20/04/2025
NAMIBIA CALLING - Day 1 (April 20, 2025)
Finally arrived, waiting for guests. Breakfast at the airport and check-in at the hotel in the elegant residential area of Klein Windhoek. However, the flight was less comfortable than expected. The plane is quite full, but the window seat next to me is still empty, and I begin to entertain the idea that I will be able to enjoy the flight with some extra space. But sometimes dreams die long before dawn, and a rather corpulent gentleman signals to me that the seat next to mine is his. I almost feel sorry for him, as with his size he could have comfortably occupied both seats, but instead he is forced to occupy only his own and half of mine. He introduces himself, shakes my hand, and tells me he is a German Namibian. German Namibians are a sunnier, friendlier, and ultra-conservative version of the main Germanic strain. He is coming back from a vacation with his French partner who lives in Greece. He has a 220-square-kilometer farm in southern Namibia and shows me a photo on his cell phone of “his garden”: a savanna stretching as far as the eye can see. I tell him that I lived in South Africa for many years but that my wife, who is South African, doesn't even want to hear about going back to live there (if it were up to me, I'd go back tomorrow morning). He nods and tells me that the problem with South Africans is their “zebra approach,” that bizarre theory that black and white can and must live side by side. “It's not possible, it doesn't exist,” he explains. I pretend to have learned my lesson and try to sleep. I only manage to do so for a few hours later, after finding a free spot a little further away without any extra-large neighbors. When we arrive in Windhoek, the sun is shining. As it does practically every day here in Namibia.
