Windhoek - I’ve got a feeling it was a senior Canadian diplomat who forgot to return my copy of Henno Martin’s book, The Sheltering Desert.
Newly arrived in Namibia about the time of independence in 1990, he expressed a desire to explore the Namib Desert.
I said: before you do, read this. He did and was captivated. I then loaned him our tent, camping chairs, gas stove and water canisters and gave him directions to a couple of our favourite spots in the Namib.
Chief among those was what was known as “Henno Martin’s cave”…not so much a cave as a massive rock overhang perched high above the folded, twisted back-of-beyond place which was known as the “Gramadoelas”.
This was where Martin, a German-speaking geologist survived for two years, along with a colleague after they fled Windhoek in late 1939 in fear of being interned by the South African authorities as enemy aliens.
They carved a table and chairs out of rock into a dining and living room. It’s all there today.
The book Martin wrote about his experiences has become a classic of “Africana”, not only for its observations of an inhospitable wilderness, but also about survival and the strength of the human spirit.
He writes of an occasion when he and his friend were walking in the bed of the dry Kuiseb River. Suddenly, the sand started moving and frogs emerged and began hopping to higher ground.
The two Germans did the same – and less than 15 minutes later a 15 metre-high wall of brown water came thundering through the canyon, sweeping all before it.
When we lived in Namibia, the rains were seldom good enough to get the Kuiseb flowing, but when they did, we would drive a 600km round-trip to see the water. There is no other sight like a flowing desert river (even if it was only a trickle after a few hours and dried up within days). This happens on average once every two decades or so.
When it floods upcountry, though, there can be repercussions many hundreds of kilometres away in the desert – as happened when Martin found carp in isolated pools of water deep in the canyon. They were survivors of the great flood of 1934 – five years earlier – and managed to survive and grow in these pools which, strangely, never dried up. You can still find similar pools around today, although the carp are long gone.
I was reminded of Martin’s book the other day when a colleague and I were talking about Namibia. We agreed that it is a place like no other. He only visited; we were privileged to live there for five years and explore its vastness.
He also has a copy of Martin’s book – albeit in Afrikaans.
My recommendation: find a copy of the book and read it. Then starting making plans to visit Martin’s cave. You won’t regret either.
I accepted long ago I will never get my copy of The Sheltering Desert back; it’s probably sitting on someone’s bookshelf in Ottawa, reminding him of his sojourn in one of Africa’s most beautiful countries (although the camping equipment did come back, in good order).
If you do find a copy and there is an extra, or you know where I can get one, please let me know.
Saturday Star