It starts the minute you step off the plane. The landscape is beautifully different than anything I've seen in the US. It seems rough, untamed, almost prehistoric. Maybe that's because no one lives there. No seriously. I think I read once that Namibia is one of the least-populated countries in the world, second in sparseness to Mongolia. MONGOLIA people. There is so much distance between towns that when they do pop up out of the savannah or desert (depending on where you are in the country), it's a shock.
On a related note, it then becomes a little challenging to travel the country if you don't possess a car. My boyfriend's solution is to hitch-hike (or free-hike, as they call it there). Are you kidding me? My generation was raised on crappy horror films where the young, naive couple is brutally murdered by the seemingly harmless (but secretly psychopathic) hitchhiker that they picked up off the side of the road. There is no way in hell that I would ever give a stranger a ride. But Namibia isn't the US. As my boyfriend likes to say, "T.I.A." This Is Africa. The normal rules don't apply. You need to get from Walvis Bay to Okahandja? Just stick your hand out, wait for the next bakki (truck) to pull over, and enjoy a seatbelt-free ride in the open back of the truck while the rugged landscape whips past you at 140 kilometers/hour.
The reason free-hiking is a legitimate way of traveling is because of the people. Now, I won't try to generalize my experiences to include all 100 people who live in Namibia, but based on my encounters in the community where my boyfriend lives with his host family, it seems to be a part of their culture to help others. And not in a conscious, "I'm doing a good thing by helping you out" sort of way. It's just a given. I see it the most with food. The belief is that if you have enough food to feed one person, you have enough to feed five people. It seems like such a small thing, but it's what struck me the most about Namibia. I didn't realize it until I was faced with it, but that idea is so different from what I've experienced in the US. In the States, you are responsible for your own food. If someone else is going to eat some of your food, it's because you have already established a date and time when they will come over to eat with you. Not so in Namibia. If someone happens show up unannounced, you just got out an extra plate and divvy up the food so that everyone has some. No questions asked. TIA
I think I'm going to leave it at that for now. If I kept going, this post will become ridiculously long, and I don't know about you, but these days I have the attention span of a gnat, so if you've even made it this far down the post, congrats! You hung in there longer than I would've. I'm hoping to put up some pictures soon, but for now I will leave you with this teaser:
Two words: Dune 7.
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