Day 24 -26 Feelin' Namushasha

Day 24 -26   Namushasha 

We gassed up, gin-ed up, and ATM-ed, in the large town of Rundu.  It was Saturday morning and the place was chaos.  A do-run-run-run, a do run run. 

We traveled east on the B8 and entered the Caprivi Strip.  The Caprivi Strip is NOT a dance performed by the Himba women.  (see photos -Damara Mopane   Day 17-18)  I just wanted to clarify. 

 

A typical kraal in the Caprivi

The Strip is, in fact, a narrow rectangle of territory that juts out eastward from the rest of the country, very similar to that of Oklahoma’s.  It is unlike the rest of the country in that it is criss-crossed by rivers and it lies nestled snugly between Angola, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.  So, why is it part of Namibia?

The history in a nutshell is that it was traded by the British to the Germans following the historic Treaty of Godknowswhat, a hundred years ago, for the island of Zanzibar.  Cool, really.  These days,  countries make treaties and trade things like corn for TV sets or industrial secrets for Angela Merkel’s emails.  Pretty boring in comparison.  I’m thinking maybe the USA can trade North Dakota for Greece, which we could get for a steal these days.

As recently as 1999, there was a Caprivian independence movement that resulted in violence, and, I read afterwards, the murder and robbery of French tourists traveling on the, you guessed it, same B8 linking Kongola and Divundu  that we came over on yesterday.        

Driving into the Caprivi, though, it is still stark and mostly dry and hot.  There are more thatch huts and more green trees.  And highway signs that warn of Elephants.  80 kph. Is that for the motorists, or the elephants?  

We spotted not a single speeding elephant!

We go through another disease control check point and dutifully exit the vehicle as the guy in the African hazmat suit (a baseball cap and baggy jeans) sprays all of the X-Trail’s tires with some chemical, while we are directed to walk over a towel soaked in the same noxious stuff.  This process is designed to prevent the spread of foot (hoof) and mouth disease from the cattle areas to the wildlife areas, or vice versa.  After undergoing this process three times now, I have full confidence that the Nissan X-Trail is disease-free! 

We enter the Bwabwata Game Reserve.  Pronounce it almost like Gilda Radner doing Barbara Walters, “BabaWawa.”  The reserve is actually four different game parks combined.  And Bwabwata means “the sound of boiling water.”  Really.  And, I think this word nails it pretty well, don’t you?  Try it a few times when nobody is looking.  Sounds like boiling water, right? 

  

Our lodge for three nights, Namushasha, translates to mean, “No freakin’ AC, even though the temperature outside is a stifling 102 F. (41 C.) and we are overlooking a river, but we are on a generator, so deal with it, Sir.”  No, not really. 

Actually, for the past week or so as we have looked ahead in the itinerary to this lodge, we have taken to using this word as every part of speech to great delight and hilarity and to pass the long hours on the solitary roads.  For instance,

As an adjective:  “Check out that woman over there with the tight dress and the high heels.  She is sooooo NAMUSHASHA!”     

As a noun:  “When I’m having my kudu burgers, I like to sprinkle them with just a few drops of NAMUSHASHA to give it that extra kick.”

Or

“Honey, could you change the baby’s diapers, I think she made Naumushasha again.”

Or, especially as a verb:  “Hey, good lookin’, wanna go up to my room and, you know, NAMUSHASHA?”

Try it yourself at home, it’s cheap and easy!    (You’ll have to read to the end of the entry to see Namushasha’s real meaning.)

The Namushasha Lodge is fantastic, though.  It does sit on the banks of the Kwando River, which has two different names upriver-the Liyeti and something else, and eventually is called the Chobe when it reaches Botswana.  Looking across the thirty meters of flowing water in the tributary our chalet sits over, you see alternating waves of reeds, grasses, and acacia trees stretching to the horizon. 

View from our chalet to the ellies

Namushasha Lodge on the Kwando River

Extreme hardship of life in the bush

Look closer.  See them?  That herd of elephants strolling to the left under the line of trees.  Unbelievable.  Look down.  Okay.  It’s a river.  No, look on the bank there.  See him?  Ohhhhh, that croc-croc-croc!  Whoa.  He is the daddy of the tiny ones we saw at Hakusembe.  Hear that?  Yeah, I think it’s our German neighbors and he tends to sound like that in the morning.  No, not that.  Ohhhhhh, THAT!  And the answering snort!  Yes, I hear it.  Those are the hippos.  They stay in the water during the day, but will go into the reeds and grass at night.  Don’t worry, they can’t climb up this high…

We did a game drive the first evening.  We had to take the pontoon boat and make our way Everglades-style to the Land Rover parked a few km away as the Fish Eagle flies.  It was just us and another young couple, both of whom just graduated from med school in Switzerland.  No slouches.  I tried to use as many large words as possible so as to impress them with my intellect, while Mimi introduced them to bush lore.  She succeeded.  I failed.   

The zebra and the wildebeests were agitated and they were sprinting (galloping) first this way, then that.  Of course you think…lion?  But we never saw him/her.  A great herd of 59, our guide Arnold, counted them, Cape Buffalo, who kept their eyes and their horns sharp, pointed our way.  Mean animals not to be messed with.   As we rounded a bend in the boat on the return trip, we caught sight of one hippo in the act of swan diving into the river just ahead of us. 

Bo giving Mimi a back rub after a long day.

And, the thing is, then, after some of these incredible spottings, you pull the vehicle up onto a bank above the river, step off, and Arnold sets up a folding table and opens the bar, while you and your fellow safari-mates nervously scan the horizon like lighthouses in the storm.  Arnold, weren’t those Cape Buffalo like, just over there, behind those trees?  Yes, would you prefer a Windhoek Lager or a white wine? 

Cape Buffalo

We saw a Lechwe.  Ha!  Gotcha, didn’t I?  Not to worry, even Safari Mama hadn’t heard of this antelope grazer-type animal.  Chevrolet has its Impala, and Mercury has its Sable, but I’m not sure when we will be driving a Lechwe.  Maybe Tesla will adopt it?  Dude, check out my radical new ride, it’s a Tesla Lechwe. 

A charging elephant

OK, so it was just this Amarula mascot

But THIS is a  REAL ellie giving us the mock charge, kicking up dust and all

We learned how to tell male elephant dung from female.  Hey, you never know when you will be a contestant on a game show and have to answer this.  OK, I know you give up.  Because of their anatomy, the spot of urine darkening the ground of a female’s droppings will be right in front of the basketball-sized mound of dung, while the male’s will be several feet ahead.  Common sense, really.  Now you know.

As always, a great game drive, as they all are.  There are no bad ones.  Just different ones.  Adrenaline ones, mellow ones, educational ones, spiritual ones, frightening ones.  And, let me repeat, we feel so very fortunate to be experiencing all of this.  We toast our luck nightly with an incredulous shake of the head, a clink of our glasses of sparkling water, and, in unison, a “Wow.”

At night, in De Kelders, we (Bo) are sometimes awakened by the sound of whales.  It is magical.  At Namushasha, it was hippos, just below our open doors and windows and through the mosquito net surrounding our bed.  (Remember, we are on generator and there is no AC).  It was hot, for sure, but by night it cooled and the breezes blew and it was fine.   

We have found that all of the staff members we have met at the 13 guest houses, B and B’s, and lodges we have slept in to this point have been super people, well-trained, constantly smiling (is it the big tips Mimi gives?), and genuinely friendly.  But none of them can match Freida of Namushasha. 

What a sharp, witty, with-it person!  Huge smile fills her face, and that’s a lot of face to fill!  She is the food and beverage manager of the lodge and we enjoyed talking with her so much.  Mimi tried to help her get What’s App on her cell phone, but the internet was so spotty that it took the two young Namibian men who are visiting each Gondwana lodge making promotional films to get it to work.  These are the two guys, we found out, who also had the drone back at Hakusembe.  Anyhow, Freida was above and beyond, and, yes, is there any question, she is now Mimi’s Facebook friend.   

We have had TV at only one place on the whole journey so far, which has been fine.  BUT, the South Africa Rugby team, the Springboks were playing their first match in the Rugby World Cup taking place in England right now.  While our wifi wasn’t great, by some miracle it worked well enough to pick up the Rugby website that also had an audio feed.  So, impolitely, I plugged in the headphones and listened all through the candlelight dinner on the deck. 

As it turned out, I was unable to finish my Oryx Schnitzel.  The Boks, heavily favored over the second tier Japan Powerful Blossoms, managed to lose the match as time expired.  This is like the Yankees losing to a little league team from Duluth.  I was able to seek solace with a South African guy over the next couple days as we consoled each other, pointed out elephants from the deck, and cried in each other’s beers.  (He actually had two at the doorstep to his chalet the one morning at 4 AM!) (Elephants, not beers.)

We are at the farthest reach of our journey, 2800 km (1800 miles) from the safety of my own wine cellar.  It’s been a long slog, but a check of the odometer tells us we have already rocked, rolled, and b-b-b-b-bounced over 4000 km so far.  And, there remain no more C Roads! 

Oh, I almost forgot.  Namushasha, for those of you who have actually read this far and didn’t skip ahead, means “sour” in the local language.  The example our boat skipper gave was, “You might say, ‘This beer is shasha.  Sour.’ ”  Ok, got it.    What this has to do with this stunning lodge, I can’t figure out.