MEMORIES FROM MY LIFE
In The Heart Of The Desert
A unique experience learning survival skills and more about oneself while out in nature
I was fourteen, and in the third year of high school in Windhoek, Namibia. I had always worked hard at school to earn good grades, and this served me well. Every year, school chose thirty girls whose grades were good enough for them to miss a week of school. I was one of those girls, and thrilled to be chosen, as we would go to Swakopmund, one of my favorite places.
We were to leave on Monday morning, and return on Saturday afternoon.
Overnight at Spitzkoppe
Where the trip from Windhoek to Swakopmund was just over 3 hours by car, it surely took longer by bus. Also, besides the fact the week was called a ‘survival week’, obviously it was also about fun and learning.
There were frequent stops on the way to our destination, and a lot of exciting squeals from us teenage girls. I clearly remember a photo taken on one of our roadside stops (which I still have in a photo album) where I sit on a rock with four other girls.
The program for the week said we would first drive to the Spitzkoppe, even though this would take us off the direct route to Swakopmund.
The Spitzkoppe is a group of bald granite peaks or inselbergs located between Usakos and Swakopmund in the Namib desert of Namibia. The granite is more than 120 million years old and the highest outcrop rises about 1,728 metres above sea level. The peaks stand out dramatically from the flat surrounding plains ~ Wikipedia
We arrived at the Spitzkoppe somewhere in the afternoon, and there was… only nature. After a snack and something to drink, the teachers rounded us up, and we started walking towards the granite peaks. Thinking back on this, I can still ‘feel’ the freedom of nature; the beauty of being in a place where there were no man-made things, only what nature had created.
On those granite rocks, we found large ants — about 1 to 1.5 centimeter long — and spiders. At first we didn’t know it was spiders, those red velvety creatures running around in the sun. We were told they were harmless, and this was the only time in my life I held a spider in my hand. They were beautiful and tiny, smaller than those ants.
After our adventure on those rocks, we went back down to the bus. Us girls thought we would get back in and continue to Swakopmund, but we were wrong.
We were told to get our backpacks and roll out our sleeping bags. The teachers started a fire to prepare the evening meal, and by the time we ate, the only light we had was that of the fire. Out there in nature, in the desert, it got so dark that you couldn’t see a hand in front of your eyes.
A scream woke me that night, somewhere in the early hours of the morning. The next sound was a deep grunty-growly-snorty one. It definitely came from an animal, but where was it?
The teachers told us to be quiet, to be calm. I can’t remember if we went back to sleep — I don’t think so — but as the day broke, we found the den of a common warthog close to where we had slept that night.
The barracks
In Swakopmund, we slept in barracks that were once property of the army, but then used by schools for these kinds of survival trips.
After being assigned our beds, we all gathered outside, where they gave us the planning for the rest of the week. During daytime, we would mainly be outside on the obstacle course, climbing over or crawling under contraptions once used by soldiers. Between these outdoor activities, we had some theoretical and practical lessons about survival.
We had enough downtime between those activities, even though we all also had to do our chores of sweeping floors and doing dishes. The teachers added an element of competition when we were on those obstacle courses, dividing us into teams and setting goals for us to reach. Of course, each team wanted to win, and it made for lots of laughter and camaraderie.
Compass, map, and coordinates
When we were told about the planning, the teachers told us they had another surprise for us later in the week.
After two nights sleeping in the barracks, on Thursday morning we all stood ready to go back to the obstacle course again, but the teachers told us to get our backpacks and our sleeping bags. We were told to pack our tracksuits, and even an extra jersey. The rest of our clothes stayed in the barracks. Once we had everything, we all got on the bus.
We drove away from Swakopmund toward Walvis Bay. With no town in sight, the bus stopped, and the first team was told to get off. The teachers spoke to them for a short moment, handed them some stuff and got back onto the bus, leaving the team there. Then they dropped a second team many kilometers down the road.
When it was our team’s turn, we got off the bus. On one side of the road was the ocean, on the other, the desert. The teachers handed us a compass, a map and a set of coordinates — they had taught us navigating in the previous days. They opened a box and each girl in the team had to pick a tin of food — none of them had labels — and put it in her backpack. The teachers wished us good luck, got back onto the bus and drove off.
The competition of element was to be the first group to reach the set of coordinates the teachers had given us.
We used our newly gained knowledge of navigating and started walking — straight into the desert and away from the ocean.
We were chirpy and motivated, but as the day wore on, the tears came. We encouraged each other to keep going on, when we all felt like giving up. We dragged each other along. We discovered how difficult it was to walk up a dune on the leeward side, which is mostly steeper than the windward side.
It was tiring, so damn tiring.
It took us most of the day to finally, finally get to the coordinates where the teachers waited. We thought we would be the last group to arrive, but as we approached the teachers, we saw another group heading towards them. We couldn’t run because of the sea of sand around us, but we didn’t want to be the last group in, so we found some energy from somewhere and increased our speed.
Fun fact: we were the first group in. Just!
COLD!
Once again, the day went from bright daylight to a short period of dusk and suddenly it was DARK!
By then, each group had already shared and eaten what was in the tins — yuk, we had two tins of sweetcorn — and after all the walking and climbing, our muscles ached and we were tired.
With the sun and warmth gone, the cold came. I never realized how cold it could be out in the desert until that night. Despite the tracksuits, the extra jerseys and crawling deep into our sleeping bags, several of us shivered with cold.
All. Night. Long.
I had never been so happy in my life that a night had passed!
The next morning, we rounded up our stuff and had to gather up the courage to walk through the sand again. Some girls cried even before we started, thinking back on the pain and desperation of the previous day.
The teachers urged us to walk, and so we did. We headed straight for a large dune and had to climb the leeward side of it to get to the top.
As we got to the top of the dune, some of us cried with relief. There, a couple of hundred meters from that dune, were the ocean and the road where the teachers had dropped us off the day before… and the bus!
Never to be forgotten
We returned to the barracks, and that last night was all about fun and laughter. We performed for the teachers — song and dance and poems and stories. We formed many friendships that week, and I hope some of them still exist.
What we all knew was that we had shared a unique experience, and back at school the next week, it was difficult to share with those who stayed behind what we had found out there in the vast space of nature.
How I would love to return to the Spitzkoppe, to Swakopmund, and maybe even to climb at least one dune again. Being in the heart of the desert, surrounded by nothing but sand, had taught a fourteen-year-old girl something about her own resilience, and had given her a memory never to be forgotten.
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