Planning a Future in Namibia

We were back! It felt like coming home after a month abroad and we were looking forward to settling in and visiting some friends.

Our first day was taken up driving along the Angolan border from one border crossing to the next trying to find one which could sell us our Namibian road tax and stamp our carnet back in – avoiding the chaos and corruption at Santa Clara had been great but all these other borders were so small and quiet they didn´t have the facilities to deal with vehicles. It was our fourth attempt when we finally got everything we needed and literally 20 minutes later we passed a police check point who asked to see our documentation!

We stopped for the night at the lovely Fantasia Guesthouse only an hour south of the border and were warmly welcomed back by both the manager and the two adorable jack russells who remembered us from all the times we had visited before.

By now James was feeling much better from his flu but I was feeling grim. In the morning we chatted to a Namibian lady who was keen to help us any way she could in our travels or even in finding a home in Namibia. We talked for a couple of hours but I couldn´t even stand up, the whole conversation was held with me curled up in one of our camp chairs feeling like death warmed up. It wasn´t a pretty sight.

We had met Theuyns when we had stayed at Fantasia a previous time and stayed in touch with him for a few months. We had been promising to go and visit him and his family in Grootfontein but never found the opportunity. Now was the perfect time – Grootfontein was close by and we had no other urgent calls on our time. So we headed in that direction

As we drove we passed a group of motorcyclists with Angolan number plates pulled over by the side of the road. James, remarkably, recognised one of the bikes as belonging to Jose, the Treasurer from the Luanda Naval Club, so we pulled over to say hello. He had to look twice to believe it was us, what were the odds of seeing each other on the road in Namibia?! He said they had all ridden from Luanda to Windhoek for a coffee and were busy riding back. That´s a 4,000km round trip on a whim! He also said that the all-electric couple we had met at the coffee plantation had been parked up just down the road charging their solar panels a couple of days before.

We had been thinking of joining the Swiss couple from Pedras Negras and the French women from Luis and Julietta´s campsite to celebrate two birthdays in Etosha. But trying do Etosha with me feeling so bad seemed a waste and we had got on so well with the all-electric couple we contacted them instead to see where they were and whether it was practical to meet up with them.

We stopped at Tsumeb enroute and found a very nice campsite that was remarkably cheap. We did six loads of washing, cleaned the fridge, food drawer and floor mat, I managed to use their wifi to do a lot of work on the re-financing of our properties in the UK as well as post a blog and James did a few bits on bobs on Henry. By the time we left we were feeling very much in control, clean and tidy and raring to go.

From Tsumeb it was a short drive to Grootfontein and from there on to Theuyns´ place.

Their 25 hectare farm took a little bit of finding and when we arrived it seemed deserted. But eventually we found a member of staff who went into the house and found everyone having their afternoon nap. Theuyns and his wife Thea rushed out and greeted us warmly

We spent three days with the family and enjoyed every minute of our time with them. We were treated to wonderful home cooked meals, we met the whole family along with some friends and neighbours and I was even taken care of with some flu medicine which I had to take twice a day and which might have been worse than the flu itself! Every time their son, Heinrich, handed me my glass of medicine to drink I curled up my nose and everyone laughed in sympathy.

But by the time we left I was feeling significantly better – whether it was the flu medicine or the home comforts or simply the company of lovely people and good friends I will never know, maybe a combination of all three.

By now the all-electric couple had replied to us to say that they were staying at the Otavi Vineyard and welcomed us to join them. We had been to the vineyard before and enjoyed both the campsite and the wine. So we headed off to meet them, although we found it so hard leaving Theuyns, Thea and their family that we didn´t get going until late afternoon. When we finally arrived at the vineyard we had a quick glass of wine with the all-electric couple that evening but sadly they had work to do so we didn´t see much of them again

Nevertheless we stayed at the vineyard for three nights and decided to buy their full range of white, red and sparkly wines as a birthday present for my sister – something from your travels in Namibia had been the request and this seemed the perfect fit.

But danger was looming ahead of us! We make no secret of the fact that we love Namibia and feel very at home here. But the honest truth is that we have already done all the tourist things and neither of us are that much into repetition, not when there is a whole world out there to see. We had flights booked back to the UK from Windhoek in about three weeks time and little to do between now and then.

A very dangerous scenario for nomadic travellers, we could get ourselves into all sorts of trouble. And that´s exactly what we did!

Whilst at the vineyard I had pulled out our paper map of Namibia and idly looked to see whether there was anywhere that could be a compromise between my desire to live down south in the desert with James´ desire to be no more than 3-4 hours drive from Windhoek or Swakopmund. At this stage I was telling myself that it was just something to amuse myself with and pass the time. But my heart leapt when I studied the map and saw that there was a whole swath of the country in a rectangle between Swakopmund, Windhoek, Mariental and Sossussvlei that easily met all our criteria at the same time

Theuyns and Thea had chatted to us a lot during our stay with them about all sorts of things, including life on a farm in Namibia. Their daughter, Monique and her husband JP live up north in the Ovamboland district and JP is a close friend of the Ovambo tribal chief. The Chief is offering long leaseholds on parcels of land in his district, some of which are very close to Etosha National Park, and JP said he could help us negotiate with him.

We were getting sucked in again, there is something very compelling about the idea of never leaving this beautiful country. We said that whilst Ovamboland is beautiful it would not be ideal for us as it is much more densely populated than the south with more bush and less desert. We mentioned that we had looked at a housing plot further south near Okahandja a few months earlier and had planned to see some more in Omaruru but decided against it as housing plots were not what we wanted. They all agreed that Omaruru is one of the best places to live in Namibia and from what we´d seen earlier in the year I could well believe it.

They gave us the contact details of some friends in Omaruru who were well connected – Gerhard and Phellazie – and who also run a Landrover garage. We called them straight away and arranged to meet up with them. We said to each other that we would just go and see what´s around, just to pass the time, just to see if maybe in a few years it might be something to consider. But as we said it we looked at each other with a twinkle in our eyes and a knowing smile that suggested it would be far more than that.

So after leaving the vineyard we headed straight for Omaruru. Gerhard and Phellazie are very busy people with hectic work schedules, but they gave up a whole day to help us. They made a few phone calls and found a game lodge that could be for sale as well as a 250 hectare housing plot.

The lodge didn´t work out but the owner of the 250 hectare plot was very keen for us to go and see it. Gerhard dropped everything and drove us out there.

It is going to sound strange for me to say that 250 hectares is a very small parcel of land. In the UK, or indeed anywhere in Europe, it would be a huge estate (625 acres). However in Namibia it is just a housing plot. With the lack of rainfall, you need a lot of land in order to be productive and 250 hectares just isn´t enough to do anything with except sit in your house and look at it. Which, whilst pretty, could get a little boring after a while.

And around Omaruru there is a lot of quite dense bush which meant that on this plot you couldn´t even look over your land, you could only see a few metres through the trees and bushes

James fell in love with Omaruru itself. It is a vibrant town, affluent, with a couple of wineries, cafes, restaurants and only two and a half hours from Windhoek. Location-wise it would be perfect and it comes complete with one very compelling extra – a large and active motorcycling community! In fact Gerhard was becoming very keen for us to move in so James could join them on their biking events.

But it just wasn´t right in too many other ways. Most of the land around that area is very close to the town and in small parcels – so the dream of a large, remote farm in the middle of the Namibian desert just wasn´t going to happen here. And the land is very expensive by Namibian standards.

We were commiserating with Phellazie and telling her what we were ideally looking for when she said she´d make a call. Her sister-in-law, Heike, is an estate agent in Windhoek and might have some ideas. Heike did indeed have an idea – she offered to set up a viewing on a 16,500 hectare (41,000 acres) farm much further south near Maltahohe. She sent photos, it looked run down but lovely. The asking price was a bit higher than we wanted to spend but she said it was negotiable.

So we booked a viewing for three days time.

We decided to drive slowly to the farm over a couple of days and see what the landscape was like in the rectangle I had identified on the map. We drove from Omaruru to Karibib and the landscape still looked densely bushy and not what we were seeking

But shortly after leaving Karibib to the south, the yellow grass savannah and soaring mountains started to appear. My heart lurched.

We drove for half a day through incredibly beautiful landscapes. It was so remote we didn´t see a single soul for miles upon miles. Every now and again we spotted a farmhouse way off in the distance but was this now too remote? We were skirting the vast Namib Naukluft National Park to our west which could only add to the sense of isolation. Did we need to choose between beauty and community?

That night we stopped at the Bushmans Desert Campsite where we had stayed near the beginning of our Namibian adventure many months ago. I had fallen in love with the place then and it was no less gorgeous this time round. This was exactly what we were looking for

All we talked about was what we could do with our farm, how we could hold motorbike and Landrover meets, how we could bring in some income by offering a top quality tourist camp, what sort of conservation and environmental research we could host. The ideas were coming thick and fast and we were so excited

The next day we drove through Solitaire, a famous tourist town where there is nothing but a fuel station, a lodge, a small store and a restaurant – it lives up to its name very well!

We had not had any internet signal since we left Karibib and we needed to get in touch with Heike to agree a time to meet at the farm the following day. So we decided to stop for lunch at the Neuras Winery where we had visited before. We knew it offered lovely food and had fast wifi

Lunch was good, the wifi was great and we got all our arrangements made. All was going well up to now but as we left the winery heading closer to the farm my heart started to sink.

Almost as soon as we drove out of the vineyard the landscape started to change. Gone were the waving yellow grasses, gone were the mountains. Instead we found ourselves driving through flat, sparse farmland. The earth was no longer the pale limestone or the red sand that covers most of Namibia. Here it was clay – dark, flat and mud-like. Whilst clay is nutrient rich, little can grow without careful cultivation as the ground is too hard for seeds to take root – and around here it was clearly all just livestock farming. There were no trees, no nothing of any interest in fact

We drove on, staring out of the windows at the views hoping that something would change, but it didn´t. I tried to convince myself that it was beautiful in a different way – and of course it is, but yet again it wasn´t the dream. Namibia is such a stunningly beautiful country, why would you choose this part as your home?

We arrived at the farmhouse in the late afternoon feeling rather down and concerned that we were wasting the owner´s time and Heike´s who was driving 5 hours from Windhoek to meet us the following day.

The owner greeted us and showed us around the farmhouse. It had been built by her family in 1935 and was solid sandstone with walls three feet thick. It had bags of character but was very run down – in fact the whole thing was very run down.

That evening, as we were camped up in her garden I was musing on my long history with Namibia, my dream from 25 years ago of buying damaged and over grazed land and turning it into something wonderful. When suddenly it struck me like a bolt of lightening. I turned to James and exclaimed ´this is the dream´! The land here looks bare, dark and uninspiring because it has been badly over grazed. This is where it all started, this is the real thing.

I stood James looking out over the farm and pointed to the horizon. See the bare earth, the sheep, the fencing? Now image waving yellow grasses, a waterhole and springbok, kudu and oryx instead of livestock. And imagine working with all the neighbouring farms to achieve the same thing on a much larger scale.

He looked at me, looked out at the view again. ´You think we can do it?´ he asked. Why not? Why not us, why not here? He mused for a while then said ´if this is your dream and you think we can do it then I´ll back you all the way´.

I had a sleepless night with ideas and plans whizzing through my head. By the time the agent arrived the next morning we had already spent a couple of hours looking over the outbuildings, barns and make-shift campsite. Ideas were churning, James was becoming as excited by this as I was. The owner drove us for most of the day around the land – but with 16,500 hectares to get around we hardly scratched the surface, just one of the boundary lines was 25km long!

As we drove further away from the farmhouse itself we realised that not as much of the land as we had thought was damaged, in fact there were large parts that had some of my waving yellow grasses.

And it had water. Plentiful, clean water that literally pumped itself out of natural springs. For southern Namibia the amount of underground water was miraculous and meant that we could grow almost anything here. That in itself was priceless.

We stopped off on a slight rise where we could see for miles to the horizon in every direction, and all of it would be our land. My lungs filled will cool, clean air, my heart soured. Even with small ambitions we could do something amazing with this land. If we set our sights higher we could achieve something remarkable.

This spot here, where we were standing would be our new Viking Longhouse home. The original farmhouse would be the lodge for conservation volunteers. The make-shift campsite could be built up properly to house more guests. We would need game fencing erected around the perimeter to keep the animals safe, whilst taking out all the fences internally to give them freedom to roam. We would bring diggers in to remove the thorny scrub and rotavate the ground before planting grass seeds. We would convert the concrete water troughs into natural waterholes for the wild animals and plant trees around the edge – Acacias, Wild Fig, even Baobab if we could source them.

The owner said the land used to be full of caracal, bat eared foxes, cheetah, kudu, vultures. All killed by farmers, rabies or from degraded land no longer able to provide the nutrients to support such biodiversity. If we started with rehabilitating the land and worked slowly to bring back the small creatures – insects, birds, small mammals – we could invite the university and other researchers to monitor how nature reasserts itself and eventually brings back populations of the larger mammals. We could host conservation volunteers to work on the estate, whether qualified or simply enthusiastic novices.

I was feeling like I was going to explode. James was quiet but thoughtful. I said to him that whilst this had been my dream for 25 years, it would not be a dream unless we both wanted the same thing. I promised to give him space and time to think things through and over the course of the next two to three days it was clear that my dream had now become our dream.

But we had a problem. 16,500 hectares is a lot of land and that came with a price. Not a price anywhere close to what it would cost in Europe but still more than we had at that moment. And once we had costed up the work we needed to do in order to get the farm where we needed it to be we realised it was out of reach.

A lifeline was thrown to us. A neighbouring farmer was part of the Landrover community and we were introduced to him by our friend Kobus. Johnny had previously been interested in buying the land himself and told us that the farm was in fact split into two lots – one being 10,300 hectares and the other 6,200 hectares. He wanted the smaller piece and said he had had an offer accepted in principle by the owner subject to someone else wanting to buy the larger piece. He showed us the split on the map and it worked for us.

We were disappointed to think that we would not be able to achieve quite as much with 10,300 hectares but, let´s face it, it´s still an enormous amount of land and plenty to get our teeth into.

But we still had the problem that foreign nationals are not allowed to own agricultural land in Namibia. We could only own 49% of it, but we would have to pay for the whole thing and have a silent Namibian partner. Kobus was the obvious choice and was very willing to help. But it would be incredibly complicated and risky for all parties – what happened if one of us died? What happened if we wanted to sell? Or if he didn´t want to be part land owner in the future due to changes in his own circumstances? There were so many things that could go wrong.

So I asked around, made a few enquiries and got the names of two recommended accountants and three recommended lawyers. I contacted them all and waited to see who would come back to me.

That evening we left the farm and camped up at a small but clean campsite just on the outskirts of Maltahohe. Maltahohe is the nearest town to the farm and is around 45 minutes drive away. When we arrived we realised it was a very small, dusty town with a very local supermarket selling limited stock, no doctor or hospital, in fact not a lot at all. But wasn´t that part of the excitement – the remote farm in the middle of nowhere??

We were making serious plans but those plans were about to be derailed, at least for a little while.

The next morning I jumped out of bed and felt a sharp pain. I ignored it and carried on with my morning. It got worse, I carried on ignoring it – we had far more important things to think about.

As we prepared to leave the campsite I climbed back into Henry to pack things away and the sharp pain surged inside me to the extent that I had to hold onto the worktop to stop myself from fainting.

I very carefully stepped back down onto the ground and said to James that something was wrong. He looked at me and frowned, seeing my pale face. We decided to go into town and try to find a pharmacy. It was Sunday which could have made things difficult but in the end it didn´t matter as there was no pharmacy to be found.

Eventually we decided to give up and drive the 100km tar road from Maltahohe to the larger town of Mariental where we hoped we could find some medical help. We arrived early afternoon but by that time I could barely walk and even sliding in and out of Henry was agony. James said we shouldn´t waste time trying to find a pharmacy, he suggested we press on all the way to Windhoek and go straight to the Lady Pohamba hospital where he had had his cellulitis diagnosed. We knew where it was, we knew it was a world class hospital and we knew the cost of a consultation wouldn´t break the bank.

So we drove through Mariental onto the main tar road directly to Windhoek and made it to the Lady Pohamba by late morning the next day. Reception sent us to the GP consulting suites and we managed to make an appointment to see a doctor for 2 hours later. She started doing some investigations then literally gasped and said that I had a blood clot that was about to rupture and needed to be admitted to hospital straight away.

They walked me back to main reception where I was taken up to the ward, put on a drip for the pain and the duty surgeon came to see me that evening. It was expected that I would be operated on the next day.

I have never been in hospital before, never had surgery and never had a general anaesthetic. I was terrified!

In fact, it´s fair to say I was having a bit of a panic. And the panic only got worse when James was told to leave and the surgeon came round and said I would need to spend at least two nights in hospital as the recovery for this particular operation would be difficult.

The nursing staff were all absolutely lovely. They came round regularly to check on me and make sure I had everything I needed. I said I needed to go home but they just smiled and patted my arm.

The next day was one of endless waiting. I just wanted this over and done with. I wanted to be operated on early enough to be able to check myself out the same day.

But it was not to be. James was called at 2:30pm and told to come straight away to say goodbye! I was then taken down to theatre at 3pm and with everyone buzzing around me I was barely able to contain my panic.

But finally a really lovely, kind and gentle anaesthetist came and introduced himself to me and the next thing I knew I was waking up in recovery.

They had promised to make sure James was there when I woke up to keep me calm but he was not there. They took me up to my bed in the ward and he was still not there. I asked for him but they said it wasn´t visiting time. I started grabbing at my wires and trying to get out of bed. They went and got James!

With all the anaesthetic in my body there was no pain at all. I woke up the next morning feeling great and tucked into my breakfast with enthusiasm

It was not going to last!

Late morning a nurse came to change my dressing and take me for a salt bath. She gently pulled the dressing away and I passed out with the agony. I tried to walk down the corridor to the salt bath and passed out again – twice in fact. I was on my knees in the bathroom with my head on the floor unable to move.

Eventually I was helped back into bed. But if I stayed there for anything more than an hour it would be midday and we would be charged for another day´s stay. We were getting nowhere with the travel insurance and the worry over the cost was making me feel even worse – the fees had already sky-rocketed from the original quote and we needed to stem the tide.

So James came to collect me at 11:30am and helped me to limp out of the hospital with a large bag of pain killers, creams and medicines. I don’t remember much about the rest of that day, everything was kind of painful and bleary.

The surgeon had told me I needed to change my dressing and have a salt bath every morning but they couldn´t put stitches into the wound, so every time the dressing was removed it would rip everything open again. He warned me that the first time I did it would be very painful.

He was not wrong, I staggered out of the shower block into James´s waiting arms and fainted again with tears streaming down my cheeks. I had to go straight back to bed with a mouthful of painkillers and lie for over an hour with my fists clenched before the pain started to subside.

The surgeon had said that after the first time it would be a lot easier. He lied! I went to the showers the next morning on my own and ended up collapsing on a poor woman waiting outside. James came running over, scooped me up and practically carried me back to bed.

The next day I managed to stagger back leaning on James without being carried and the day after that I just needed his hand to hold tightly onto. By day five I was able to hobble back to Henry on my own and by day seven I didn´t need to go back to bed afterwards.

During this time I managed to keep my mind off things to a large extent by talking to accountants and lawyers about our proposed purchase. They introduced me to a beautiful structure whereby a Namibian Trust buys the farm and we are the beneficiaries. All within the law and no-one else has any interest in the property. We would be two of the trustees and all we needed was either one or three Namibian trustees – depending on whether you believed the accountant or the lawyer!

But in the main we just stayed at Urban Camp doing very little, waiting for my wounds to heal.

It wasn´t a bad place to recouperate

When I was finally able to travel again we went back to visit Kobus and Marissa which was lovely and just what I needed

But to be honest, the 10 days between my surgery and our flights to the UK were not the best time in my life. Pain like I have never experienced before, bringing with it a mugginess in my brain and a desire for each day just to be over with as quickly as possible in the hope that the next would be better.

The surgeon told me that I would be in no pain after about two weeks. As I write this it is two months and I still hurt. But it is slowly getting better and thanks to the care and attention I have received from everyone here from nurses to surgeons to anaesthetists to receptionists and of course from James who has been there for me every step of the way – I think I´m going to pull through!