking with paper shufflers in the capital city, Windhoek; I wanted to see how things operated first hand.

Because our pilot arrived late, we didn’t get off the ground until around 7:30. Then upon arrival at the airport in Luderitz, there was no one from the fisheries ministry to meet us. Thus, it was 10 AM before we were able to get into town, which is a long ten kilometres from the airport.
To get an overview of the fisheries sector we met first with the Inspector in his office. Unfortunately, he kept us waiting half an hour. When he finally did arrive, he was one of the most unassuming men I have ever met. He was wearing one of those navy blue jump suits that mechanics wear; and he kept going in and out of his office so as to deal with other business from time to time. Being about 5 ft. 4 ins. Tall, and very stocky, he wasn’t much to look at. But he turned out to be very knowledgeable. He told us that he had a staff of twenty-eight or nine under him, mainly for fisheries inspections, but that they were under-equipped and poorly trained.

When we finished with MR. X, we headed for Pescanova, where we had an interesting tour of their impressive plant. The owners are Spaniards, and everything is run with clockwork efficiency, from their own boats to the processing operations, packing, etc. They seem to be making oodles of money out of this plant, largely because the hundreds of locals they employ to process the fish, are paid a pittance, a fraction of what a Spaniard would cost in the home country. The Spaniards in general have a dreadful reputation throughout Africa, and indeed in my own country, Canada, when it comes to fishing. They are notorious for engaging in piracy and plundering the resource. Right here in Namibia, in 1991, two Spanish trawlers were seized for fishing without a license within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone. This seizure sent shock waves through the international fishing world. Observers were stunned to learn that a relatively small, newly-independent country like Namibia, a place most people had never even heard of, would be so daring as to seize these two ships caught in flagrante delicto. The captains were eventually convicted, and the two vessels in question were sold to the highest bidder. But here, five years later, at the gleaming Pescanova plant, everything seemed to be smiles ‘n chuckles. The manager of the plant, a slight, dignified gentleman in his early fifties, received us in his office and had tea brought in on a trolley. He and I seemed to get along just fine, in spite of the fact that I was a Canadian and my government had recently arrested Mr. X was there with us, slouching in his chair, wearing his navy blue overalls. What he made of all this was anyone’s guess; he never said a word.

After the tour and the meeting with the manager had ended, we had 30 minutes in which to eat before our next appointment. We went to a nondescript cafe above a supermarket. Service was very slow, and although most of us only ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of soup, they took ages to arrive. Ever punctual, I gobbled mine up, and was ready to pay my bill by around 1:55 PM. But I was amazed to hear my colleagues, some of whom were on their second sandwich, discussing desert! I could not believe my ears! Sure enough, four of them ordered home-made chocolate cake. By the time we got out of there it must have been 2:15 PM, with the result that we arrived twenty minutes late for our appointment at the maritime training institute.

The Director, a Brit, looked somewhat peeved as we came in the door, and rightly so; one of his subordinates had seen us enter the cafe earlier, so he knew where we were. For my part, I was simply flabbergasted that a bunch of professionals would put their desert ahead of a business appointment. A day like this in Luderitz was costing the European Union, who paid all the bills, about US $8000 in fees and other expenses, not to mention the cost of the Cessna. We only had about two hours to go before we had to get back on the plane, so time was of the essence. But these turkeys I was with did not seem to give a damn. After our institute meeting we scooted over to the fisheries research institute, where a bright young South African marine biologist filled me in on the threats to the rock lobster fishery posed by offshore diamond mining. It appears that this kind of mining involves raking the sandy bottom of the ocean, sifting through it to find diamonds, then returning the dredged spoils to the sea. The government, which has a fifty-fifty interest in the project with De Beers, the South African mining giant, claims the operation is harmless to the fishery, but the fisher people say otherwise.

At four fifteen we had to cut our last meeting short and trundle off to the airport again for the flight back to Windhoek. There was dead silence all the way. The vagaries of international consulting! That evening, we had our usual meal in the Spur restaurant, which by this time I was completely fed up with; but, there was an unwritten rule in this group that we should all eat together whenever possible.

Within another couple of days, we were off to the coast again, this time in our van. Our destination: Walvis Bay, principal port city, and Swapokmund, resort town just north of it. From there we would head south by plane for South Africa. The ride through the desert was a lovely one. There were plenty of impressive sights, including the famous Spitzkoppe mountain jutting out of nowhere; at 1829 metres high, it is also known as the Matterhorn of Namibia. The distance between Windhoek and Walvis Bay is about 325 kms, and the trip took us about 4 hours. Our van was a VW, without any guts, and we had quite a load, being at total of six passengers, with tons of luggage. Walvis Bay itself turned out to be a big surprise. I had known that it was an important port which had for a long time been a semi-enclave of South Africa. I also knew that it was the centre for the thriving Namibian fishing industry. What sets Walvis Bay apart is the fact that it is the only developed deep water port along the Namibian coast. It had great strategic significance for South Africa, which used it as the railhead for its own bulk imports and exports.

The port area of Walvis Bay is predictably utilitarian and industrial. What really surprised me about the community adjoining it, however, was how neat and tidy everything was. The town is laid out in a grid pattern, the streets are quite wide, and there is a very nice mix of shops, cafés, and bungalow-style housing. Overall, there is an air of middle class comfort and prosperity about the place. All except for the black township of Kuisepmund, which lies just outside of Walvis Bay, beside the road to Swapokmund. Kuisepmund is a reminder that you can create your own country, but you cannot eliminate poverty and discrimination overnight. Beyond the port area, there were beaches to the north and a lovely boardwalk to the south. Early each morning while I was there, I would get up and go to the mudflats at low tide to see thousands upon thousands of flamingos; but come back an hour later and almost all of them would be gone, scared off by photographers who had got a little too close, I presume. Given this and a wide assortment of other seabirds, I was disheartened to learn from the port captain that Walvis Bay was sadly deficient in oil spill prevention and response capability. Steps were being taken to rectify this deplorable situation, but there had already been several incidents involving tanker discharges, whether accidental or deliberate. Thus, as part of my report I recommended an oil spill response component, not just for Namibia, but the whole SADC region. The rationale for inclusion of such a component in what was essentially a fisheries project was that urgent steps were required to protect and preserve the fishery from pollutants such as hydrocarbons.

Unfortunately, many African coastal countries fail to take the threat of marine oil spills seriously. This is partly because few of them have much of a maritime tradition. Even the port captain, however, displayed ignorance of the true extent of the threat. He, like many others I met, was of the view that all of the supertankers going up the west coast of Africa navigate outside the 200 mile zone, and that in the event of a spill the oil would move out to sea rather than towards the coast. I asked Jurgen, our Danish fisheries patrol expert, to check this out with some fish captains he was meeting; the word that came back was that supertankers were regularly spotted on the fishing grounds just forty nautical miles from shore. And when I looked at some oceanographic charts of the Namibian coastal zone, I noted that at that distance the prevailing currents would bring the oil towards the shore. This was a good example of the flawed way of thinking: “Out of sight, out of mind”.

Our lodgings in Walvis Bay were quite a ways outside of town, in a holiday camp owned by a Boer. This was the first real Boer I ever had the pleasure of meeting. The term “Boer” has an unfortunate connotation, for me at least. For not only is it synonymous with apartheid; it also sounds like ‘bore’ in English, or, for that matter, ‘boar’. Whenever I hear the term, I immediately conjure up images of barnyard animals, as in ‘wild boar’. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I learn that ‘Boer’ is Afrikaans for ‘farmer’. You see Boer all over the place in Windhoek and Walvis Bay. You can spot a Boer a mile away. First of all, a Boer male is typically dressed in khaki from head to toe, as if he were in the Army or the boy scouts. Moreover, your average Boer will usually sport a beard. And finally, he will invariably have this enormous beer tumour spilling out over his shorts. If this has not provided the reader with an image of a typical Boer, then I urge you to thing of Eugene Terreblanche, the former right wing Boer leader in South Africa, now serving time in jail for atrocities against blacks.

Boers are legendary for two things above all: their stupidity and their pigheadedness. My first Boer certainly looked stupid. In actual fact, he turned out to be quite a nice fellow, although the accommodation we rented from him were substandard, with little privacy, a faulty shower, and ants everywhere. The best that could be said about our digs was that they were cheap: dirt cheap in fact. They were located on the outskirts of town, not far from a lovely boardwalk where I would go to watch the flamingoes each morning just after sunrise; thousands upon thousands of them would be feeding there at the crack of dawn. I am sure it is just a coincidence, but ‘flamingo’ is the nickname for people of Flemish origin, who are of course Belgian cousins of the Boers. By nine o’clock there would be hardly a trace of the flock of flamingoes. Presumably they would be scared off by humans and motor traffic, or perhaps this was just part of their daily routine.

In Walvis Bay we were briefed on Namibia’s fisheries surveillance efforts by a very serious black man in a naval uniform. He was in charge of the whole operation, and he was quite impressive, but he talked far too loud. Sweat dripped from his brow; he must have been incredibly nervous. I felt rather sorry for the man, for he seemed to take our mission very seriously. It was almost as if his job depended on the success of his presentation. Our group had only been together for less than a week, but I could already see that the wheels were going to fall off at some point. I seemed to be the only member of our party who knew how to ask a straight question so as to get the kind of information we needed. All Martina seemed capable of doing was to present burdensome demands for tons of documentation. Invariably she would begin by berating our hosts for not complying with a written demand, sent in advance, for material; hardly a way to get these people, many of whom did not even have access to a fax machine, to cooperate. As for our esteemed leader, the man from Eire, by this time his blarney was well honed. He would begin each meeting with a rambling, incoherent soliloquy as to what our mission was all about. Maybe the locals understood it, but I sure didn’t. I was beginning to see why I was expected to be de facto team leader; for this man had serious problems getting his words out.

Of the five countries I visited on this mission, this was the only one that mounted any creditable effort to control and manage the fishery, at least in terms of patrol vessels, inspections, etc. All the others talked a good talk, but in reality had little operational capability. The problem was, though, that like many other fishing nations, developed coastal states included, Namibia had let out to many licences, to the point where some species were seriously depleted. High ranking government officials were suspected of pocketing kickbacks in return for according licenses. Namibia did, however, spend a respectable amount of money on fisheries research, as we found out when we visited the country’s main oceanographic institute cum fisheries research station at Swapokmund, located about fifteen kilometres up the coast from Walvis Bay. The town used to be the base from which SWAPO ( South West Africa People’s Organisation ) launched their attacks on South African controlled Walvis Bay. It looks like a little Walvis Bay, though quite a bit more touristy. There are quite a few cafes and boutiques lining the main streets. There is even a casino. But, there is little if any industry other than tourism.

We made two or three trips to Swapokmund from Walvis Bay in order to visit the oceanographic institute and talk to fisheries scientists. What struck me about the research station was what a gigantic boondoggle it was. Spanking new and two thirds empty, it occupied a prominent place along the beach. The building itself was ultramodern and conspicuously well-appointed. In all honesty, I could not believe how lavish it was, particularly for a country with such a low standard of living. I understood that fisheries and oceans were considered a priority for Namibia in its development plan, but I asked myself how the country could afford such an expensive building. This was the question I put to the chap who ‘greeted’ us in one of the labs, a solemn-looking young Icelandic oceanographer by the name of Stefan ? It turns out that the institute was a gift of the people of Iceland. I was absolutely amazed to find that a country so small as Iceland, with only about 200,000 inhabitants, could afford to donate such a structure to another small country half-way around the world. Ole, the Icelander seconded to our team, explained to me that his country had unofficially adopted Namibia as a sort of ‘twin country’.

What a good idea, I thought, instead of doing what my own country, Canada does, which is spread the money thinly across many countries. Namibia would also, no doubt, make a nice place to visit during the bleak Nordic winter, or Canadian winter, for that matter! Nevertheless, the institute still seemed like an enormous waste of money, what with a fancy library and modern imported furniture, including expensive leather chairs in the boardroom. In other countries I was to visit I saw similar evidence of waste, usually on the part of Nordic countries, who have played an important role in the southern African region since the days of the struggle against apartheid. And then I remembered Graham Hancock’s depressing book Lords of Poverty, which documented dozens of failed foreign aid projects; he singled out the Nordic countries as having the worst record of all when it came to boondoggles. These countries tend to practice an inflexible, top-down approach to development.

Stefan, the stern-faced Icelandic oceanographer who greeted us at the Institute turned out to be an extremely personable fellow. He had the entire project team over to his house one night for a buffet. He was living with a lovely black Namibian lady in a tidy little bungalow in Walvis Bay; they had two very cute kids as well. Just about everyone was in a very relaxed mood; jazz music played in the background and the wine was flowing. Everyone, that is, except Ole, who got totally pissed and insisted on talking shop all evening. He just wouldn’t shut up! Amazingly, though, he was there the next morning for the ride back to Swapokmund for further meetings at the Institute.

I found these indoor meetings throughout our trip excruciating. All I really wanted to do was to be outside and walk along the beach. At the Swapokmund institute in particular, the beach was lovely; enormous breakers were crashing against the shore. There was a lovely, salty spray above the cafe au lait-coloured sand. But here we were, holed up inside, having a rather tedious meeting with the newly-appointed director of the institute, a Dr. Van Zyl, followed by others with fisheries researchers. What really got to me, however, was the fact that after three or four hours of meetings in the morning, the whole group trundled off to a rather fancy restaurant for lunch. The location and the view were spectacular, but all I really wanted to do was walk or run along that beach. This was a fisheries mission, these were all fisheries specialists, but no one showed the slightest interest at any time in going for a walk along a beach. Normally I would have just gone off and done my own thing, but I felt that I had to go along with the group for the sake of preserving group solidarity. I was beginning to realise that this whole trip was about work, and that any enjoyment I might get out of it was probably going to be purely accidental. This is not to say, however, that there were not meetings that I did enjoy. On the contrary, I got to meet many interesting people on the mission, and I learned an awful lot. It’s just that there was very little private time; everything, and I mean everything, was done together, and so much time was wasted sitting in god-awful restaurants.

As we crammed into a propeller-driven airplane at Swapokmund airport for the two hour flight to Cape Town, I was reasonably happy with the way things had gone. Namibia was a great place to take my first dip into southern Africa. I was quite impressed by what I saw, on the whole. This is a beautiful country, with lots of resources, and tons of empty space just waiting to be filled. Obviously, the country is not without its problems, but at least this is one place in Africa where there is an abundance of hope. Flying over the southern part of the country, along the coast, the vast diamond mining area, where public access is prohibited, was clearly visible. The diamonds here are being mined in a joint venture between De Beers and Namdev, a state-owned company. So, hopefully, the Namibian people will somehow benefit from enterprises like this. I couldn’t help but think that my South African friend on the flight from Frankfurt was mis-informed when he boldly proclaimed: “We’re in control there!” At best, he was only half right.