West Africa Cruise: Namibia Township (12.7.24)

I enjoyed our tour of the native township in Swakopmund, Nambia, on December 7, 2024, even more than the desert trip the day before.  

Our guide lived in the township, himself, and led us through the market and to two private homes.  This township was a middle class section of the old German colonial city, Swakopmund, which was an hour from Walvis Bay.  "Middle class", of course, is different in Africa than in the United States.

Fruits and vegetables were sold from small market stalls.

Clothes were also sold in market stalls, or just spread out on the ground!

In another area of the market, household tools and construction materials, such as sinks and hammers, were laid out on the ground for buyers to browse.

Some stores were more elaborate, with concrete walls and tin roofs.

Most of the roads in the township were dirt.

Our first hostess, at a private home, was Mama Erickson.  She was a member of the Ovahereo tribe, which wears Victorian clothes dating back to the times of German colonists, and headdresses that are shaped like the horns of cattle.  Mama Erickson wore a floor-length dress with a green shawl.  She was 74, just like me.  Mama sold dolls which she dressed with scraps from her own homemade dresses.

I bought one of Mama's dolls to add to the doll collection I keep for my granddaughters and "greats".

Mama had moved from a rural village to Swakopmund after her husband died.  She lived with her granddaughter, who was holding a baby and who was dressed in Western clothes.

We next stopped at the home of Maro Wilma, from the Nama tribe.  

Maro Wilma had a beautiful garden of succulents and palm trees.

Maro Wilma wore a red dress, which she said was typical of her tribe.  Maro Wilma, with the help of our guide, showed us the cosmetics and medicines that traditional healers of Maro Wilma's tribe use.  Maro Wilma is one of those healers, and people come from the township to her to buy those medicines and cosmetics.

The cosmetics include the soft red sandstone that tribal women mix with oil and rub onto their bodies and into their hair.  It is considered not only beautiful, but it also protects against sunburn and insects.
 

Dried elephant dung is used for soaking aching feet, and dried baboon dung is used for a tea to cure illnesses.

A turtle shell stuffed with soft fox hair is a nice gift for a girlfriend.

Maro Wilma's tribe speaks a language with "clicks" which are made by slapping the tongue from the top of the mouth down to the bottom.  Maro Wilma teaches the click language in the local elementary schools.

Our guide, who also came from a tribe with a language that uses clicks, shoed us a chart listing the four types of clicks and how they are made in the mouth.  We all tried them.

For our treat, we stopped at the Tandikes community kitchen, where each table received a platter of spiced spinach, fried crickets, porridge made from cassava, and a cake made from millet.  This was my big chance to try fried crickets, but I just couldn't do it.  We ate the treats with our hands.

We were entertained by a local boys band that sang several jazzy African tunes.  I bought their CD, since I love the music which is performed everywhere in Africa.

The boys drove off in their fancy pickup truck.

Before driving us back to Walvis Bay, our guide showed us the shanty town where immigrants live with no running water or plumbing.  Namibia has lots of immigrants from other parts of Africa because its living conditions are better than in other poor or war-torn areas of the continent.

On our drive back to Walvis Bay, we passed apartment buildings on the coast where wealthier people lived.

 

West Africa Cruise: Desert of Namibia (12.6.24)

Namibia was quite the contrast to tropical Sao Tome, which we visited just days earlier.  Walvis Bay, Namibia, where our ship docked on December 6 and 7, 2024, is known for the vast deserts nearby.  

 
David lived in Utah's West Desert as a boy, in Dugway, and today's shore excursion was one of his favorites of the trip.  We ventured into the Namibian desert in 4 x 4 land cruisers, with guides and trackers, searching for desert animals hiding beneath the sand.

Our guide was excellent at identifying the many desert creatures and explaining to us how they thrived in this harsh environment.  His tracker (background of this photo) went ahead, searching for tracks of snakes and toads and lizards, and then beckoning to our guide when he found something promising.

This dune covered with bushes looked desolate to us, but it housed a hive of creatures.

Our guide knelt in the sand, examined the tracks of the desert creatures, and then scooped then out of the sand with his hand or with a metal hook.

The first creature was a little lizard, with big eyes and a pale skin that blended into the sand.  When our tour had taken a look, the guide placed each creature back, gently, on the sand and it quickly burrowed back into the earth.

The next creature was a snake.

It slithered into a green bush.

Our guide located another variety of lizard.

The prize of the day was a toad with bulging eyes and scaly skin.

Our guide also showed us a dried up seed that, with a bit of water or mist and a bit of wind, could blow to another spot in the desert and start a new bush.  There is virtually never rain in the Namibian desert, but cold mists blow in from the sea, providing water for animals and plants.  One beetle raises its high end high, so that drops of mist will roll down its back and into its mouth!  It was actually chilly on this day in the desert.

Our tour group consisted of three land cruisers, which followed each other into the desert.

The driver of our land cruiser owned his own tour company.  When a cruise ship docks, one large tour company hires guides from other tour companies to serve the large cruise ship group.  I sat in the front seat of our land cruiser and talked throughout our ride to the driver.  He was a fourth generation descendant of German colonizers of Namibia, but said that Namibia is such an egalitarian place that he feels no discrimination for being white.  He said that Namibia has a love/hate relationship with South Africa.  South Africa is its largest trading partner and supplies the tourists for Namibia's coastal resorts, but South Africa was also a United Nations-appointed overlord for Namibia for many years, and ruled harshly and with racism.

The next part of our tour included dashing up and down and around the sand dunes, in our land cruiser.  

Other tours in this magical place involved riding camels or racing ATVs up and down the dunes.

At the end of our tour, we drove to the seashore and ate chunks of cheese and olives, washed down with champagne or (for us) orange juice.  The water in the ocean had never looked so refreshing!

Normally, our ship cast anchor and headed for another port in the late afternoon.  Since the ship was staying in Namibia for two days, the cruise director arranged for Namibian singers and dancers to entertain us.

West Africa Cruise: San Tome (12.2.24)

San Tome, an island off the coast of central Africa, is a tropical paradise.  We visited on December 2, 2024, and were charmed by the intense greenery, the jaw-dropping views of cliffs and sea, the tropical fruit, and the friendly people.  The island was settled by the Portuguese in the 1400s, and it has a unique blend of African, Portuguese, and Brazilian influences.  Except--a bitter war for independence in 1975 and the abrupt pull-out of the Portuguese left the island financially destitute, from which it has not yet recovered.  The island seemed heartbreakingly poor. Our guide said that 40,000 people emigrated from the lightly populated island just last year and that it can't keep its educated young people, who flock to Lisbon.  There, they can speak the Portuguese that they were raised with and find good jobs.

We had a great guide--frank, informative, and fluent in English.

As we began our drive around the island, we passed a river where people were washing their clothes.

We stopped at a cocoa plantation once run by the Portuguese and now by a local cooperative.

Our guide cut open a cocoa pod to show the beans inside.  The beans are removed from the pod, dried, and then fermented, before being bagged and exported overseas.  A problem for San Tome, as for most African countries, is that they ship their natural resources abroad before processing them.  They lose the profit that processing brings to richer countries.

We explored the former Portuguese plantation house.  It was once an elegant home, but has now been partitioned into apartments, with peeling paint and roofs stripped bare.

There were beautiful views out to sea from the walkway along the roof.

Some workers lived within the old plantation house and some lived in houses nearby.

My favorites--the little boys striking poses for my photos.  I assumed their hand gestures were not risque...

We paused at a viewpoint for fresh coconut juice.

We also stopped at a beach for breathtaking views.

Finally, we arrived at the Sao Jaoa Plantation Hotel on the east coast of San Tome.  A local entrepreneur had turned an old Portuguese plantation into an elegant hotel, restaurant, and art gallery overlooking the beach.

The restaurant had a six-course tasting menu featuring island food products, such as cocoa beans, pork, and plantains.

I could imagine spending a few days at this hotel, relaxing in a hammock and enjoying the view, the flowers, and the art.

As we finished lunch, a troupe of singers and drummers performed for us.

Back in San Tome City, we stopped at a chocolate shop where an entrepreneur turned cocoa beans into gourmet chocolates.  After paying $20 for a box of chocolates and finding them chalky, rather than creamy, we decided that chocolatier had a ways to go!