Back on the kokerboom road

Issue 32

Television presenter Kate Humble fell in love with Namibia’s spectacular vistas and intriguing flora and fauna when she first travelled there over a decade ago. Last year she returned, to front the first series of Wild in Africa for the BBC. As she prepares for a second round of filming she reveals how it felt to revisit this extraordinary country, ten years on. Picture the scene. In the plane was the pilot, who like most policemen these days, looked fourteen. Beside him sat my colleague Ben Fogle, who had rather unchivalrously nabbed the front seat and immediately fallen asleep. Behind the pilot sat Chris, our producer, with me next to him. The plane’s only other two seats were almost entirely taken up by our assorted luggage. Gazing out of the window, looking down on what some might call barren scrub, I felt nostalgic. These wide open spaces, unsullied by roads or buildings or patches of unnatural agricultural green, are to me the epitome of Namibia. But I was also a little apprehensive. What would it be like on the ground when I stepped off the plane into the hot dry air, my feet firmly on Namibian soil for the first time in more than a decade? Would it be as I had long remembered and cherished it or would it be a bitter disappointment? Would it make me feel like a teenager in love or a middle-aged woman meeting her university crush and finding him to be a crashing bore with halitosis? I was soon distracted from these worries by a rather more pressing matter. Excitement and the three litres of water I’d dutifully drunk between London and Windhoek were beginning to overstretch my bladder. “How long before we land in Caprivi?” I asked the pilot hopefully. “Probably about an hour.” Oh God. “You haven’t, by any chance, got enough fuel to land and take off again have you?” “No. Why?” “Er… don’t worry...” I looked longingly at Chris’ water bottle and wished I was a man. Ten years previously I had arrived in Namibia by road, crossing the border from South Africa in a dilapidated yellow and white Ford Cortina bakkie driven by my husband Ludo. Windows down, cab full of red dust, a tent, a coolbox and a couple of cardboard boxes in the back, sun blazing, and a sense of total, total freedom. The long, straight, empty dirt road cut through a landscape so alien we had to keep stopping and getting out of the car to see if it was real. Along the way, we saw our first kokerboom trees. Somehow these had found the wherewithal to survive on the red rocky outcrops that lined the road. Smaller but no less recognisable than baobabs, they are also known as quiver trees. The ever-inventive Bushmen discovered long ago that their branches, with the fibrous wood hollowed out, were perfect for carrying arrows. To subscribe or to buy this edition, click here We also found the long tattered leaves of the welwitschia, surely one of the strangest plants on the planet. These can live, it is thought, for over a thousand years. Everywhere in the dry, seemingly barren earth were signs of life, the tracks and burrows of a million tiny creatures. And then there was the sky. To someone who has grown up with the narrow, crowded horizons of suburban England, the Namibian sky is nothing short of miraculous – so huge and wide and blue it gives you a sense of vertigo if you gaze up at it for too long. Back in the car we would try and guess the distance to some point on the horizon and always fall way short of the mark. Nowhere in Namibia can be described as pretty. An old Cotswold village is pretty. Dartmoor, Snowdonia and parts of northwest Scotland are glorious, but Namibia’s landscape is jaw-dropping, eye-popping, heart-racing in its magnificence. The great, yawning expanse of Fish River Canyon; the stark, surreal beauty of Dead Vlei and Sossusvlei; the bleak romance of the Skeleton Coast; the shimmering outline of a thousand animals – zebra, giraffe, antelope – against the blinding backdrop of Etosha Pan. But, I thought as I sat in that plane, now that I had a decade of experience of other parts of the world, would Namibia still seem impressive? Would it, despite the onset of tourism, now the country’s second biggest earner after diamonds, still feel raw and wild? Tourism can do terrible things to a country, but handled responsibly, both the environment and the people who live in it can benefit. Namibia has been lucky. Up until 1994 international tourism largely left it alone. It was able to start slowly, learning from the mistakes and successes of other countries, understanding that its biggest draw, the thing that sets it apart, is its wildlife – and the extraordinarily diverse landscapes in which it lives. Back in the early ’90s Ludo and I had camped. Campsites in southern Africa tend to be excellent and the Namibian ones, with plenty of trees for shade, wood for sale, well-stocked little shops for emergency rations and, quite often, swimming pools, were no exception. But returning to the country on this working trip, needing electricity for the camera equipment, we would be staying in lodges. Many of these had been built since my last visit, so I was intrigued to know what they would be like. Lianshulu, in Caprivi, built on the banks of the Kwando River and run by the irrepressible Ralph Meyer Rust and his wife Sharon, was to be our first stop. I would fall asleep listening to hippos grunting to each other. They sounded so close, I wondered if they had taken up temporary residence on the deck outside. And they might well have. Lianshulu is not fenced. The wildlife comes and goes as it pleases and if you have to wait in the bar – not a great hardship – until a hippo has moved on past your cabin, then wait you must. It would be the same at Hobatere, a private concession on the southern border with Etosha National Park, run by Steve Brain. This is a wonderful place for birding as both Steve and his head guide Orlando are excellent birders, but it is also home to many of Namibia’s mammal species, including the big predators. When I asked Steve if I could sleep outside – a quirk of mine – he said: “Fine. But we’re not fenced so just let me know where you’d like me to send your bones.” Point taken. All too often animal and human populations clash. Namibian farmers struggle to protect their livestock from cheetahs, leopards and lions, and have the right to shoot any animal they find on its land even if it’s endangered. Cheetahs and, to a lesser extent, lions, are both under threat, yet risk being be trapped or shot. This is where the work of NGOs like AfriCat, the Cheetah Conservation Fund and AfriLeo, all of which we would visit, are so important. They work tirelessly, not just to rescue and relocate big cats that have strayed into the wrong territory, but most importantly to help the local population learn about and benefit from the presence of these animals in their country. Money from tourism helps fund this vital work; visitors to the predator projects get the chance to see some of these remarkable animals up close and learn more about them. Another species I would get to know better in Namibia was the Cape griffin vulture. This is one of the most endangered birds in the world and Namibia has a population of just eleven. So the chances of seeing one are almost nil – or would be it if it weren’t for the Rare and Endangered Species Trust. REST, as it is known, cares for a few rescued Cape griffin vultures. It also monitors the wild population by putting out carcasses once a week and watching the resulting influx from a hide. The view from that hide would be one of the most remarkable sights I have ever seen. A few dark, distinctive V-shapes appeared in the sky, circling gently. Birds started to land as more and more gathered in the sky. White-backed vultures, lappet-faced vultures, marabou storks in vast numbers wheeled overhead as the ground became a seething mass of feathers and beaks and talons and flesh. And then all of a sudden a pale bluish-grey giant landed, the other birds moving away and clearing a space as if greeting royalty, and I watched as one of the rarest birds in the world joined the fray. But, as our plane banked, all that was still to come. I caught a glimpse of the runway, a wide dirt strip carved out of the bush. We floated out of the sky and landed with the merest bump before taxiing to meet Ralph Meyer. I walked over to shake his outstretched hand, offering a silent vote of thanks to the ‘three C’s’ – creativity, control and contortionism – hiding a full, but not of sick, sick bag behind my back. The sun, the space, the sky, the dusty, herby smell of the Namibian bush all contrived to make my face split into a huge, goofy grin. I shut my eyes and spun in circles and when I opened them again Namibia was still there and it felt so right. I may not be a teenager anymore, but this was definitely love.

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