Dear Leony,
It's been a while since we booked our trip with you (last September)
It was a fantastic trip, even though we nearly got burned in a bushfire.
Oh well, that's part of it.
Here is the travelogue we promised you then (a section from it) with a few photos.
No, it's not the Bobo camper that's on it.
But alas, these photos are part of the story...
Warm regards, and best wishes for the New Year, and…
Until our next trip!
Thanks for all the good preparation and bookings!
Henk de G./Ciske den H.
The Song of Silence
@En recently you sang to me, and now I sing to you.
It's one of the most beautiful songs I know.
I will sing it too, later, in the desert.
Will I be quiet enough? Soon I will know.
We were briefly in real Africa, not among the white people but in the east of Namibia, with the Bushmen beads, and the bush still burned for 4 days, with occasional terrifyingly approaching crackling, and enormous fountains of sparks in the night, and the roar of falling giants of the forest… but we also so desperately wanted to visit the Khaudom, the difficult to access and therefore unspoilt wildlife area where almost no one ever went. It lay a little further, a little east of where we were, on the border with Botswana, but how to ride these deep and narrow sandy paths, hidden in the tall grass? And then there was the fire…
No, we had to turn back, first to Tsumkwe (it seems like a little place, it’s only a few farms) to head north from there, a total of around 160 extra kms there and back.
I checked the fuel gauge after pouring the last of the fuel from the jerry can. The first reliable station was 220 km back, at Grootfontein, and we would make that from here. But also to Khaudom?
Our food supplies had also dwindled. There was nothing to be had, the supply lines had been cut. Yes, we saw hunger around us, and we shared the remnants of old, dry bread. I spread peanut butter and jam on it for them, and the San seemed a little surprised. Until they saw that we ate it ourselves, just the same. Then it was fine.
And then Arno came by, Arno who as a lone white man often goes to the bushmen to help them, and has even built a little school for them somewhere further away. However, the Dutch teacher he had appointed had been sleeping off his binge for months in some town... lessons were not being given, the children were at home.
Arno, a rough diamond, suggested he join us for a day out, taking the scenic route to Khaudom and that his pickup would manage it.
We asked him for food, but he barely had any himself. He did still have petrol, though.
We were delighted by this unexpected opportunity.
We set off.
The conversation on the way got off to a slow start.
Arno turned out to be a real grumbler, who gruffly contradicted everything I said with an air of casualness.
Whatever I told you.
Yes, of course he knew a lot about nature, about the animals, and especially the birds, but still.
As he rushed on over the smallest paths, the atmosphere remained tense.
It wasn't relaxed, no matter how much I tried to lighten the mood (only much later did I manage to thaw him out a bit. His first smile).
Cis was glad she was sitting at the back. She didn't have to deal with it as much and could focus her attention on her surroundings.
And I thought: let it go. It’s fine like this.
Because there was plenty to see, and otherwise Arno would point it out (”look over there!, a…….(you fill in the blank)).
He went along the watering holes, clearing their sources and a bit of them from packed elephant earth. (”The government does nothing about it. I have more tools in the car than the government has in its entire depot”).
Still, we didn't see many animals apart from elephants, but there were supposed to be the rare wild dogs that Arno had only recently seen.
We saw the only campsite in the area, where incidentally no one was.
With warning signs, mind you, due to the lions and other large game that could just wander by there.
And then it was 3 PM, and Arno stopped at a watering hole.
He took a chair from the boot, advised us to do the same, and began to read from the thick tome about Africa he had brought with him.
We would stay there until the sun went down.
But the sun was still high... Cis and I looked at each other.
What could we do? Get bored? Couldn't he have let us know beforehand, so we could have brought a book or something too?
I rummaged through my backpack for useful bits and bobs to pass the time, and I found a few printed texts inside.
I read again what had been written, and I asked once more, this time to Arno, what was true about that gemsbok that never drank. He looked at me as if I were mad...
He had also often seen the Bushmen kill the mother animal and her young, if they were hungry enough.
And then I found a little lyric I'd brought with me, and the melody merged with the silence.
And so there was a song, and there was a large termite mound I was sitting on, and there was Cis further down by the water, and Arno by the car, Arno who was reading his book.
Three hours had passed. They went by like 30 minutes.
Darkness fell as it was time for night, and great shadows slowly detached themselves from the edge of the woods on the other side of the lake, and they came slowly, without exception with their trunks held high, towards the water.
It was a solemn sight, like a pastoral.
We were sniffed and scanned and cleared.
The little scene of bathing elephants unfolded again, but this time in the evening twilight.
And then it was suddenly time to leave.
Arno was in a huge hurry.
Because the fire flared up again.
We dashed with incredible speed through high-standing grass and on the side, we just caught sight of the large grey shadows of mother elephants with young ones who ran with us for a while longer.
We sped and the grass caused hallucinations, we swerved through too-sharp bends, sometimes landing off the road and into the bushes, and yet it had something solemn about it.
For we were bordered by burning torches.
It was the tree stumps along the path, at equal distances, as if someone had placed them there for us.
Later, when they arrived at the camper, Cis asked:
”Why were you singing out there on the plain just now?
Why did you disturb the silence?”
Henk,
Nieuwegein
Dutch 
English