Driving in Namibia is totally different from East Africa. Long straight roads in perfect conditions. No traffic. Stunning landscape. Freedom driving these roads but also very boring and tiring…
…and it´s not only about driving: In the smallest town you will find a perfectly clean, perfectly equipped supermarket with free wireless. Never found this in Europe before… and at the same time you have kids begging in front of the supermarket for food! There is something very wrong… Other parts of Africa are poor. Bad enough that the western world is forgetting about this or let´s better say keeping Africa poor deliberately – not wanting to develop Africa. But coming to Namibia and South Africa, seeing only white people in cars, fantastic lodges in the National Parks, the best shopping malls I have ever come across, feels even worse. I could hardly live in these countries; having all the conveniences and knowing that the township 20 km next to me hasn’t even running clean water. I have seen all that before but after travelling quite a long time in West and East Africa I have forgotten about all that and find it now quite shocking… I even had a dream about wanting to go back to “real” Africa again… with its colourful markets, smelling towns, chaotic cities, most of the time happy, laughing friendly people, waving kids on the side of the road, power cuts and cold and just dripping showers… I told Mash, our Kenyan cook, about this dream. That’s why he told me his dream of that night: One of his family members was badly hit by someone with a machete. He tried to find help in a hospital but they refused to give first aid as in Kenya you need a police report first before you are treated in a hospital after a crime…
…Me wishing to go back to “real” Africa hearing horrible stories from there… made me very quiet. But at the same time: this is what I am travelling for: to see and feel how the world is with all its beautiful and horrible parts…
I love my job….and I hate the society or system I am living in…