Flamingo - Travel & Tourism - Roaring around the capital
Text by Hugh Paxton Photos by Marita van Rooyen
Hi, it’s Annabel again! I’m five years old – I started this column when I was six months old – and I believe it’s still safe to say that I’m Africa’s youngest travel correspondent.
Shortly before I was born my father read a horror story. It came in the form of a chapter in the aptly named Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Good Father and was titled ‘How Much Is This Kid Going to Cost?’
I wasn’t there to see it, obviously. But I have it on the good authority of my mother that: 1) he turned whiter than a salt pan, 2) limply tapped away on his calculator, confirming economic figures, 3) screamed, 4) then shot faster than a speeding cheetah in the direction of the drinks cabinet. He emerged several days later. Apparently.
“Income! We need income!” he announced, and flew Air Namibia to London Gatwick and from there proceeded to the Rough Guides office on Oxford Street.
His plan was to suggest a Rough Guides guidebook to Namibia. The suit on the other side of the desk read a couple of sample chapters, then said, “You make Windhoek sound rather attractive, actually.”
Actually?
“What do you mean, ‘actually’? It IS attractive!”
The interview went downhill thereafter and ended with the deathblow phrase, “Thanks for dropping by. We’ll get back to you.”
Surprisingly they did. Five years later, true. But they did. Could my father supply some sample chapters they asked. Three lightning strikes, three computer wipeouts, additional crashes – I tell you, those original sample chapters were deader than Kennedy.
So where am I going with this sad tale?
Windhoek. That’s where.
My father can take a punch (which come to think of it, is just as well, as he’s probably received more of them than Harry Simon) and he immediately started work on a new Windhoek sample chapter.
“I’ll give em ‘actually’,” he announced grimly and suddenly I found myself in an abrupt learning curve of terrifyingly steep proportions.
In pre-guide-book times, he’d pick me up from school and then whisk me back home. No longer.
“Annabel. Do you want to go to a restaurant?”
“Yes.”
After 30 restaurants (there wasn’t time to eat at 29 of them, just grab menus, sneak surreptitious glances at what people were eating, wish we were eating there too, assess the toilets, accidentally walk into the kitchens to check the chef wasn’t dropping cigarette ash into the soup, et cetera). I was beginning to revise my opinion of Windhoek.
I’ve lived most of my life here and like anybody who does that sort of thing I pretty much took the place for granted. It was background. But now it wasn’t. My eyes had been opened. It was a gourmet mecca! The city seemed to have hundreds of restaurants. Mediterranean, Ethiopian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Moroccan, Fusion, Portuguese, fast food, slowly delivered food (a few of those), roaring Namibian braais, huge slabs of juicy meat, crocodiles, kudu, quiche, even morning-picked vegetables. You could eat out for a month here – breakfast, lunch and dinner – without visiting the same restaurant twice.
“Annabel. Do you want to go to a coffee shop?” my father asked.
Same story. I’m not a coffee girl but coffee shops come with all sorts of hidden extras. Milk shakes are my vice.
Same whirlwind tour deal. Coffee shops everywhere. This café culture is booming. Outdoor, indoor, out of the shopping-mall door, into hardware stores…
“Annabel. Do you want to go to a museum?”
Off we ran, my father fuelled by caffeine overdose. National museum first. This is the fourth largest museum in Africa and is housed in the Alte Feste fort (the oldest building in Windhoek) and at Owela on Robert Mugabe Ave. There is a big building across the road facing the fort that also has a lot of stuff but visits here are by appointment (although some reprobates do on occasion sneak in for a refreshing swig of pickling alcohol so not all specimens are in peak condition). Frankly, the Alte Feste struck me as a tad dull – lots of old bottles and jugs and a piano you can’t fiddle with and break – that sort of thing. But Owela! Hey, that place was made for me!
Stuffed animals, dioramas, spears, San tobacco pipes, tribal huts, bones, even a river (not a real one, obviously). Neat. As was the railway museum. The trains are outside the station, but the really intriguing stuff is above the ticket office – a century’s worth of history and railway paraphernalia. Very atmospheric. You can almost smell the steam.
Rocks were next. The museum at Geological Survey in the Ministry of Mines and Energy building just outside Eros Airport is sensational. I didn’t think they’d let us in. It’s a ministry building after all and has guards, looks formidable, that sort of thing. A lot of people think the same, which is why nobody goes and the visitor book is rather thin on entries of the “What a lovely museum!” type.
Entry to all museums is free but this one proved extremely expensive. Enthused by the dazzling array of geological marvels, my father’s next research proposal came as no surprise.
“Annabel! Let’s spend a vast amount of time and money roaring round Windhoek buying as many weird and wonderful minerals as possible before your mother freezes our account.”
“Sure!”
And we did. Before she did. So many shops have something mineral on offer. Car parks outside supermarkets often have small-scale miners with sacks of stones. House of Gems doesn’t just sell them but has its own museum. Apparently it is indescribably beautiful. I certainly can’t describe it. My mother put her foot down. If there were a Mineral Purchasers Anonymous self-help group in town, she’d have frog-marched us both down immediately.
Things could have gone further. My father was making a list. Quad biking, archery, massage, pedicures, theatre, Afrikaans live music at the Parachute Club, boiled goat's heads, brewery tours et cetera. But then it was London Calling.
“…your efforts …greatly appreciated ...regret… project postponed until 2012… global financial slump…”
My father went whiter than a salt pan, et cetera. You know the routine.
When he emerged from the drinks cabinet, he’d taken his punch.
“Looking on the bright side, Windhoek is rather attractive,” he said. “Actually. To hell with the budget and global financial slump. Let’s live a little!”
“Can we go to the museum with the scary crocodile?”
“Why not? And then we’ll go for a pedicure, my feet are killing me, we’ll do some urban bird watching, I saw an ad for city birding tours at the Crafts Centre. Ah heck, girl, let’s go all over the city. See what’s been under our noses all this time.”
