Empty Spaces

Landscape

Garub railway-station

 Keetmanshoop, Namibia 06.04.12

First off all happy Easter too you all. I know I’m a bit early, but I’m writing today and not on Sunday, and as it happens I have peeked into the bible and figured what is going to happen on Sunday, so it’s going to end well also this year.

I’m still going strong in Namibia. Things are almost starting to get boring. It’s so easy to travel here in Namibia. There are good roads everywhere, lovely people, no one who comes to you heavily armed to check your passport, no angry Sudanese police who accuses you to drive in the desert when the whole thing is a desert. This week there haven’t been any angry elephants or scary snakes either, so I’m pretty safe here in Africa. It will be good to get some action with my brother in law, Mparanay coming to visit on Sunday. We’ll head straight to Etosha to find some crazy Elephants and rhinos and lions and all!

Most of the week has been spend in Lüderitz, an absolutely lovely little town on the south-west coast off Namibia. I came there on Saturday, and stayed there until Tuesday evening.  It was time for jet another service of Wombosi. He has soon done 40 000 kilometers now since Germany. That’s quite an achievement for a fifteen year old Land-Rover.

Sunday was obviously not going to be service-day, so I went out into the Sperrgebiet (restricted-diamond-area) to the ghost-village Kolmanskop. Kolmanskop was settled around 1906 when diamonds were found in the area. Fifty years later the town was abandoned, and since then the sand and the wind has taken its toll on the village. The visit was ok. You need a permit to go there (it’s the only place in the Sperrgebiet you get to rather easily), but you get 45 minute guiding with two other tourists (in my case), and can walk and climb around the houses on your own as much as you please.

Monday was supposed to be service-day, but there was no place for us in the garages, so the service was done swiftly Tuesday in the morning. Monday I met a young man from Windhoek named Charles, who needed his broken minibus toed to Windhoek (over 800 kilometers). We sat talking all Monday and he was a nice guy, so I decided to help him, and offered to toe him. An absolutely crazy mission, but I had said it, so there was not really any way back. So after my service Tuesday I went to meet Charles and to get things settled, but after waiting a whole day I left Lüderitz alone. Things had not worked out for him, and I felt both a bit sad and relief. I would have loved to help him, but it would have been dangerous, and would have made numerous things far more difficult.

Wednesday I visited a group of wild horses, smoked a pipe and wrote two songs. Yesterday I came to Keetmanshoop early, but decided to stay in the area, because I need to call my two nephews who have their birthday today, and for that I need internet. So Yesterday I went out to the Quiver-tree forest and a place called the giants playground, a place with funny rock-formation a sunset, nice South-African tourists and these small rat-like animals that jump from stone to stone and look at you. I counted 15 at a time, but I recon there were plenty of them hiding too.

I have also done a fair bit of reading in the bible, regarding that I’m lagging far behind my initial plan. Besides, Easter is after all not mainly about skiing and eating chocolate, but about Christ dying for our sins. It’s pretty amazing that we, who would deserve death on a cross don’t have to face judgment, because God let his only son hang on that cross for us 2000 years ago. 

The bay of Lüderitz

Some animal (not the rat-like thing)

Giants playground in the late evening-light
and the almost full moon rising

One of many nice old colonial houses in Lüderitz

A house in Kolmanskop

Quiver-trees

Wild horses