Tracking back

30 April – 6 May

Maun was a puncture (yes, another one) and provisions stop. We stayed at Audi campsite on the outskirts of town. At Audi, you get to know your fellow campers intimately. Parked cheek by jowl, much like a parking lot, we could hear our neighbours breathe, never mind anything else…no peace and tranquility there. And if it wasn’t Serge snoring in his rooftop tent, then it was the neighbourhood dogs yapping aimlessly all night. At 4am, when the barking finally subsided, a cacophony of hysterical roosters erupted, becoming hoarser and more discordant with each successive crow. Needless to say, we were very happy to make tracks after three days – the silence and remoteness of Otjozondjupa (formerly Bushmanland) was calling.

We met friends, Clive, Simon and Lezlie in Tsumkwe, a one-donkey town where unemployment, alcohol abuse and grinding poverty have taken their toll on the local population. Clive was there for business meetings with some San master trackers as well as to assist one of the trackers who has multiple drug resistant tuberculosis. Tsumkwe has the highest incidence of TB in the country. There is only one ‘hospital’ at nearby Mangetti, and one doctor- a retired Swiss doctor who cannot retire as there is no replacement for her. The conditions in the hospital are unsanitary, with broken toilets and little children sleeping with their desperately ill (and highly infectious) parents. It is a dire and very sad situation. A way out of these wretched socioeconomic conditions is for the San master trackers to be accredited as such, enabling them to earn a living by accompanying tourists on tracking expeditions, not only in Namibia, but parts of South Africa such as the Makuleke Concession within the Kruger National Park.

We were privileged to spend two nights wild camping on Nyae Pan with two of the master trackers. Sadly, the pan, which is usually full at his time of year, was bone dry. As a result, apart from spring hares and a couple of jackal, there was not much wildlife to be seen. It was beautiful nonetheless.

And then the wheel(s) fell off. Literally. On our way out of the pan en route to Nhoma, we heard a now familiar sound associated with malfunctioning wheels. Surely it couldn’t be another puncture. Was our karma that bad? Alas, it was worse than a puncture. When we got out of our car to investigate, one of the caravan’s wheels was hanging on by one nut and bolt – all the other nuts had fallen off along the way. Good thing we were going at 20km/h and not 120km/h or I may have been typing this in a hospital bed, or perhaps not at all. I walked back along the tracks and managed to salvage three nuts, but when I returned with my lucky find, I found Anton staring disconsolately at the wheel: two of the wheel studs had been sheared right off after 7000km of often horrendous roads. We managed to force three nuts onto the remaining threadbare studs, and we limped 280 km to Grootfontein to get it repaired.