Tale guide

Namibia (South West Africa)

Over those years Mary Phillips had developed a skill for writing and had enjoyed considerable success on radio and in print. Peter Phillips believed that Mary’s talent offered much promise. In order to support and cultivate the opportunity he decided to resurrect his ability to restore and maintain pianos, a trade he had learnt before the war, like seven generations before him had done, as an apprentice at the Bechstein factory in Germany. He then won a Government tender for the regular maintenance of pianos located throughout the schools of South West Africa.

They bought themselves a Volkswagen camping car. It was imported from Germany and was fitted with a pop up roof and an awning that could serve as a tent. They rented a flat in Windhoek as a sort of lock up and go and for six glorious years of adventure, proceeded on a journey across the length and breadth of SWA, repairing and maintaining pianos in the schools as well as on many of the ranches and farms surrounding these very distant and isolated towns where Peter entertained the farmers’ families at many a sing along and Mary regaled all who would listen with stories she had encountered along the way.

One Monday morning I found myself almost skipping down Kaiser Street in Windhoek in a state of pure, ecstatic elation on a scale I had not experienced before. I was finally free to take on the world and take on the world, I was determined to do.

Emboldened by my new freedom, inborn confidence and inimitable positive outlook on life, I entered a local German pub and ordered a Windhoek lager before introducing myself to a young man at the counter.

“Do you know where I could find a job?” I asked this new found friend.

“I’m told that a guy called Rusty McAlister at a place called Bedrock drilling is looking for diamond drillers”, replied the man as we clinked our glasses in a friendly toast. “I’m going there in the morning to try and get an interview. Why don’t you come along?”

Rusty was a big man and it came as no surprise that he possessed a full head of red hair which he constantly pushed back with the large fingers on his right hand. His eyes twinkled with the telltale signs of good natured humour that he tried to hide beneath a stern exterior.

The job was secured at a basic wage plus a bonus on every foot drilled. The destination for my first assignment was a drilling rig located some 80 kilometers South, South West of Usakos and I was to leave in the morning.

Rusty drove me out to the site. We travelled along the tarred main road between Okahandja and Swakopmund and until we reached the little sleepy hollow called Usakos on the edge of the Namib’s so called green desert. Usakos, like just about everything I was discovering, was smaller than any settlement I had seen. A railway station gave way to a garage with two pumps, and a two-story hotel. In the front of the hotel stood a wooden railing to which a saddled horse was hitched.

The day was hot and dry and the pale blue sky stretched to the far horizon and beyond. In the near distance swirls of dust rose in the heat at the behest of tiny whirlwinds and occasionally a tumbleweed rolled across the road. It was like a picture straight out of the Wild West.

Just beyond the hotel, Rusty steered his Landrover left off the highway and onto a two wheeled track that wound its way out across the flat plains of the desert floor.

Namibia (formerly South West Africa) is an arid country of surprising contrasts. It is home to two great deserts. Along its length, the vast shifting sea of sand of the Namib rolls inland along the Atlantic coastline. In the interior, the plateau slopes away to the north and east to meet the Kalahari Desert. The green desert describes the plains that lie between the rolling dunes of the Namib and the first range of mountains in the hinterland.

Interspersed by rivers that only run once every five or more years, this land is sparsely covered with vegetation which springs into life immediately following proper rainfall which in itself is a very occasional event. But there is an amazing abundance of desert life from birds and snakes, insects and lizards to hares, antelope, Giraffe and Elephant that over the millennia have adapted to life in this ancient land.

The disturbance on the surface of the plains by the elements is such that the tracks made by man and his cars remain intact for decades.

Rusty navigated his 4x4 into this strange and fascinating landscape until he found the bed of the Swakop River. He drove into the dry river bed and swung the vehicle towards the sea. After an hour and a half, we climbed out of the river and stopped in front of an old Sprite caravan with its tent open. Behind the caravan, about a 100 meters or so away stood a huge diesel drilling rig with a tall tower of scaffolding and to the left of the rig stood a large, circular brown canvas tent in which a group of Ovambo labourers were housed.

The sun baked down on the scene as a tall European man, darkly tanned with sandy hair and clear blue eyes turned away from the base of the rig and walked towards us extending his hand in greeting.

“Pieter Vermaak” he announced, shaking my hand before Rusty could make the introduction. “Welcome to paradise” he added with a wry smile.

After an exchange of reports and instructions and as Rusty’s Landrover disappeared into the distance, I was taken on a tour of the site. I was to sleep in the bed nearest the caravan door. On entering the tent we encountered a red Datsun SSS that occupied about 60% of the available space. The balance was stacked roof high with cases of beer.

“We can’t drink the water here” explained Pieter. “It’s almost sea water”. He saw the query in my eye, lent into the caravan and opened the door of a small fridge. He pulled out two cans of ice cold Castle and passed one to me. “In the desert we drink and work all day”, he explained, popping the cap on his can. “Cheers!”

“But we must be 100km inland?” I queried.

“Sure but the sea somehow finds its way under the continental shelf and I’m told that brack water is pumped up from boreholes as far inland as 250Km”.

Pieter was an affable chap. In his early thirties, he seemed very content with his life and I sensed we would get on comfortably.

I quickly learnt that a diamond embedded drill bit is screwed onto the base of a ten foot core barrel which in turn is screwed onto six foot rods and lowered into the earth down a vertical hole that it drills out meter by meter, to whatever depths the geologists require. The perfectly cylindrical core is drawn up in the barrel, carefully laid out in the grooves of corrugated iron sheets and marked with the depth from which they were extracted thereby affording the geologists the means of determining the nature and extent of the mineral deposits below.

In order to keep the drill bit cool, water is fed through the rods throughout the drilling process. In order that we could provide the water, a 10 ton truck was made available on the back of which stood two large square steel water tanks. Periodically we would drive back along the track for about five kilometers to a borehole on the nearest sheep farm where we were able to refill the tanks and return to continue the work.

Weeks past as the routine set in under the desert sun. The rumble of the diesel engine, the smell of the fumes, the chatter and banter between all of the members of the team were punctuated by the occasional breakdown that brought Pieter’s quite evident mechanical skills to the fore; And then came the nights…

Night time heralded the building of a massive log fire, the preparation of some pretty basic food, mostly extracted from cans and an uninterrupted flow of cold beer. I discovered early on that the little fridge was reserved entirely for the purposes of keeping the beer cold and any suggestion to the contrary would simply be careless to make. Small quantities of fresh meat secured on weekend trips to Swakopmund in the triple-S found its way into the ice compartment, but that was the only exception to the rule.

Sitting around the fire under the crystal clear desert sky has a profound effect on the most hardened of souls and those nights were no exception. The conversation was nevertheless far from philosophical and centered on more practical matters of the day such as how to find women in Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, the need to replenish the spirit in the town’s most frequented pubs and the beer stocks at the site. Even the war that was raging up north in Ovamboland seemed very far away.

A couple of months past interspersed by hair raising weekend journeys in the comparatively low slung Nissan saloon, down the windy, dry river bed to the little German enclave of Swakopmund. There we would go searching for young ladies with a spectacular lack of success, frequent the local pubs and then drive back up the riverbed singing and recounting terrible jokes as intoxicated men are inclined to do. How we survived these excursions I will never know.

On one such weekend, Pieter announced a change of plan as he wanted to visit his friend who managed the Usakos Hotel. “While we are at it, we’ll take the truck” he announced, “and fill the tanks”.

Herman Volker was the perfect example of a ‘Suid Wester’ of German descent. Big, bold, tough, rowdy and kind. He was thrilled to see us and even though it was a Sunday and the bar was closed, we were ushered into the cool, wood paneled room and soon presented with a plate of steak, eggs and chips for lunch.

We spent the best part of the afternoon exchanging tales under the sightless gaze of a Kudu bull trophy mounted above the bar, his twisted horns almost touching the ceiling, alongside similar trophies of Eland and Zebra and other animals that adorned the walls.

As the afternoon started to draw to a close, we filled the tanks with water from the Hotel’s borehole and replenished the camp’s supply of cases of beer. Pieter took a case of beer and lodged it firmly between the driver and passenger seats in the cab.

I had grown to be cautious of nature and was naturally attuned to the inherent dangers of driving under the influence. Despite my own intoxicated condition, the prospect of continuing to drink while travelling the desert tracks gave me cause for concern but my position of apprenticeship in the general scheme of things necessitated a strong degree of acquiescence. Not only did I nervously choose to hold my tongue but I adopted a view that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The two of us cracked open a fresh can of the good stuff as we bade farewell to Usakos and drove into the setting sun.

The distance between Usakos and the camp was not more than 80km but the time it took to travel this distance is determined by the relatively slow speed one would need to travel through the desert, particularly in a 10 ton truck fully laden with an equal weight of water, in order to safely arrive at one’s destination. In my opinion everything seemed to be reasonably OK until well after dark when a spring hare jumped into the headlights ahead of us and began to run down the trail, bouncing left and right as it tried to find a safe direction of flight.

Pieter, now well oiled, decided to give chase. The truck accelerate and lurched its way across the uneven tracks beneath it. Soon the hare darted right and off the tracks. Without as much as single thought, Pieter swung the wheel and turned the truck off the tracks and into the veldt. The open veldt of the desert may appear flat and undulating but on the ground the surface is a mixture of flat open spaces broken by dry river beds, dongas and numerous outcrops of stone and rocks. In between all of this are bushes of varying sizes and densities and even the occasional small tree. The truck lurched its way through, down, into and over the seemingly never-ending gauntlet of obstacles never designed for 20 tons of twisting and groaning weight, travelling at speeds of up to 20 Kilometers per hour.

The first hare finally disappeared into the darkness but I, by now clutching onto anything I could, to keep from hitting my head on the roof of the cab or worse being thrown from the track, had hardly drawn a breath when a second hare sprang into the oncoming headlamps, turned and ran like the wind jumping left and right as it went.

Pieter, initially disappointed had having lost his first prey, floored the accelerator at the sight of the second and pursued his new prey with renewed determination shouting at the top of his voice “Ek gaan jou vang hassie. Ek gaan jou vang!” (I’m going to catch you bunny, I’m going to catch you!)

At this point the hare took a sharp right, careered down the embankment of a wide dry river bed and then shot off to his left. The lumbering truck attempted to follow suit.

I was thrown upwards. My shoulder bounced off the top of the door and my knee connected sharply with the under carriage of the dash before I was returned unceremoniously back into my seat with a thump. The truck found its equilibrium momentarily before grinding to a halt, partially sinking into the soft river sand. Pieter engaged the first gear and released the clutch. The truck shuddered forward slowly and then as if it was simply a bridge too far, it jolted violently to the sound of a loud crack in the rear and stopped.

“Fuck!” was all that Pieter uttered before jumping down to inspect the damage.

I was not happy. We were stuck in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night. Pieter was pissed out of his bracket and had become of no more value to the predicament. What now?

As if hearing my thoughts, Pieter pointed westwards in the general direction of the camp and said “I know where we are. This is the Swakop river. The camp is less than a kilometer from here. It’s close enough to walk. We’ll get some sleep and come back for the truck in the morning.

“You can’t possibly know where we are”, I declared, now sufficiently aggravated at the prospect of spending the night in the desert to the four winds without a thought of my lesser status in the relationship and declared my discontent.

Pieter laughed. “Listen Rooinek. I’m telling you I’ll take you directly to the caravan. It’s exactly over there”. He pointed in a southwesterly direction. “Let’s start walking’ he urged but not before collecting up another case of beer. It was this last gesture that put the lid on it for me. In response he said “You go your merry way. When I find the camp, I’ll light a fire and you can follow me in on that bearing”.

Pieter stumbled out into the darkness and I could still hear him laughing way into the distance.

A full moon lay low in the sky to the West. I knelt down so as to find the silhouette of the small mountain range that ran past the camp. I took a bearing on the mountain and set off to find the camp.

After about an hour I stopped. I began to doubt himself. Pieter was long gone and nowhere to be seen. I kneeled down again. This time the silhouette of the mountain was much closer.

“The camp must be here. I couldn’t possibly have passed it”, I said out loud to myself. Just then I turned and looked back from where I had come and far in the distance, I could barely make out the light from the flames of a newly lit fire.

“God damn it!” I said. “He was right” and set off back, retracing my tired footsteps across the sand.

The drive shaft of the truck was well and truly broken in two. We called Windhoek on the two way radio.

Our activities of that night became all too evident to Rusty when en route  to us, he encountered the myriad of broken tell tale tracks that weaved their way across virgin terrain never before tampered with by man.

I never saw Pieter again. I was transferred onto the construction site at the Swakop dam near Okahandja and later to a massive exploration camp in Witvlei to the East of Windhoek where subsequently they established a copper mine.

In no time at all the date upon which I was required to report for compulsory military training was fast approaching and I would have to get myself to Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State.

So I resigned my post and returned to our Windhoek flat where my parents had just received news that my elder brother Nick, had been employed as the assistant purser on a Union Castle mailship and would be arriving on his first voyage to Durban in six weeks.

Thanks for following

All the best