Transportation addendum

In Namibia, lots of people walk. And people walk lots of places: school kids walk along the highway to get home; women walk with large sacks of grass on their head; people in blue pants and shirts – the characteristic sign of working class – make their way by foot (or packed into the back of pick-up trucks) from residence to job or return. The country has 2 million people and 70,000 cars, so lots of people go without. Given how much travel happens by foot, one might expect pedestrians to have the right of way, and drivers to be aware of foot traffic. Quite the contrary! It doesn’t matter your age, race, or how many small children you’re traveling with, if you’re on foot, you have to make sure you stay out of the way of cars and trucks, because they will not deviate from their path. Even crossing a street with a green light, the pedestrian has to yield to right or left hand turners, or risk being hit. Actually, some of our closest calls while driving have occurred when we tried to allow someone to cross the road in front of us on foot: pedestrians assume that cars will continue to move at a constant speed and direction, and they often judge their crossing to flow just behind a passing car – sort of like a deadly video game! When we slowed down or changed lanes, pedestrians became quite confused!

For people without cars, there are many options for transportation – but we haven’t experienced these directly, despite our thoughts prior to arrival of doing without a car. In Windhoek, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of taxis, with a similar proportion in smaller towns. When we’re walking around town, the taxis regularly honk (they all seem to have the same horn-tone) to inquire if we want a ride. People can get picked up and dropped off all along the way. Prices are uncertain: students at the Polytechnic who live in Katatura, a traditionally-black suburb of Windhoek, pay $N200 (US$30) for an entire term of daily transport, but other fares have to be negotiated, as there are no mileage or time counters in the taxis. Each taxi driver is his (haven’t seen any her) own company, usually simply indicated with some letters on the door stating name and address.

For longer distance transport, there are short buses that pull baggage trailers behind them. People gather at major intersections along the highway for pick-up. On dirt roads, people hitchhike – we’ve picked up several when the clutter of sleeping bags, oyster samples, and Katie’s books hasn’t been too excessive, and when traveling in pretty remote places where the next car could be some time coming. Very few people travel by rail in Namibia, in contrast to many other African nations (so we’ve heard). Our flat in Windhoek provides ample opportunity to observe trains – even more so because Katie’s ear is acutely tuned to the rumble, chug, and whistle, so she runs to the window to look at each one. An old blue engine or two, belching black smoke, generally pulls some yellow cylindrical tanker cars, maybe some open-top cars full of scrap metal, a few boxcars, and perhaps a passenger car or two. The trains often have just 5 cars total and rarely more than 20. We are on the main north-south route through Namibia, so it’s strange that most of the trains seem to be heading south (but we haven’t quantified this); there is also a rail spur to Swakopmund, but in many many hours of traveling this road back and forth to the coast, we’ve only seen one train on the tracks parallel to us. Which brings up one current reason for little train traffic – good roads for trucking from Walvis Bay, the country’s only deepwater port, to pretty much anywhere. The poor infrastructure for trains may also reflect a historical decision: Namibia’s railways are spaced at 3 and a half feet, rather than four feet and change elsewhere, a legacy of someone’s assessment that getting a narrow gauge railway through the mountains would be less work. We recently learned that the first railway in Namibia was near Cape Cross, running between the phosphate rock (old bird guano, nitrogen leached out) and the small harbor where sailing ships would anchor offshore.