A change in the weather (and some more food comments)

Latitudinally, much of Namibia is tropical – we’ve passed the Tropic of Capricorn on a few trips to the south. Still, we’ve definitely experienced seasonal changes. In 2008, the summer rainy season was shifted later than normal, beginning in late-January and lasting until May. We personally experienced these late rains around 7 May at Swakopmund and 26 May at Etosha. Flamingos breed in the Etosha “pan”, a large saline body of water whose level fluctuates dramatically with precipitation and evaporation. The literature indicates that flamingos leave the coast in December to breed and return in April. This year, we watched flocks of honking pink birds fly north from Walvis Bay and the Saltworks in March, tracking the late start of the rains. They were inland until at least September, but probably didn’t breed successfully, as the pan had too much water: flamingos need a stable level so they can build mud nests rising out of the water, providing some protection from water-wary predators. The late rains were nonetheless torrential, and the northern part of the country flooded, resulting in poor crop production and emergency food deliveries.

By mid-April in Namibia, a sense of sadness is pervasive as the landscape changes from vibrant lush green to its drier hues. Stipagrostis bushmens grass has long nodding seed heads with feathery plumes, so abundant that the landscape turns silver, and the plumes accumulate before the wind in piles like small snowdrifts. Many of the desert plants seem not to be tied to the duration of the rainy season. They germinate with rain; they complete their life cycle with fog; and they fruit and dry up. So the landscape changed color even before the rainy season ended this year. Still, there were enough plants still flowering in May to keep JR’s parents busy with species identification while they visited!

Some of the plants that grow during the rainy season were worth sampling – given the history of hunter-gatherer societies in this region, we know there must be things to eat (in addition to the spiny, toxic ones that have evolved means of protecting their hard-won growth against herbivory). We saw fields of wild watermelons throughout the country, from the highlands around Windhoek to the wild lands of Etosha to the border of the Namib Desert. These melons grow slightly larger than softball-sized, and they look simply luscious as the landscape dries up, like green and gold packages of life-saving moisture. They lasted much longer than we would have expected, and in our travels we asked about their natural history: We heard that the melons can be very bitter, but that kudu and gemsbok will bite into them as other resources become scarce. At Namib-Rand, Mr. Klein collected several on our tour of the reserve and said that some plants produce bitter fruit, but others taste quite nice. The ones he selected were on the “nice-tasting” end of the spectrum, a cucumber taste crossed with watermelon consistency, harboring enormous seeds that are probably also edible if prepared correctly. At Treesleeper, with the Bushmen, we ate sweet berries, which tasted like tamarind but were mostly husk, seed, and a little fruity essence.

We missed one natural Namibian delicacy – not a plant, but a fungus. In February and March, as we drove the B-roads between Windhoek and the coast, we regularly saw people standing by the side of the road with white mushrooms as big as their heads. We were still a little dubious about food safety at this point, so never stopped, but in late April we learned from several Namibian friends that the mushrooms taste amazing as steaks sauted in butter. We should have stopped and paid no more than N$30 for one, as long as it was treated properly and not held upside down, which causes dirt to fall into the gills. In such a dry country, mushrooms are pretty rare, but these grow on termite mounds because these mound-building termites farm fungus. The mycelia send up fruiting bodies when there’s rain.

This year’s winter was not as cold as we’d been warned to expect, even at elevation in Windhoek. We never used our heaters in the apartment and never awoke to frost, although we did pass many people bundled in puffy jackets, or selling gloves on the street. Winter usually brings east winds on the coast. These hot winds are caused by freezing temperatures in the mountains, which set up a pressure differential with the coast. As the air moves from high (cold) to low (warm) pressure, it also drops in elevation, and the air heats up from this adiabatic change. When the air reaches the coast, it can be 40C, driving desert sand before it at such velocity that it sand-blasts paint off cars and knocks small children off cliffs (this latter in theory – we never tested it). The hot air is also essential for drying out the guano on the big platform constructed above one of the salt pans. Usually, the guano is “harvested” in June, but this year the process didn’t start until September. Once again, it’s proving to be a weird year - the east winds were late and infrequent.

In Namibia, the country burns in August. In general, we’ve tried to avoid driving at night in a country where the wildlife is larger than our Kombi, and the wildlife habitat comes up to the edge of the (dark, narrow, 2-lane) road. But on a couple of August nights, we were traveling after sunset through scenes out of Dante’s Inferno. Pitch black. Red flames licking through low bush. Lines of fire stretching into the air as they moved up hillsides. Thick smoke. We have heard that some of these fires are set on purpose, because they flush game, eliminate accumulated grass litter, and open up space for new vegetation growth. Indeed, we have seen green blades appear in burned-over areas. Some of the fires are probably natural or unintentional: the landscape is so dry by late winter that it seems poised to combust.
In Namibia, spring arrives in September. Despite the ongoing dry weather, some of the Acacia trees flower, and there’s a heady sweetness in the air. From our 7th floor apartment, Windhoek looks like a patchwork of purple, because all the introduced (from Australia/NZ?) Jacaranda trees are covered in purple blossoms. Historically, spring was the “little rainy season,” but the recent trend has been that Namibia receives less and less of its annual rainfall during this season. We have heard October called “suicide month”, the hottest month of the year, when clouds start gathering after months of blue-sky, dry weather. The farmers think that these clouds might drop some rain and end the seasonal drought, filling their catchments and growing a bit of new vegetation for their stock. But usually all they get is clouds, not rain. This year, however, we’ve witnessed a little rain as October ends, including unprecedented sprinkles at Swakopmund and 40 mm in a night in Windhoek. We wonder what this signals for the ocean, which is roiling around with odd winds and high production, and there may be another sulfide eruption in store…. This time, if the toxic ocean materializes, we hope to be out on the water of Walvis Bay to study it intensively first hand.

Goat head for breakfast

Classes have resumed for second semester at the Polytechnic. We are co-teaching non-ruminant husbandry, trying to communicate the joy and fascination and content of biology, but also not cramp our travel style too much, especially while Abby and Teddy are here for a month. Fortunately, a large part of each class involves week-long excursions to farms in Namibia, and the students were off working on agro-ecology and agricultural land management while we traveled elsewhere. But we met up for a day at Mashare Agricultural Development Institute, directly north of Windhoek at the Angolan border. The dinner menu for the night was goat, and the goat was standing in the back of a pick-up when we arrived. Now, these agriculture students have struggled with my emphasis on graphing and modeling skills, but I have to give them enormous credit for their hands-on agriculture. Katie and I went off to watch the goat be slaughtered, while Alan cooked the dinner we had brought along, having heard of stiff competition for food on these excursions (and also desiring a few more vegetables than the standard Namibian fare). A side note about our newest traveling meal investment: We now carry a 3-legged cast iron pot with us. In the US, it’s a dutch oven, but here it’s a … hmmm, well, the label said “potjie” at the store, but the Kleins seem to say “poikie”. You build a nice fire, let it burn down to hot coals, and meanwhile fill the pot with an assemblage of vegetables (potatoes, carrots, maybe a pepper if you have one), a can of tomatoes (African-style spicy is my favorite, but not necessary), a can of corn (not baby corn, though: Katie just eats those plain), and a can of beans or some sausage or meat chunks for protein. Put the pot over the coals, and soon there is a happy bubbling sound. A half hour later or so, Voila! Dinner. If you have a little extra juice and time and coals at the end of the evening, mix up a batch of biscuits and cook them in the poikie too. Yum! The poikie has also proved to be a great community-builder: it’s easy to invite someone to dinner if it just involves putting in another potato or 2 to stretch the poikie stew.
Okay, back to the goat. While some of the students around camp curiously wondered what Alan was cooking (or perhaps why Alan was cooking), the goat was quickly dispatched and bled, head removed, then hung from a hind leg while the entire hide was peeled off. The lower legs came off with the hide, cracked just at kneeline. Katie watched with fascination and absolutely no squeamishness. Zipppp- cut down the midline, and out came an enormous stomach (it’s not a non-ruminant!). The stomach was later emptied and washed – its absorptive surface is incredible, like a shag carpet! In the absence of a pot, the rumen apparently makes a good cooking vessel, but in this case it was cut and cooked. It was great to have Katie along, as a foil to learn a little more ruminant anatomy. “Look Katie, I wonder what that is? Hey guys [yes, all guys], what’s still hanging out of the abdomen?” A uterus. Someone didn’t make the best choice for slaughtering: she was pregnant. Then we got to see liver, kidneys encased in fat, pink lungs, small heart, pancreas, uh-oh, where’s the gall bladder – if it leaks, the meat tastes bad, so don’t simply let it go in the bag with intestine, saved for cooking. After the carcass was gutted, the goat was cut in half down one side of the spine and carried into the kitchen. That’s the last we saw of the goat except for the head and lower legs, which were roasted over the fire that evening, carefully tended and turned by one of the students at the campsite. Katie and I stopped by to ask about the process: roast on a grate – entirely intact, eyes, hair, horns give a good grip for turning – then cover with water in a pot, which is set over the fire overnight. The goat is done the next morning, and the student wouldn’t have to share breakfast with everyone else. But he said he’d let us try some if we wanted. Well, the next morning, we happened to be sitting by the fire when the goat head and ankles were removed from the pot, and, after they cooled, we were offered half a lower jaw with tongue. I didn’t ask, but I’m guessing this is the prime piece, as one of the chef’s friends came by a little later and asked “Where’s the tongue?” Katie had already eaten half of it. Additionally, she downed a substantial portion of goat cheek, really cooked to perfection: very tender, with a lovely roasted flavor. That’s my girl! She turned 3 the next day.

Mercy’s fish cakes and further adventures with food in Namibia

We have discovered what are quite likely the best fish cakes on the planet, served at Mercy’s take-away and catering near the northern road out of Swakopmund. It’s a difficult decision whether to have potato salad or French fries (here “chips”) on the side, as both are exceptionally tasty. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss from the Sleep Book, “Mercy’s is grand for having a bite/ if you happen to be there with your appetite.” Mercy herself reports that she will look for a location closer to town, because most of the people walking by cannot afford to eat out. This was yet another reminder of the economic gap between visiting Americans and most Namibians, as we find it quite incredible that we can feed the two-and-a-half of us for about $US8.
We have been learning more southern African terms for food: Pawpaws are papayas, Peppadew is a slightly spicy red pepper, Naartjies are small Satsuma oranges (it’s citrus season here), Mahango is millet, a staple in parts of the north that we have not yet eaten, and maize of course is corn (we have had mixed experiences with fresh sweet corn, but continue to try it because the best ears are really good – again, it’s the late-summer/ fall season for it). Rusks are like biscotti, available in a variety of flavors (buttermilk, muesli) and chocolate-dipped for holidays. According to the Ouma Rusks package, they are “a unique crunchy snack,… a truly South African icon, sought after in many countries around the world. The ideal treat, they can be served any time of the day or night and are equally delicious with tea or coffee.” After passing by entire aisles of rusks in the grocery stores for the past several months, we made an impulse buy to try them… and we’ll buy more! Katie is in a phase where she loves to dip food, and JR (as mentioned before) is happy with any excuse to have more 5 Roses tea. Alan was excited to learn that the basic rusk recipe includes some coconut!
At least one mystery still remains with respect to Namibian food: Monkey gland sauce!

It's the wurst!

Actually, the sausages are superb – even the Viennas (essentially hot dogs), but especially brats and “Windhoek grillers” that incorporate both pork and mutton, and also boerwors coiled like snakes for sale. These are undoubtedly a german legacy. (And another enticement to get JR's dad to visit... bratwurst like it was meant to be!) However, the local delicacy is biltong – beef or game meat dried and spiced for very long shelf life. There are chains of stores that sell only biltong, plus biltong available in unlabelled bags at nearly every gas station convenience store. We’ve now tried both types and have found them… well… chewy, but certainly flavorful. Given the country’s interest in preserved meat, one might perceive a market for smoked oysters, but, as far as we can tell, no one has attempted this niche, and the niche may not actually exist – oysters, after all, are seafood. However, we can now report on some further sampling of Namibian oysters: 3 preparations at the Lighthouse restaurant in Swakopmund – raw on the half shell, baked with cheese, and battered and fried and served in shells with a sort of golden boullion (this last, our favorite, was a special dish requested by our server when he found out we were oyster biologists, but we didn’t manage to get the same thing when we came back a few weeks later); raw oysters on the boat tour of Walvis Bay; baked oysters at the Raft restaurant in Walvis Bay; and freshly opened raw gigas from the Kleins’ salt pond (one never turns down a grower’s offer – especially since he’d opened them to check for spawning condition and found very little gonad). The standard procedure is to keep oysters in holding tanks prior to sale long enough for them to clear their guts – this is very different from our Washington experience, where the phytoplankton contribute some of the distinctive taste from particular growing areas. Generally, the oysters tend to be very small, which makes for easier one-bite slurping or tasting, and also allows for rapid grow-out times of 7 months! (One wonders what the equivalent crop cycle time would be in Willapa Bay if oysters were harvested at shell lengths less than 2 inches – but hey! we can find that out with a quick comparative study!) Some of the oysters we consumed were pretty “soft” – after all, it’s the southern summer, and water temperatures have been unusually high, so no wonder oysters are building up gonad. One grower has just started pumping ozone into his refrigerated building where he holds oysters as they clear their guts; the ozone is supposed to help firm up the oysters, although how this would work mechanistically is very unclear to us.

As we’ve been camping with just a tiny one-burner stove, we’ve been venturing into new culinary territory as we try a variety of ready-to-eat meals. Many of these seem to come in the form of curries (the east Indian influence is strong in South Africa, where the grocery chains are based): we’ve tried curry-in-a-can (and strongly recommend against the textured vegetable protein), and curry-in-a-bag (these are quite good, including separate lemon rice or biryani, although Katie pronounces some of them “too spicy”). In both cases, one places the container in boiling water for a few minutes, then simply pours out of the can/bag. Undoubtedly better when consumed on the beach while watching the waves.

It’s Namibian!
Good beer, brewed to German standards with imported ingredients. There are several Namibian breweries, and the “waste” grain is a potential source of feed for intensively-raised non-ruminants such as chickens and pigs. Some of the faculty at Poly are just embarking on a research project to examine feed quality.
Hot Cross Buns: all his life, Alan has been disappointed with the bland taste and texture of what nursery rhymes assure us should be a tasty treat. But here in Namibia, he’s found HCB’s that are truly delectable, not just stripes of sugar-water on top of a white roll.
Namibian whole milk curdles rapidly, we discovered when our cooler ran out of ice 12 hours before we reached a refrigerator. But curdled milk works great in biscuits.
Beetroot – available in all sorts of preparations off the shelf (grated, sliced, whole, pickled, spiced, etc.). Seems to be served as a side dish, along with other options such as feta, olives, and gherkins. Feta is particularly confusing to us, as we think of it as middle eastern, and the connection between that region and Namibia seems thin.
Ice cream: Despite Katie’s appreciation of “pink” soft-serve, ice cream in general is disappointing. 90% of what’s available in stores is from Nestle, and 100% has vegetable shortening as an ingredient, which must contribute to the foamy texture even when it’s melted.
Five Roses: this is THE black tea brand in southern Africa. And JR could drink it all day! We’ve learned that it’s easiest to order black tea by simply saying “Five roses, please”.

Garbage: We’re generating much more than we’re used to in the U.S., primarily because we have no access to a compost pile (or chickens, which are actually illegal in Windhoek), and Namibia’s recycling program is either non-existent or still opaque to us. We’ve heard that some recycling occurs when people sort through trash looking for anything usable, but we weren’t told what counts as usable. Fortunately, thanks to the amazing cloth diapers we brought with us (Fuzzi Bunz: happy to give personal testimonials), we’re not generating diaper waste. And, because Katie is daytime potty-trained, we’re not tied to doing laundry every other day.

Namibian locavores?

In keeping with the Ruesink family tradition, no log-book would be complete without some details about FOOD!
Food that fits the climate:
1. Stale tortilla chips that we brought from Seattle are now crispy.
2. Katie has discovered ice cream cones, best consumed in the heat of the day with big licks, a face covered in stickiness, and always just barely ahead of the drips.
3. Water: we are drinking perpetually (except for Katie, who has her own opinion about these things). Water throughout the country is potable if it comes from a tap (so we’ve heard, and it certainly seems true in Windhoek – no GI distress at all to report). Still, we appreciate the filter that we brought from the US, as it improves the taste of municipal water: we’re just not the sort to spring for bottled water.
4. Tea (and coffee): Namibians do not drink iced tea or coffee. It’s hot hot hot, even though the air is as well. In fact, if we ask for “hot tea,” we get strange looks – is that something special? different? The standard tea is 5 Roses brand, very well steeped. Rooibos, native to south Africa, is also common. As Katie has attended meetings and briefings with us, she has had many opportunities to try her practiced skills at “tea parties” with real china (under close supervision). She particularly enjoys putting in A LOT of sugar, stirring, and snitching any sugar that misses the cup and falls on the saucer.

Local food:
The bare fact of the matter is that this country is dry. All the introductory ecology textbooks are borne out here: low evapotranspiration leads to low productivity. Low productivity means it’s challenging to grow local food. You need 15 hectares of land to support a single beef cow; goats and sheep can be stocked at six times the density, but (we calculated) the space of the Rutabaga Ranch near Willapa Bay would only allow us to keep a half a goat. More intensive animal production, such as broilers, eggs, pigs, dairy cows, all require feeds, and these require more soil and irrigation than is possible in much of Namibia. Eating local, therefore, takes on a somewhat different challenge here. From ecology and history and (we’ve heard) some perverse subsidies, much of the food in Namibia is imported from South Africa. Ecology: there’s more productive land there. History: Namibia was a protectorate of South Africa, and it’s still considered a sign of status to purchase South African products. On our first evening here, Alan went to a South African chain general store, described as “a bit like Walmart”. All the items he brought home had been imported. Since then, we have looked carefully for Namibian products: we can buy Nammilk milk (only whole; South African milk comes in different fat contents and is usually irradiated so needs no refrigeration) and yogurt (Katie particularly enjoys the sweetened fruit versions). We can buy Waldschmidt eggs from near Windhoek, and, as we’ll be teaching about chickens in a few months, we hope to visit their farm. We can buy Namibian fish, but this is apparently an unusual product for consumption in the country: only 2% of the extensive fisheries of the Benguela current are consumed within Namibia, and most of that by tourists. So, we’ve begun to try the local beef (ground, it matched the low fat content of Bud Goulter’s grass-fed beef near Willapa Bay – and all the cattle we’ve seen have been very rangy), sausage, kudu, and oryx (stuffed inside a pepper for JR’s tasty lunch today). We’ve become fans of “Fruit and Veg City” just down the street, where we buy apples, oranges, nectarines (all smaller and tangy-er than in the US), papayas (called paw-paws?), grapes, plums. F&V City prides itself on fresh local produce but includes all of southern Africa as “local”.

On Saturday 1/19 we attended our first Green Market, or Bio-Market, a sort of farmers’ market equivalent. The good part: fresh, organic, and mostly local food (exception: dried nuts and fruits, purchased from S Africa and beyond [probably, given the dried cranberries!] and packaged for sale here). The ambivalent part: 99% white for both sellers and buyers, our first time to experience this slice of Windhoek life. Booths included: homebaked bread, rusks, and crunchies (granola bars); eggs and home-slaughtered chickens and geese; vegetables such as lettuce, spinach (Namibian type), aubergine (eggplant), zucchini, patty-pan squash, maize (corn), parsley; sausage and cheeses; dried herbs; ground beef and ground game. One booth had vegetables purchased from a variety of nearby locations, including Khomasdal, which we understand is a suburb where some non-whites were resettled in the 1950s. We bought honey with comb from the only bee-keeper in Windhoek, who had suffered quite a few stings even though he reported that African honeybees are not particularly aggressive in summer when lots of flowers, especially acacia, are available. The honey is dark and pungent. We also bought prickly pear fruits, because we heard that, like Washington cherries, they are only available for a short time each year. Peel the fruits and slice the sweet, seedy inside to eat raw.

Oysters: In a way, we’re in Nambia due to oysters. There’s not much to report so far, except we first encountered them raw on the half shell at the Kalahari Sands Hotel (and casino) for Sunday brunch. They tended towards the “east coast” style (“watery”, we say on the West coast), with nothing in their guts. Alan refused to try them: I found them to be quite pleasant, slightly briny and sweet, even with a little lime squeezed over them. The brunch also included green-lipped mussels (Apparently from NZ, as their introduction has not been allowed in S. Africa or Namibia), available on the “salad bar” cooked in a sort of vinaigrette, and as an addition to a “choose your own” stirfry. The oysters must have been popular, because by the time I got to the iced section, there were only a few left.

Namibia does have an excellent combination of characteristics to produce salt: a marine coastline with tremendous evaporative solar power. The Salt Company (I kid you not) can be seen from the Salt Road between Swakopmund and Henties Bay: a conveyor belt drops salt in an outdoor pile that is several stories tall – this must be the first separation of salt from the other materials picked up from salt ponds.

It’s different!
1. Namibian pizza: soft crust with tomato sauce, mushroom and baloney pieces, cheese on top. It’s good! 2 out of 4 of our first lunches.
2. “Natural” products are difficult to find: Peanut butter and many juices contain added sugar. Soaps are full of chemical scents, and (we gasped) laundry detergent still has phosphate. The lowest amount we found at Pick and Pay was 3%, and the highest 30-40%!
3. Spinach: in southern Africa, refers to something that is much more like our chard, eaten raw in salads or cooked. Cheap and delicious! JR’s idea of heaven. For AT and little KCR, potatoes are also easily available. And a potato is still a potato.
4. Bread: There are essentially no name brands (not even Wonder bread!) Instead, each grocery/bakery has generally 3 types of sliced bread, all in very square loaves: white, brown, and wheat. Personally, I was hoping for a little more German influence – crisp crust, chewy inside. Even though the crusts are almost indistinguishable from the rest of the loaf, Katie still wants them cut off!
5. Another type of bread that’s characteristic of Namibia is brotchen (with a double dot over the “o”). These are 4-5” white rolls, sliced in half and topped with a variety of savory options open-faced. So far we’ve tasted: egg salad, cheese and tomato, and thinly-sliced smoked game with tomato and pepper. We’re pretty sure brotchen are indicative of german influence!