Read Online No Stopping for Lions by Joanne Glynn - Free Book Online Page B

border, we’re still not prepared for the sight of them walking down the main street. They’re people from a different time, confident, proud, at ease with themselves and their place in the order of things. And what style! Hair, skin and clothing totally covered in a mixture of ochre and butterfat, elaborate headdresses and weighty jewellery. Red-skinned and barely dressed, the women and girls swing their hips so that their hide skirts sway to and fro, while the doe-eyed men rest on one thin long leg and a walking stick, their skirts worn with the pleats at the front. There are also Herero ladies in their head-to-toe yardage, younger men dressed in varying degrees of modernity, and a smattering of tourists trying to look as though they’ve seen it all before. The street is dusty and full of bars and barbers and, because it’s Sunday, both are doing a roaring trade. A Wild West town.
    We overnight on the outskirts of Opuwo at the first true hotel we’ve stayed in. It’s surrounded by an electric fence but is still a nice surprise after the rough and tumble of the town. The hotel is new and the décor city-modern, but the food is terrible. Maybe it’s the bad dinner or perhaps it’s my tender stomach making itself felt, but when we return to our room I’m in a dark mood. I moan that we should have changed rooms to one in the block further away; it’s noisy here and the bed is facing in the wrong direction. Neil points out that it’s late, there’s probably no one at reception, and anyway, we took the last room so there’s none left to move to. I’m not that easily placated and continue to pick until Neil has had enough. He’s heard it all before he says, there’s always a room with a better view or one with a bigger deck. I usually don’t even unpack but prowl around a room, opening drawers, flipping on lights, feeling the pillows and counting the number of mini soaps in the bathroom. Then I insist that he phones reception and requests a re-allocation or a second robe. Well he’s putting his foot down. With a continent full of new beds in front of us he can see his life as one long line of pandering to my obsessions.
    He has a point; I love staying in new places and as a result I sometimes get carried away with it all. But hasn’t Neil noticed that so far on this trip I’ve been so wrapped up in what we are doing and where we are staying that the last thing on my mind has been to make changes? I haven’t wanted to change anything. Well, apart from the occasional campsite. To prove a point I declare that this room is growing on me, in fact it’s perfect, and we go to bed with African disco music throbbing from the noisy shebeen in the valley below us.
    We’re continuing north, heading for Epupa Falls on the Angolan border. The standard of the road slides as the isolation increases and I can believe what I’ve read: this is one of the country’s last remaining wilderness areas. And that’s saying something. All the villages we pass now are Himba, with domed huts made from mud, cow dung and palm leaves. Some look deserted, though all are swept and tidy. Just waiting for the owners to return I suppose. We pick up a half-gentrified Himba, so puffed after running to catch a lift in the only vehicle to pass for hours that he can’t talk. It wouldn’t matter anyway because we don’t understand each other, but I can see that he’s embarrassed that he’s sweating all over the Troopy’s backseat. I give him the only thing I can find to mop his brow, a refresher towel, and when we drop him off he hands it back with two hands, head bowed, the little towel folded into a neat damp square.
    How many times since arriving here have we commented that Namibia is all that everyone says it is? It must be at least once a day. It was always hard to believe that a sparsely populated country, with no water and few trees, just