Southeast Africa

Originally, we had spoken with the landlady to extend our booked stay by another night, until Saturday, as we had no idea what we were going to do in the following days. She had initially confirmed the extension, but then last night wrote to us and informed us that she had made a mistake and had to retract the extension offer.

We quickly had to come up with a new plan, but couldn't do anything last night as everything was closed. So, the rough plan was the following. Call up various rental agencies and see if they have any off-road campers available for immediate pick-up, and if they do, quickly decide if it will be just Anne and me or Arlett as well who will leave in it.

At 07:30 I started calling up various companies in the search for an available camper van, and by 10:00 I had actually managed to get two offers! Both were flexible between bedding for two or three people, so we offered Arlett a spot to join us, but she ultimately decided that our working schedules might be a bit too prohibitive for her liking during a campervan adventure and decided to book a spot for a 12 day organized camping adventure leaving the next day instead. This meant that today was our last day together - for the time being at least.

Until 11:00 I had not only made a deal with the rental agency, but also called ahead and made sure that we had a space to stay at for the first night.

Anne had already packed up and gone to the office to meet with the senior management for a workshop, so I packed up everything in the apartment with Arlett and we took a taxi to bring all our gear to the office as well for a short-term storage until the afternoon. The plan was to leave in the afternoon because Anne had organized for two of the local WWF colleagues to do a guided city tour with us.

After we got to the office I first spoke with one of the local colleagues about how to apply storytelling in her small side business to differentiate herself, then at 12:30, the three of us travelers and two locals left for the tour. They started out by bringing us to a local landmark called the Christuskirche, which looks quite cute there in the middle of a roundabout. Close to it was the national museum, which we tried to enter, but discovered to our dismay that only the panorama restaurant was open to the public on that day. But hey, at least we had great views from up there!

From there, we went straight to the Katutura district of Windhoek. The situation in Windhoek is special because an assumed 65-80% of the local population lives in the Katutura township outside of the city. That's also the reason why the entire city center is deserted after 18:00, since all the workers have gone home and barely anyone is left.

If you are unfamiliar with the term, townships are commonly informal settlements, where living conditions are usually cramped and access to resources such as electricity is limited. A lot of the shacks are made of simple sheet metal and house very large families.

Some townships are more organized than others. For example, we were told that people in Katutura all own the land their shack is on and are registered for their plot officially with the city hall. In other townships the city council builds most of the housing units in a tiny house manner to get a better control over infrastructure and building standards.

We also went to visit the local market, where we tried some local delicacies such as mopane worms and freshly grilled beef liver, meat, and fat, dipped in a local spice mix and served with cornflour bread - mpap.

It was definitely a special experience for us to visit Katutura with local guides, as one of them regaled us with stories of the time when he was living there after moving to Windhoek, even showing us his old house/shack. Additionally, our market experience was definitely more enjoyable because of our guides, as they know exactly what, where, and how to get and try.Lue lisää