Pofadder

The last overnight walk of the holiday was in Pofadder; The town could just as well have been called smallville. It was nothing, and there was nothing. However, it was close to Keetmanshoop, which is even smaller, where the Pofadder walk started and ended. The walk lasted 4 days and was tough. We walked from half past seven in the morning to five in the afternoon. The area as very beautiful and the route was not all that hard, but the long days made the walk very strenuous.

Our guide was a Nama man, Maikel, whose native tongue was Afrikaans, and who did not speak English. I had to translate for 4 days for my travel companions, which was a lot of fun, albeit difficult at times. Some words in Afrikaans have come to mean the opposite in Dutch (to which it is related), which makes translating (and understanding) harder.

"Bobbejaan is amper mens" (Babboon is "amper" human) does not mean,

"A babboon is hardly human", but

"A babboon is almost human"

In addition, he answered nearly all my questions with "ja" (yes), which makes it hard to get a clear answer. After he had answered "ja" three times to my question if there was water somewhere, he suddenly said "Maar daar is nie water nie" (But there is no water there).

I thought it was very special to meet a man on the other side of the earth with an African face that had a native tongue which was a variation of mine. It just blew my mind when he said to me: "Jij kunt mooi praat. Ik kan jou verstaan." (You speak nicely, I can understand you). In addition, Maikel had a very nice personality. He liked to talk about everything and checked continuously if no-one was left behind.

Maikel was an interesting mix of the Nama culture (which language he only learned from his father at the age of 35) and the western christian culture. He was a catholic, but also showed some animistic roots. When rain clouds appeared over our heads (it had been dry for three years, and now that we were there it started to rain) he started to burn some branches with leaves. When I asked him why he did that he said that it should drive away the clouds. And it did. They had only just been burned when the sky opened up and the sun beamed down with unrelenting force again. "Dat werkte een bietje te goed" (That worked a bit too well) was Maikels dry comment.