11 September

A bit of a sad day; found a dead hippo in Mamili, just skin and bones… then later found a dead buffalo calf in the same condition. But that’s not why it’s a sad day, today is 9/11. But that’s not why either, the real reason is that today was kind of our last day in the Caprivi region of Namibia. Tomorrow we drive up to a small conservancy near the border with Botswana, and the day after that we cross.

The Caprivi turned out to be an incredibly wild and adventurous place, and in contrast to the rest of the country: very wet. The people here are very friendly, and although they live in a bit of primitive manner; they seem educated and easy to talk to. Their world is so different to ours, that I’m not sure how long it will take for them to understand ours and for us to understand theirs. They live at nature’s mercy, flooding can force them to move homes, darkness really means the end of the day and their food supply can be disrupted by the activities of wild animals. On the other hand; we live in an environment so perfectly controlled and artificial, that we can hardly tolerate hardship. And yet we create our own issues, how can I explain street-crime to someone here? A man robbing his own neighbours? On another note, the Caprivi really is a land of elephants – they are absolutely everywhere. 

Today seems to pretty much sum up the whole Caprivi experience. Rising at sunset we had to drive 50km north to fill up our fuel tank due to a miscalculation. Then we drove the whole length down again and farther south past Mudumu (where we had a herd of elephant crossing the road before us), and down to the Mamili National Park. On the way we picked up a lady and her toddler daughter and dropped them off at Sangwali, the turn off to Mamili. They didn’t speak much English. Past Sangwali we passed bustling villages and eventually came to a river with two makeshift log-bridges. At the side were many women doing the laundry in the river, and watching amusedly as our big car tossed over the bridge.

A few more kilometers through the Wuparo conservancy (taking a few wrong turns along the way), we eventually reached the border with the Mamili National Park. This park is super wild, and the official brochure advises that you travel in a convoy with at least two vehicles, but we decided to venture on our own and see how far we could get. It is essentially a big wetland swampland, with two large islands. We ended up exploring the northernmost island Lupala, as the rest of the park was completely flooded (abnormally high rains this year). We basically saw hundreds of elephant.

One thing I’ve noticed about the elephants here is that they are a little more afraid of cars than the elephants in Etosha for example. They will actively move away from you and spread their ears big. We had lunch on a floodplain at one of the many points where the road ended abruptly into the swamp and was impassable.

On our way out of the park we gave a lift to a maintenance worker and dropped him off at the make-shift bridges. This time there were many children swimming in the river as it was apparently crocodile free. A German couple from our campsite was also there and had apparently been told that the bridges weren’t trustworthy and they had instead driven through the river around it. We then did that.  At Sangwali we picked up a mother and her two kids. She apologized profusely and explained that she wanted to use the road as she was afraid of the elephants in the forest. We dropped them off 10 minutes later.

On the sandy road back to camp, there was a sign to the Kwando traditional village, so we stopped to check it out. After a short wait of banging drums a guide turned up and gave us a short tour through a model village, showing us the traditional way of life.

·         They have small mouse-traps which they place around their crops.

·         They take the mice and place them in larger traps around the chicken coops in order to catch genets, civets, serval or wild cats.

·         They feed these to their dogs.

·         The dogs are meant to look after the village at night from wild animals

·         In the ‘modern’ times they salvage metal from scrapyards to make their tools, they used to use bone.

·         The witch-doctors charge exorbitant fees of up to N$5000 (500EU), and no one seems to mind.

·         The only thing they can’t cure is AIDS

·         They used to use ‘hippo drums’ to emulate a hippo call and lure them out of the water to hunt, but no longer do so as they can earn more money from tourism.

·         They use baskets to catch fish on the river-bed

·         They have water-pumps installed by the government

·         If they don’t have nets they burn elephant or cattle poop to keep away mosquitoes.

We bought a bunch of stuff in their shop, which is all locally produced.

Then we got a small tour of the real village, and also a demonstration of the local dance and music.

·         The camera lens that broke was fixed with duct tape and has been sturdy since Etosha 6 days ago.

·         Mosquitoes are everywhere

·         After driving through the river some water leaked into the back of the car.

·         We have a great routine for the camping; arrive, open up the tent, cook dinner, eat, clean dishes. We can be ready for bed within about 40 minutes. In the mornings we can pack up within half an hour.

·         Walking around the national parks and getting out for our lunches, weve noticed that animals tend to leave us alone and stay clear. Maybe we’re lucky but we haven’t had any trouble whatsoever with predators or dangerous animals.

·         We still haven’t seen a crocodile!!!!

·         Yes, I have bush-pooped.