Namibia – Connected in the middle
of nowhere Written and Photographed by Molly Marie Griffin
“You’ll probably never be so far from other people
again in your life.” Another working guest said that to
me last September, while volunteer-vacationing on a wildlife sanctuary
in rural Namibia. Glancing over at her through the flames we had
conjured from desiccated wood in the pink-grey twilight, I thought:
that's an odd thing to say to someone three feet from you. I shrugged
and forked another chunk of fire-cooked kudu into my mouth. Chewing
slowly to savor both the sweet, gamey taste and the pride of having
actually cooked something with real fire besides a marshmallow,
I chewed on her words as well, digesting them quietly in the thickening
darkness.
Before this trip, I used to joke that I hail from Middle-Of-Nowhere,
Massachusetts—a small city surrounded by farmland at the
western end of the American state. But squatting around a campfire
on a wildlife sanctuary deep in the Namibian bush suddenly gives
a whole new meaning to that phrase. For remoteness, Namibia is
difficult to beat: to get here, I’d taken a three-hour bus
to New York City, an eight-hour flight to London, a ten hour flight
to the Namibian capital of Windhoek, then climbed into the back
of a van for three more hours as it sped east over dusty pavement
lined with cattle fences, rambled over endless miles of dirt road,
swerved side to side to gain traction in the vibrant orange sand.
When it finally slid to a stop at Harnas Wildlife Foundation,
I was roughly 7,310 miles from my home, as the crow flies and
commercial airlines do not.
Our campfire was located outside the Dam House, a circular cement
structure in the farm's open game reserve, an additional 30 minutes
drive from the fenced inner campus. Its verdantly painted walls
clashed irreverently against the brown winter landscape, enclosing
a small cement room and supporting an open deck for observing
animals at the nearby watering hole. Three weeks into my month
long stay, I had been sent to spend the night at Dam House to
count game, along with two other working guests.
Upon arrival, we rolled out of the back of the farm's Land Rover,
queasy and heat-sick, with sleeping bags, matches, raw meat, rice,
and no way to contact another human being until we were picked
up at sunrise the next day. Now, with dinner cooked and the game
log full of eland sightings, we stoked the fire to fend off the
absolute blackness that falls where neon signs and streetlights
(and streets, for that matter) are a distant myth. Chewing my
kudu, I realized my fellow eco-traveler was right—I could
walk miles in any direction and not disturb a soul except a slumbering
warthog family or a scavenging jackal, neither of which I was
especially keen to do.
After watching a tribal dance performance, carrying a freshly
butchered cow shank into a lion enclosure, and sharing my bed
with a diapered baby baboon, I gave up trying to find new ways
to say “Wow.” Namibia's inland climate has spawned
a fierce world of sinewy predators and sleek grazers; squat, stunted
vegetation barbed with three-inch-long thorns; hardy, nomadic
tribes of physically small people—all evolved to thrive
where nights are freezing, days are blazing, and water is scarce.
I can't say I miss the thorns much, but the other two are more
than worth the long journey. And yet, as one of the least densely
populated nations in the world, Namibia's true gift is the opportunity
to take oneself entirely out of context and be truly, terrifyingly
alone. (Although sleeping next to a cheetah isn't bad either).
Unless you regularly snack on kudu and make camp in the desert
bush, there are few vestiges of the familiar to cling to, affording
a complete seclusion unattainable in the urban world.
When the inevitable dark finally consumed our fire and the others
tucked into their sleeping bags on the concrete floor, I climbed
the rickety spiral staircase up to the observation deck. Fumbling
with the blackness and a borrowed flashlight—the one thing
I had forgotten to bring in my massively over-packed duffel bag—I
laid out on the dusty planks where I’d kept watch earlier
that day. Shutting my eyes, I turned my face heavenward and opened
them to find a new sky I had never seen before, blue-black and
crowded with stars of all sizes: some moving, some glittering,
some just holding their own. The boundless firmament, devoid of
horizon, robbed me of my spatial bearing, creating that sense
of universality that makes one's existence feel instantaneously
miraculous and completely insignificant.
Not every night under the Namibian sky was as reflective as that
one at the Dam House: many were spent as drunken astronomy lessons,
a pile of volunteers from an assortment of countries sprawled
out in a circle on the unpaved airstrip. Resting our heads in
the dirt, we searched for the Southern Cross, which quickly dissolved
into sightings of lesser-known constellations such as the Heavenly
Vacuum Cleaner, visible only after a few Windhoek Lagers. But
sooner or later we would all fall silent, together in spirit but
alone in our thoughts. For my part, I was thinking that I used
to complain about living in the “middle of nowhere”
because I felt so bored and isolated. But the funny thing about
the real middle of nowhere is that when I was miles from the familiar,
with my back in the dirt and my head in the stars, I felt connected
to everything.
Molly Marie Griffin
never owned a passport until 2007, when she jumped headfirst
into the travel world by spending a month on a wildlife sanctuary
in Namibia. While planning her next travel adventure, she
is currently living outside New York City, working as a journalist
and attempting to learn the harmonica.
