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"I see an ELEPHANT!!!" The snippets of conversations you hear while wandering through the hallways of Grinnell dorms around 2am can provide some great and random entertainment. During my junior year at Grinnell, my good friend Bryan Berube introduced me to the wonders of the National Geographic Webcam, which constantly videotaped an African watering hole. The best animal viewing times were at dawn, or around 2am Iowa time, so our late night procrastination often consisted of staring at a blurry pop-up window on the computer, crossing our fingers for some elephants. Two years later, I found myself grinning like an idiot while watching an elephant romp in a watering hole in Etosha National Park. There I was, though unfortunately I could no longer shout down the hall for Bryan when something exciting arrived. Actually, my predominant thought when I visited Etosha with my family was "animals travel all those kilometers for this?" When I initially pictured the largest pan in Namibia, drawing Simba-crowned
-in-the-Lion-King numbers of wild game, I imagined enormous lakes of water. In fact, when I visited, the watering holes were often smaller than a backyard swimming pool. I say and hear it all the time, but Namibia is one of the driest locations in the world, and the importance of these small pools reiterated this for me.
To picture the aridity of the central Namib Desert, here's a description I particularly enjoy by Henno Martin, a German geologist who spent two years hiding in the Namib Desert during World War II: "Day after day death poured down on the earth, its scythe a sheaf of burning rays, and its harvest as generous as in war. The air trembled over the plains as it does over a hot oven, and the gramadoela gorges yawned like the portals of hell." In contrast to my first 7 months in Namibia, we have recently had some exceptional water events at Gobabeb, and I devote the first part of my report to this.
Rain
"The colours were clear and brilliant, the light changed constantly and protean clouds surged and rolled. A rainy day in the desert is something so marvelous that you never tire of watching it." - Henno Martin, Sheltering Desert
If you replaced the sparkly slippers with dusty Chacos, the tornado with a wall of sand, the brick road with a soggy line of dunes, and the wicked witch with insurance companies, you would get a fair approximation of our version of blasting out of Kansas. What storms we have had!
In mid-January we began to have sporadic rainfall. It was will-o'-the-wisp rainfall, disappearing as quickly as it began. Life is relative, and after a rainless 21 months at Gobabeb, 0.5mm had everyone jumping. The desert seemed less harsh-sun showers, arching rainbows and a light drumming on our corrugated roofs brightened our daily work. A new fixture crept onto our water globe panorama of sky, as billowing cumulonimbus clouds billowed in the once empty east.
My perception of desert rainfall changed on March 2 around 4pm. I was waiting for a late group from the University of Madrid (a group arriving on schedule to Gobabeb would probably cause the cosmos to explode). So I didn't pay too much attention to the building wind and ominous clouds in the southeast. The storm and the Madrid group (two flat tires-the gravel roads to Gobabeb are devilish) arrived simultaneously. First job: shove a bunch of college students, who just wanted to go pee, throw up after the bumpy drive and wander around, into a safe room. The southeastern clouds coalesced into walls of horizontal rain and sand. The new arrivals and I watched open- mouthed as giant sand cyclones swirled over the dunes, almost invisible from the amount of dust in the air around the station. I think I heard someone ask "Isn't this supposed to be, you know, one of the driest places in the world?" when the roof was ripped from our station in the 100+ km/h winds, flying over our solar panels to land about 100
meters away.
Once the dust settled, we walked out into a landscape transformed. Broken solar water heaters gushed liters of water, multiple roofs had caved in or blown away, rooms flooded with water, and a thick layer of mud covered every surface. Damage estimates total over US $200,000, a heavy blow for a financially unstable station with an uncertain future. The realities of insurance claims are sobering as company representatives scramble to deny Gobabeb money. The combined rebuild and sorting out of insurance will take months.
Drinking Water
"At home we had so often heard the sun glibly called the source of all life; here in the desert it certainly wasn't." - Henno Martin, Sheltering Desert
Following our first major storm, we had one day of mud-filled water in our taps. While faucets spurting brown water might sound comical, the thought of our sole source of water failing us was unsettling. Clear water returned quickly enough, but the salt content steadily increased over the next month until the water was almost undrinkable. Even coffee took on a distinctly salty flavor, and layers of salt lined water bottles. Lucky for us, we knew we could travel into town if necessary and buy water relatively cheaply-compare that to the Nama people living in our region for over three centuries. Still, the need to horde "clean" water was an uncomfortable development and one I hope I do not have to repeat.
Floods and Quicksand
"There are degrees and kinds of solitude…I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood." - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
The first time the flood came down will remain in my mind as a true highlight of my life. Although you hear about the flooding of the ephemeral Kuiseb, grasping that the sandy riverbed really does fill with water is difficult until you experience it yourself. So when a truck drove to Gobabeb from Homeb, a village 20km upriver, to warn us of the flood's imminent arrival, I glanced at the cloudless sky a bit skeptically. Work came to a halt as every staff member piled onto the water tower or into the riverbed. It reminded me of a game my dad used to play with my brother and I on car trips to keep us occupied-first person to spot the Ohio border wins a candy bar. Lying in the riverbed under a tree for about one hour, I spent equal time picking off sand ticks and trying to imagine waves of water replacing the waves of heat emanating from the sand.
Suddenly, there it was, moving slowly enough to dip in a foot before outracing the water for a few more meters. The beauty of this age-old event had even the most reserved people laughing freely. I'll admit that I grinned particularly widely when the water reached my previous waiting spot, picturing dozens of sand ticks swept away. We spent the next few hours swimming and inter-tubing, work forgotten for the day.
The river has flooded eight times since February 7, and each flood event has had a character of its own. Some came slowly, meandering in lazy esses through the riverbed. Others arrived as swiftly as a Windhoek taxi driver (who treats pedestrians and vehicles as bowling pins), whisking down whole trees and creating vast whirlpools where the riverbed widens. Remnants of each flood's passing remained behind, creating a new landscape to explore out of familiar territory.
My enjoyment of wandering through a post-flood riverbed provided me with three realizations: First, river mud squishing between your toes is fantastic. Second, quicksand actually exists. Despite warnings from our director about hidden quicksand patches among the silt, I would blithely tramp out on solo walks, scoffing at what I assumed to be hyperbole. This is how I found myself stuck almost a meter deep in quicksand, wondering if this was what rich people in spas felt like during their daily mud baths. My own predicament really wasn't so great; I had fortuitously squished into my trap right next to a tree, which I used to lever myself out. Third realization-my director, a scientist working and living at Gobabeb for over thirty years, gives warnings worth heeding.
A final enjoyable aspect of the floods-navigating a river crossing to wind up on top of a dune provides a truly unique sense of solitude. The river acts like a guard, keeping the (albeit sparsely) populated gravel plains at bay, and leaving you to enjoy the isolation with only the sound of flowing water as a companion.
My Job
I'll continue what seems to be a common theme in past fellows' third reports: my sense of this job has changed. Aspects that initially caused me a lot of stress no longer dominate my thoughts. I no longer dread groups of 50 Namibian college students and I don't worry that I'll come across as a complete idiot whenever visitors ask me questions. Unfortunately, I think I will break my promise to John that one day I will no longer pace back and forth starting at 7am, waiting for a group scheduled to arrive at 9am, who will invariably be late anyways. I'm a little Type A, ok??
Training courses defined my first six months here in a way that they no longer do. Instead, I've become immersed in other duties that I hope will provide a longer term benefit to Gobabeb. For example, I've spent a significant amount of time writing training grants for future funding. The vicious money cycle for our training program depresses me at times. Gobabeb needs money, so raises prices for visiting students. Namibian schools have no money, so send no students. No students means…what? Student groups never generate income anyways. Should Gobabeb run these programs at a definite loss? This question dominates my thoughts and I can't come up with a good answer. Strictly speaking in monetary terms, I have a counter-productive function at Gobabeb, which really frustrates me. But I would argue (with a large bias) that cutting out students to save money would make this station an emptier and less meaningful place. The thought of the "Gobabeb Training and Research Centre" becoming the "Gobabeb
Conferencing and Workshop Centre" upsets me-greater income, but at what greater cost? Don't take this incorrectly; I am not in any way saying Gobabeb should stop drawing income through conferences and workshops. But only functioning in this capacity negates a unique history.
Depressing realities aside, I'll end with one of my favorite job-related memories from the past few months: the Epic Mud Fight. A recent primary school group arrived in time for the largest flood event we had this season, 2.3 meters in height. As mentioned, a side benefit of floods is a glorious morass of goopy river mud. During their lunch break one day, I snuck off with some of the kids to enjoy the river. A painful barefooted sprint across hot sand landed us with a bliss-inducing squish into the mud. I enjoyed this for approximately 10 seconds, and then SPLAT, mud ball straight in the face. So of course I dropped the kid into a puddle and everything degenerated into the mother of all mud fights. Unfortunately, one of the real mothers accompanying the group chose the worst possible moment to show up, right as a massive mud bomb exploded on her son's chest. I was instantaneously transported back 15 years as, sheepishly standing amongst ten dripping little figures, I received The Look. I think
mothers receive some secret initiation upon the birth of their first child-the ability to arrive exactly at the wrong moment and perfection of The Look. Anyways, mother-encounter aside, I would pay good money if you can think up a more perfect way to spend an afternoon.
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