We had a long day driving through the desert to Swakopmund. The name comes from a combination of the river “Swakop” in the local language and “mund” from the German occupation. Swakop means “river of excrement” and mund means mouth. So Swakopmund is the “mouth of the river of shit”. It’s really just mud though. Despite that unfortunate start, it’s a really nice town designed in a grid with really wide roads. With the German period architecture it feels like a mix of a US and German town in Africa.
There are many different African languages and the local Damara people speak a click-based language with clicks made with the tongue on the roof of the mouth. It’s really unusual for us to hear. There are click “letters” mixed in with the other consonants and vowels.
We did a Township Tour. Many different tribes live alongside each other. The Namibian government have a smart programme of allocating land for a family to build a house and then loans to complete it within two years. We had an outstanding guide who is a real entrepreneur with a number of businesses. He was selected for a leadership programme where young African entrepreneurs visited the US and he met President Obama. We had a lunch of traditional African foods millet, beans, “spinach” and including the delicacy the Mapane worm. We didn’t realise we’d signed up for the Bushtucker Trial. Michelle and I both chewed and swallowed as quickly as possible.
In the afternoon we did a 4×4 “Living Desert” tour to discover the animals that hide and survive in the sand. That’s more than can be said for the railway lines that have been rebuilt twice already after being reclaimed by the dunes. Our guide found a sand-diving lizard who shed his tail when caught. It’s apparently a defensive gesture, but I think I’d rather keep my limbs. It was odd to see the tail still waggling on its own. I don’t think my leg would do that. Apparently the tail regrows though. The guide uncovered a couple of snakes – a sidewinder adder and a horned adder. The guide fed worms to a chameleon he found in a prickly bush and we watched it fire its long tongue out to grab them. After being in the dry desert this long, I reckoned I could do the same with a glass of beer. The guide also explained that the black colour on some areas of sand was magnetite and proved it with a magnet trick. The purple is from garnet.
