WALVIS BAY, PREMIER PORT OF NAMIBIA
By Bob Van Leer

  (WALVIS BAY, NAMIBIA, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2001) - Namibia is a huge country, more than half the size of Alaska, but with only 1.8 million people, about half the population of Oregon.

  There is a reason for that, of course, actually two reasons. Along the coast is the Namib Desert, and much of the interior is in the Kalahari Desert.

  We docked here this morning after a four-day run from Benin. The tropics are now behind us, but it is mid-summer here in the southern hemisphere.

  Walvis Bay, a town of 50,000 population, is by far the premier port of the country.

  Windhoek, the capital, is the largest city in this southwestern African country with a population of 200,000. Betty and I took a bus tour which started at 9:00 a.m. in chilly, overcast weather. This didn't last long as the fog burned off and the temperature turned hot. We found later on our tour this fog supports a sparse, fragile desert plant community that is entirely dependent on this fog for the water it needs to exist.

  The rainfall here averages 8 millimeters per year. For comparison, the width of 35 mm. film is about four and a half times that much. One of these plants supported by fog is a most unusual one named "wellwitschia mirabilis". The plant has only two leaves and is estimated to live up to 2000 years. This plant is not in a hurry, and given the conditions it lives in, can't be. Our guide said the plants grow an average of 10 mm. per year.  There are male and female plants and our guide said the conditions for germination are right only about every 80 years. The plant is not outstanding in appearance. The two leaves curl up to look like a lot more. One prize specimen we were shown was about six feet across and three-four feet high and had an estimated age of 1500 years.

  In this extremely dry desert, metal doesn't deteriorate much. Scrap iron from a South African Army camp in World War I (1914-18), is hardly rusted. Right at the coast, of course, salt is a factor. One rusty display is a steam tractor named "Martin Luther". It was brought in to haul supplies in the desert, but there were two strategic errors. One is that there are no ready supplies of water for the boiler in the desert, and the second is there is no fuel to heat the water.

  The water used by the population is from wells in two river valleys and piped back and forth.

  This was a German colony before World War I. It was then occupied by the British and South Africans. Namibia did not become a country until 1990. The country is now a democracy, but signs of the perennial African disease, anarchy, are visible by inspecting just one issue of the Namibian, the local newspaper (squatting on public land in defiance of a court order, a trial for treason). A testing time will be whenever the first and only president, Sam Nujoma,who has held office since independence, is to be replaced. He is serving his third five-year term which lasts to 2005.

  We visited the town of Swakopmund north of Walvis Bay and the town looks like a movie set. The buildings are left over from German colonial days, but refurbished and painted. The main street is Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse.

  Our guide said before independence there were two levels of schooling. One for whites which compared with anything in Europe. The other was for everyone else and was a second class system. Since independence all children go to the same schools and our guide, who is white, said it works very well to his surprise. Children from far out of town live in hostels in town during the school week.

  On the return trip to Walvis Bay, our driver pointed out some strange structures in the ocean, "guano islands". These are wood platforms, perhaps a hundred feet across, designed for birds to roost on. The bird droppings are harvested for fertilizer.

  A U. S. State Department publication said Namibia's average Gross Domestic Product per person ($3600) is high for a developing country, ". . .but obscures one of the most unequal income distributions on the African continent:. Life expectancy is 42.53 years and women have an expectancy of only 40.53 years. Christianity is the main religion (80-90%) and indigenous beliefs the balance. English is the official language but Afrikaans, a version of Dutch, is the common language.

  Tonight we will make a run of 259 nautical miles to Luderitz in southern Namibia, the former German port.