The long road to Omajete

The road to hell is paved with good intentions; the road to Omajete however is not paved, it is all gravel and dust. Nightmare to drive at night, it is absolutely frightening. I get scared to imagine what could pop out and surprise me. Why was I on the road to Omajete? Well I am no longer chasing chameleons in the desert, these days I’m trying to find droplets of H₂O underground. This means beneath the earth surface in case anyone was struggling.

I’ve gone from a job where I had three bosses, who would all say the same thing but manage to do it differently. I know how it’s hard to fathom that three people can say the same thing but make it sound so complicated. My current job is totally off centre. You have one supervisor and you are basically on your own. It’s like that scene in deathly hallows part two when Harry Potter walks in, and tells the gang that that he’s looking for something small and easily concealed in the castle that has something to do with Ravenclaw. To which Seamus Finnegan replies “Blimey harry! That’s nothing to go on”, that’s how every conversation with my boss end up. So should I stop beating about the bush and tell the story already? Okay, get the popcorn.

Wednesday 25 July

I woke up early for a change and started packing, my usual routine of sleeping in was disturbed. I organized my stuff as best I could and packed a bag, my destination was Windhoek. To meet up with my new boss, and start my new job, 6 days early. In typical boss fashion, he gave me nothing to go on. Just GPS coordinates, all I knew is that I was supposed to drive to Omajete. Yep! Drive, after labouring through a dozen driving tests. I was not exactly happy to hear that I was driving to a place that I’d never been to and didn’t know how to get to.

Thursday 26 July

Again I woke up way earlier than I had been used to, but I had tons of loose ends that needed to be tied before I could hit the road. There was a complication getting the car, a Nissan Hardbody single cab 4x4. I started missing Rio Tinto because it would have been the operations guys job to get the car, fuel it up + get it washed and hand it over to me, I realize we took the operations guys for granted. The real world is a bit more brutal without those ops guys. Obviously surviving for a week in the middle of nowhere requires survival gear e.g. water containers, portable gas stove, tent and mattress. A person needs to eat as well, so I spent the afternoon picking food that doesn't need to be refrigerated.

Somewhere between 15H00 and running out of time, I decided to start driving. I hit the road to the tunes of TKZee's greatest hits album, the inner Kwaito in me rejoiced. With nothing more than a road map I picked up from a filling station and a functioning brain, I wound up in Omaruru via Okahandja and Wilhemstal. If there was something I learnt well on our UNAM field trips, it was how to read a map and navigate. Though even if I had ended up lost I would never admit it. A geologist is never lost; we are just somewhere where we don't want to be.

The beauty of speaking Oshiwambo is that all petrol jockeys can speak it, and they know directions to places that are hard to find. How they know that, I don't know. All I know is that using the map, my limited vision at night and carefully slow driving technique, I ended up in Omajete. No thanks to two donkeys, one kudu and a Warthog that all ran into the road to say hello. After passing massive elephant trees that looked as though they were alive, I was ready to find the driller and get some sleep.

However the village the driller directed me to and the GPS coordinates I was given disagreed by 35 Kilometres. In geology terms that equates to being lost but knowing where you are at the same time. After nearly landing in Okombahe, I drove back to Omajete. I was too tired and lazy to set up the tent and I just don't trust the strength of a tent made completely out of cheap plastic. I had already mentally prepared my resignation letter, but the Wambo in me never wants to quit. I was going to sleep on the front seat of the car, uncomfortable and contorted. I was not having fun at all.

Friday 27 July

After a stop and start night of sleep, I woke. I drove to the village where I ran circles in the previous night, and to my surprise the drillers where there in plain sight. Why I hadn't seen them at night mystified me, but then the theory of being lost states that everything looks the same at night. With the driller gone to Okahandja to find new steel casing, I got familiar with the crew. I started writing a piece called "Chill your guava", thank god the people at Apple computers invented the I-pad so that Samsung could academically compare (copy) and create the galaxy tab. Thanks to Samsung and Android OS (Google created it), I can write on the go and in the middle of nowhere. The tablet solution as Crazy Chrissie calls it is the one, I think I am deviating so back to the story.

While we were preparing to hit the ground, like literally. The Councillor for the constituency shows up, a well respected man telling by the size of his entourage. What happened next, humbled me and later saddened me. He calls the senior village men together; they offer a sacrificial lamb as an offering. I kid you not, they brought a lamb, said a million prayers and killed the lamb. So someone tell Mary, I think she’ll be missing a lamb (I hope you get this joke). A huge pot goes on the fire and in true Herero fashion the all the men get in on the action. In the space of an hour that pot was empty, two guys even started fighting over a bone. As much as this new job sucked, it had it amusements.

To cut a long story short, drilling is noisy and usually dusty if it is with compressed air. So I will leave the technicalities out of it, but the weird thing was one of the drill crew guys had a face that haunted me. Then he put his sunglasses on and it hit me, this dude was a replica of my late brother. Even his mannerisms mirrored my brothers, looking at him drove my mind into a place that I don't like going to. Poor guy must have wondered why I started keeping my distance, some things just hurt, no matter how much time passes. Nightfall brought with it male bonding time, who was the boss and what not was forgotten, at the fire we were all men. Men who left the comfort of their homes to come make a living, men with all the same problems (women, money and all that crap).

Saturday 28 July

The only thing more disappointed than opposition parties after a lost election, is village people at a dry borehole. All I heard was "Oholomende", this is the part that saddens me. Although I feel for them, because they need water for their animals and their animals are their livelihood. I am just doing my job, if there is no water then it is the gods doing, there's not much I can do. But I guess that is how people are, they will vent at whoever is present. So I left Okamapuku, headed to Okondomba via Omajete. I met the flat mountain of Ozondati; the driller calls it the table of Ozondati. With my GPS in hand and directions from the locals, I found Okondomba behind a mountain, where a Herero man gave me a tutorial on how to engage four wheel drive properly. I knew I should have passed my driving assessment so that I could take the 4 x 4 training course; again I started missing Rio Tinto. A dry borehole meant that the locals blamed the government through me, the complexities of dealing with disappointed people. I had done my job, it was time to put peddle to the mettle and head back to Windhoek. Which meant I would have to drive the nightmarish gravel road at night again, I realized that having an assistant in the field is a necessity, and again I took the luxuries at Rio for granted.

When I got to Omaruru I was so tired that my hair was falling asleep, so I went to inquire at a few bed and breakfast places about a room for the night. When heard the prices, my hair woke up. It was astronomical, but I guess that these places target tourists; they are not for us regular folk. Needless to say that driving to Karibib, then Okahandja and eventually Windhoek didn't seem like 300 km's or so, it was doable. So I drove, looking out for animals on the side of the road and slow trucks. Nothing makes driving more difficult than trying to overtake a large truck at night, but I guess I needed to learn sometime. There's only one road in Namibia that even a slow poke driver like me is comfortable speeding on, the Karibib Okahandja road makes speed limits seem redundant. After a torturous few days in the wild, alone and overwhelmed by a new job that threw me to the lions. I had made it back to civilization; I had survived the long road to Omajete.