Arrival

It is a long way from Seattle to Namibia... and yet short. On the last day of 2007, we left the damp chill rain that never seems to dry, and we arrived a year later, having weathered 3 plane flights by dint of Katie playing with other kids on the first leg, sleeping on the second and third.

On the last leg from Johannesburg to Windhoek, we encountered a dry landscape of gigantic proportions. Initially, we flew over rich neighborhoods of Jburg where nearly every house had a private swimming pool. On the outskirts, the proportions shrunk, and the colors shifted from green to redbrown: neighborhoods of dirt roads, smaller houses, little vegetation to overcome the aerial sense of stark poverty. From above, it is clear that there are still two classes of people living in different ways in different places. The dirt underlying sparse vegetation shows red-brown especially as a mark of humans. The roads are red, running arrow-straight to the horizon, or coming together like a few spokes of a wheel around a red town, where light glints off some roofs. The fields are red, often solitary patches in the natural landscape, and even though we expected them to be green from mid-summer production. Close to Johannesburg, we saw crop circles that were obvious evidence of irrigation, but further away most fields appeared empty. By the time we reached Namibia, crop fields were not apparent at all, instead large fenced pastures. The fence borders are also red, probably from vehicle patrol rather than animals. Much of the flight took us over the Kalahari desert in Botswana, where evidence of humans is particularly sparse. Instead, the landscape is marked by irregular round grey depressions, some reaching the size of villages we saw along the way. At least they looked like depressions from above. Initially I thought meteorites, but the marks are much too common for that to be likely. Alan thinks the marks are water holes, small depressions that collect water. He is usually correct about these sorts of things, but most of the areas currently contain neither water nor vegetation, and they do not have obvious “game” trails around them (although in retrospect, I think we were too high to see paths of that size).

On the drive from the airport into Windhoek, we saw baboons, ostrich, kudu, warthogs, ant mounds, weaverbird nests. Crickets sing at night. Everything about the natural landscape looks different - we are continually wondering what things are and why the land looks as it does. And looking forward to learning more.