Lance and the Kalahari

Looking for rock paintings the hard way

At the Ngoma border post, the Namibian immigration officer returns to the car with us. He wants to record my VIN number.

He stops when he sees what I am driving. “You go in this?”

My old Mazda is covered in mud. The road has been a slippery mess from Kasane. Whatever weather system is causing the constant deluge, it seems to be just going around and around us rather than passing through.

I open the hood. The officer recoils. Mud is plastered all over the engine. He wipes it away along a section of the engine block and clicks his tongue. He wipes more.

Lance and I glance at each other. What happens if he can’t find it?

He doesn’t find it. He isn’t happy, but what can be done? His hands and uniform are filthy now, and it has begun raining again.

Lance paces and works his jaw. He is always this way at border posts. He did his compulsory South African army service two years ago, and they tried to push a lot of bad stuff into his head. The military training machine, during apartheid, went heavy on racist rhetoric. Those times are only ‘officially’ a few years behind us. But I would rather have him around than any of my Afrikaner friends for this trip. He is an English-speaking South African, meaning his roots are not with the early Dutch settlers but with the British immigrants who came later.

His worldview is not culturally entwined with the historical and Biblical justifications for segregation that form the core of the apartheid concept. Lance is genuinely thoughtful, enjoys exploring the continent he was born on, and isn’t convinced every black African is just out for revenge on the white guy.

The officer tucks his notebook away. “Just go,” he waves at us as though we are mosquitos. Crisis averted.

We continue on the jagged loop that will take us west through the Caprivi Strip and then return through central Botswana, skirting the Okavango Delta and viewing prehistoric rock paintings along the way. Two geologists, united through our jobs in the South African gold mines, looking at rocks on our days off. During my years in South Africa as a US expat, I’ve tried to explore all corners of the region accessible by car during holidays. Or, in this case, maybe not so accessible. It remains to be seen.

The road is like snot all the way to Katima Mulilo, crossing the Caprivi Strip from south to north. Occasionally, we pass a low-bed trailer truck hopelessly mired in a roadside ditch. I am laser-focused on driving a straight line lest my car begin to fishtail. Low, scrubby vegetation stretches off endlessly in all directions. At this time of year, everything is a beautiful dark green.

It is a relief to pull into the campground along the Zambezi. Better yet, it has stopped raining, so we can quickly put up the tent. We share some bread and cans of tuna, then go for beers. The bar we end up in is a repurposed defensive bunker, built in 1978 to watch over the river for ZIPRA rebels hiding in Zambia. It starts pouring again, and we drink, watching giant millipedes climb up and down the walls.

In the morning, I show Lance the biggest tourist attraction in town, one I visited on a previous trip. The Toilet Tree is a bathroom facility installed in a hollowed-out baobab. It was built when Namibia was a German colony administered by South Africa. The toilet no longer works.

The road west to Kongola is paved, a pleasure to drive after the mud. Things continue looking up on the next stretch to Bagani. It hasn’t rained as much out here, and the dirt road is manageable.

About halfway there, I see far ahead of us what looks like a gray wall blocking the way. As we get closer, we realize it is moving. A herd of elephants, at least fifty of them, crossing south from Angola to Botswana across this thin sliver of Namibia. We stop and wait as they trundle by.

We camp at Popa Falls, just south of Bagani. The storms circle back around and find us again. There is no place here to sit under a roof in the evening, so we eat in the tent, listening to the maddening drum of raindrops.

The border crossing back into Botswana is an easy one. We are through in the time it takes to get the passports stamped. The road deteriorates. My Mazda whines bitterly, high-centering on the rutted surface. We take turns pushing and get out several times to pour water on the brake pads when the sound of sand grating against metal becomes unbearable. We tag behind a Land Rover for a while, though they have just as many technical difficulties as we do.

We are on the western side of the Cubango River. It flows south out of the Angolan Plateau and into northwest Botswana. Rather than discharging into a lake or sea, it fans out into the desert and forms the Okavango Delta. Its waters sink into the sands, giving rise to a vast marshland full of wildlife.

Drotsky’s Cabins, a basic safari camp, sits on the edge of the Okavango. We pitch the tent here and ask around to hitch a ride to Tsodilo Hills tomorrow. The track going to the hills is 4WD only. I’ve already tempted fate too often to risk it with my Mazda.

No one at Drotsky’s is going. I lament the bad news, but Lance doesn’t care.

“It’s only 45 kilometers,” he shrugs, “and it’s a sand track. We can do that easily.”

We eat tuna again, this time with noodles boiled on my camp stove, and go for Christmas Eve beers in the thatched-roof restaurant.

We break down the tent at five in the morning, lock up the car, and start walking.

The Kalahari Desert, most of it at least, is not like the Sahara. It is a scrubland, sandy but vegetated. Trees are typically less than five meters in height and provide no shade. It drizzles most of the morning, good weather for us. I hope to see some wildlife, but there is nothing besides a few birds. There is no way my car would have made it through here. The sand is loose and deeply rutted.

In mid-afternoon, it clears, and the sun grills us mercilessly. I’m exhausted from walking on shifting sand. And I’m not drinking enough water, fearing we won’t have enough for the road ahead.

A land rover approaches but going the opposite way. The driver leans out the window, telling us we have a ways to go.

“We know.”

“Go past the hills and get a guide from the Bushman village. They know where all the good rock paintings are.”

“Thanks.”

“And look out for the one with the lipstick!”

They drive off.

My feet are sore and blistered. We find a tree with the tiniest scrap of shade to eat apples and rest for an hour.

I am about to throw the core away, but Lance stops me.

“Why are you throwing that away?”

“It’s just the core. And seeds.”

“Eat all of it.”

I’m tired and in a foul mood, but I see his point and eat. Lance is so much tougher than I am. In his time as an army grunt, they were instructed to attack thorn bushes, using only their bare hands and bodies to crush them flat. They slept in the rain. They forced marched day after day across the hot Bushveld scrubland. They were being trained to invade Angola and hunt down SWAPO rebels. But UN-mediated peace agreements won the day, South Africa formally withdrew from South West Africa (now called Namibia) after signing the Tripartite Accord, and Lance never saw any fighting.

After resting, we carry on. I can’t remember the last time my body hurt so much. There is brief joy when we finally see lumps in the distance. These are the Tsodilo Hills, the only topographically significant feature in this whole corner of Botswana. But it takes two more hours to get there, until six in the evening. I collapse at the base of the most prominent hill, in a sandy camping area, and vow not to move again. The blisters on my feet have long been ruptured. I’m dizzy from lack of water. I feel like such a wimp. Lance looks at me indifferently and wanders off to explore.

Twenty minutes later, he tells me that a vehicle is parked beyond some trees. We go over to have a look. It is a 4WD camper van with an older Italian couple. They invite us in for dinner.

Lance reminds me we have Christmas pudding. I thought it was back in the car, but he had jammed it into his backpack at the last minute. It is freaking heavy! Today is Christmas Day, something I had completely forgotten about until now.

The Italian couple cooks dinner for us, and we supply the dessert. It is the perfect act of sharing, an instant bonding for life with other travelers. My tongue is swollen from dehydration, and I struggle with swallowing but try to hide it. My gift this holiday is to fill up my bottle from the ample water supply they have in the truck. The tinkling sound of it is like beautiful music. To date, it is the most remote Christmas holiday I’ve spent.

At dawn, we visit the Bushman village. People come out to greet us and rouse the old man who usually acts as a guide. We sit on a log and listen to them talk. Their language is full of clicks and other related sounds one never hears in languages outside of southern Africa. The tiny thatched huts of the village are arranged in a circle around a central gathering spot, where we are now sitting. I don’t feel like getting out my camera. It feels otherwordly here, and I don’t want to ruin it by hiding behind a lens.

The mystery of the lipstick is answered when a young woman appears, her mouth surrounded by a thick red circle. Not really on her lips, but close. She says nothing, standing silently in the background. Our guide, Shuluka, appears, a wrinkled old man wearing a hat, and we head back to the hills.

Evidence of humans in southern Africa goes back at least 300,000 years. The Bushmen, or San People, are considered genetically the closest to these prehistoric inhabitants, hence the oldest living culture on the planet.

The rock paintings in Tsodilo Hills date from 30,000 years ago up to the 19th century. The hills themselves have been sacred to the San People from time immemorial. Unlike the prehistoric cave paintings in southern France, which were applied with red and black paint, these are all dark red.

The most intriguing paintings are those of rhinoceroses, with subtle, artistic shading.

There are three main hills in Tsodilo: the Male, Female, and Child Hill. All of the images we see are either on Female or Child Hill.

We walk back to the village with Shuluka and pay him. There are two young men here now, Xau and Xash (both names start with a click), who speak some English. They tell us that about thirty people live here.

Drums can be heard in the far distance. Xau says it comes from the continued Christmas celebrations in a nearby village of what he calls ‘black people.’

Back at our tent, we make the best of resting through the afternoon. We are both impressed with the Bushmen. Their survival skills and tenacity are legendary; seeing them in person is thrilling. Lance becomes more animated, detailing his plan to refurbish an old Land Rover and really get out into the bush. I wish I could be part of those future adventures, but I’ve already decided to leave the continent when my contract ends. Two years working in the gold mines is more than enough.

We talk about getting back to the car. Our time off from work is limited, and we don’t know what obstacles await us further down the road. Given the state of my feet, I argue that I cannot physically handle the return walk all at once. Our agreed strategy is to travel mostly at night, breaking the trip into two sessions.

We pack up the gear at 4 p.m. and hike until late. There is enough moonlight that the road appears as a light stripe ahead and we don’t need flashlights. It is peaceful and quiet, with only the rhythmic sound of our feet scrunching sand. We set up the tent and sleep until 5 a.m.

The last bit of walking into the rising sun is easier only because I know it’s almost over. We finally see some animals: a steenbok and a puff adder, the latter curled up in the middle of the sand track. Then we emerge onto the main road and walk through the village of Hauxa, stopping to buy water.

The owners at Drotsky’s Cabins seem relieved to see us back. My body is completely trashed.

In his quiet way, Lance intimates that walking 90 kilometers through the Kalahari Desert in less than two days wasn’t a big deal. I don’t objectively agree with this, but that is beside the point. I learned I should always be ready to push well outside my comfort zone and be more mentally prepared. It is a lesson I’ve carried with me ever since. Had I been with anyone else, I may never have made it to the Tsodilo Hills or the Bushman village and regretted it forever.

I’ve made several attempts to locate Lance over the years but without success. If I could find him, I would thank him for that.

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