A Twist Of Sand

"Well, come up," he said. "But you know, Geoffrey, what hell Swakopmund can be when the season's finished. It's June, and there's not a soul about. None of the fine fishing and swimming which make it the Pearl of South West Africa!"

"The fewer people about the better," I said. "And as for fishing — I damn well never want to see another fish again."

Mark laughed. We got along well together.

"What about a new trip to the Brandberg some time?" he said, half-seriously. A collection of Bushman paintings was Mark's chief interest in life, apart from the superb meals he cooked with his own hands for his personal friends. The Brandberg is a great chunk of mountain between Walvis Bay and the border of the Skeleton Coast where ancient rock paintings, said to be by Europeans of Egyptian or Mediterranean origin, can be seen if you take the trouble to climb the craggy heights. The main one is of a woman with red hair, known as the "White Lady of the Brandberg." I think Mark was one of the first people ever to see it. He had a truly Livingstonian passion for exploration coupled with his hobby, and we had done several trips together, first by jeep, and then on foot through the giant sand-encrusted, rock-strewn mountains to the north.

I fell for his bait. Even if one did not make the trip, half the fun was planning it.

"I'm game," I said. "What about Oshikuku?"

"Where in hell's that — Japan?" said the voice, suddenly becoming disembodied as (we always averred) a heavy gust of wind struck the wires across the desert.

"Middle of swamp — north of Etosha." I yelled.

"Blast it!" replied Mark faintly. "Come up on the afternoon bus and we'll discuss it." The rest of his words passed into oblivion. Into the sand. Always the sand. The sand is the master of this world.

The driver changed down. A fresh spate of sand and more hot oil fumes filled the interior of the vehicle as the force of the wind caught up with its speed. We ground our way up to the top of the sandhills, which lie on a level higher than the shifting dunes lower down and must, however, be traversed before the hard desert road is reached. I looked eagerly to the north and north-east, hoping to catch at least a glimpse (although they were twenty miles away) of either Mount Colquhoun beyond the railway track, or its neighbour, which stretches up a 2,000-foot thumb like a hitchhiker thumbing his way through eternity. The air was too full of sand — swirling, sickening, everlasting sand — which blotted out even the road a mile ahead.

The Brandberg and Mount Colquhoun are the pickets of a great tumble of peaks, broken tablelands, sand-blasted plateaux, waterless river courses and gullies untrodden by man since the dawn of time which go to make up the Kaokoveld or, as it is more sinisterly known, the Skeleton Coast. This territory, without a river, a well, or surface water anywhere at all, is the size of England. It is closed to man, first, by Government decree because it is thought it may be rich in diamonds and a sudden access of the precious stones might upset world market prices; and, second, more than the decree, rigidly enforced, is the Kaokoveld's timeless, sleepless guardian — thirst. And always at his back, death. Plenty of men have slipped across (lie forbidden border — it is nowhere marked and I suppose the nearest to a frontier in the furnace-like world is in the south, the so-called Hoanib River. It never flows, although in its broad bed, glistening white like Muizcuteerg beach, water can be had for the digging. Elephants and antelope in its wild, untrodden places dig in the river bed and make their own wells. Man dies before he gets there. The adventurers and diamond-seekers who slip away in the night are never heard of again. Thirst and death claim them.

In its 50,000 square miles there may be one or two white men. I suppose the little wild Bushmen and their stranger cousins, the Strandlopers (Walkers on the Beach) do not number more than several thousands. The Strandlopers, whom some believe to be almost the lowest type of living man closest to the "missing link," wander eternally by the shore, never going far from the moving dunes whose sand rasps and tears the skin as it blows and shifts under the great sea-winds. They live on shellfish, dead seals and other creatures swept up by the huge rollers. Blacker than the tan-coloured Bushmen, the Strandloper has longer hair, matted with grease and sand. Their stink is worse than any wild animal. The offal of the sea they share with the lean jackals and hyenas which scavenge the desolate seashore engaged on the same relentless, unsatisfied quest as themselves.