Namibia part 5: living with megafauna

We are camping after Swakopmund, and stock up on braai stuff and cereal at a vast Spar before heading north along the coast, past Henties Bay, a sea-fishing hotspot which fills up in December and January, and turning inland towards the Brandberg and Damaraland. We will be camping at EHRA’s base on the Ugab river, near the settlement of Oruhito (which has an excellent roadside craft market), but first we have a little hike up the Brandberg. Not to the top, which takes days, the plateau rising to over 2500m, but to some extraordinary rock art a short walk up a gorge, one of 1000 sites on this mountain. You need to hire a guide at the visitors’ centre, which was just being built when I first came here in 2002 as a community-income project. Our guide Martinez is good company, very knowledgeable. He also guides longer hikes if you have more time.

A greener valley than you might expect from the surrounding plain is once again the story (see the post on the Naukluft mountains), with singing birds and tadpoles in pools. It is much hotter though, the wider gorge providing less shade. Summertime will be fierce here. But the destination is worth the short hike (3km approx).

First things first: the White Lady paintings are not of a white lady but the name has stuck, a relic from the it’s-all-about-us / deny-African-culture period of history. As recently as 2018, confident, evidence-free assertions were made by a Namibian architect that it was painted by a Viking girl and based on Iberian art, part of a wave of lost Norsemen who apparently had a big influence on Himba culture. This is all bollocks, of course. It’s hard to see how you would come to that conclusion without denying the obvious. Sure, a bit of white is used, but this is clearly a man, walking quickly alongside animals. He is carrying a bow and long stick, similar to one we later see on our hunt at Nhoma for dislodging honey from trees, and a quiver on his back. The reading of it now, Martinez explains, is that it is a shaman preparing to hunt with a ritual dance, surrounded by images of the animals he wishes to find. His white legs are from the ashes of a fire he has been dancing around. Some of the animals have human features: an oryx with human back legs reflecting the hunter’s efforts to imagine, perhaps in a trance state, its movement and to track it. The overall effect is of motion, every figure flowing from right to left. This could also reflect a persistence hunt, in which an animal is hunted to exhaustion (or more precisely to overheating, by creatures better able to regulate their body temperature with sweat – ie humans). It is mesmerising. We sit for a while, our eyes travelling back and forth across the figures as Martinez talks us through each section. These images are 2000 years old or more, according to him (the AI summary on an internet search says 2000-4000 years old, but I can’t find the source). When I last visited 23 years ago, the figure was 900 years.

An hour away by road but only 40km up the Ugab river, in an area of grasslands, smallholdings and giant red granite outcrops, we come to the EHRA (Elephant-Human Relations Aid) base camp. It is beautiful countryside, but less wild than it used to be. We see more donkeys than antelopes when we are there. The latter are present but skittish. But there are elephants, dozens of them, adapted to the near-desert conditions. This year’s late rains and plentiful grasslands are misleading: bare red rock has dominated the landscape in recent years.

A truly beautiful campsite

We have the place to ourselves, which Sian is not happy about as it is unfenced. Elephants, which she loves but has a healthy fear of, do come by when it is very dry, but we are not at that stage in the season yet. And there is a water trough for them some distance from our tents (more tadpoles here!). We are beyond desert lions’ range, and other predators are as scarce as the game. Fifi, who gave us a lovely welcome and tour, runs the shop, visitors’ centre - well worth a stop if you do nothing else at EHRA - and campsites, also stays here alone. All these things reassure us, but we are still a little nervous.

Dusk

I follow Rudi’s advice and open a beer before lighting the fire, piling on twisted branches of fallen, dense hardwood which burn well. The coals glow for hours. We cook at leisure, inexpertly. It is charred but edible. Tomorrow’s supper will be better. We sit chatting and staring at the fire (“bush TV”) for a while before turning in early.

When he comes to pick us up the next day to go elephant tracking, our guide Barracus identifies the canine tracks in the sand around our camp as a ‘dog from the local village’ rather than a jackal or anything bigger. This is reassuring, and the second night is more relaxed, especially the trips to the loo by torchlight.

At the top of the hill, we pick up Big Mattias, EHRA’s most experienced elephant tracker, who is big, but so-called because his son Little Mattias also works for EHRA. We head off into the bush on the other side of the ‘main’ road (maybe 5 cars an hour).

We drive along a dry watercourse spotting a springbok, then a steenbok soon after. Both run as soon as they see us. Ostrich pairs do the same, though a little more slowly.

Following tracks

Barracus drives, changing direction according to Big Mattias’s hand movements as he peers over the side of the car door. He is an expert tracker (with hair-raising stories of being sent out to find lost tourists in this vast landscape – the lesson of which, essentially, is: don’t drive off-road) and an elephant-lover, swearing by the curative properties of dried elephant dung tea, a widespread habit in these parts, for stomach complaints. Big Mattias will chew it too, although that is unusual. Further north at Twyfelfontein, people inhale smoke from burning it when they are congested. Big Mattias’s bushlore is inherited and lived daily, and is partly based on observing what elephants do and eat. I can understand this, given the big beasts’ inefficient digestive systems, which would release nutrients or medicinal properties of a plant by only partially digesting it. There is also not much access to healthcare in the region, so traditional medicine is important.

We stop by some elephant tracks in the sand and a lesson begins. Under the gaze of Big Mattias, Barracus asks which way the elephant was walking. Lily gets it right, and Barracus explains the flow of the foot (deeper at the heel), and the difference between back (big) and front prints (huge – they support the weight of the head). We stop and take apart dried dung and also find some wetter, more recent excretions.

Other stops are the pretty vegetable garden of a retired schoolteacher surrounded by an EHRA-provided electric fence to deter raiding, and a solar-powered borehole, complete with elephant-friendly drinking trough so that the little (massive) buggers don’t go digging up water pipes. EHRA volunteers have built hundreds in the area.

Found them!

After a big loop through the bush, following tracks but also with a tip-off on the radio, we arrive back at the road, and spot most of the herd on the other side, with one member still to cross. An overland truck, full of wide-eyed travellers, stops for the lucky sighting. They are feeding, moving slowly through the bush. We drive over and closer to them, still at a respectful distance, unlike the tourists the week before who got out of their car to get a closer look and were chased back to it, then rolled over inside it. They were unharmed ultimately, through luck rather than anything they did: another reason you should have a guide who knows each individual and reads elephant behaviour well. But if you are on your own, I’d say 100m + is safe(ish – there’s always an -ish with elephants), and don’t ever split a group up with your vehicle, especially not this one.

Meet Duke, the youngest desert elephant

We notice why after a teasing question from Barracus. Can you see how they are standing? We look at the matriarch and other females, arranged in a kind of star shape facing outwards. In the middle of this, a small head suddenly pops up above the tall, dry grass and a tiny 2-week old elephant gets to his feet. He can still fit under his mother, and his trunk is still a bit flappy, uncontrolled. This is Duke, the youngest desert elephant, who has survived longer than most newborns in recent years, which has brought real hope to EHRA this winter. We stop for a long time to watch him as he works through a burst of energy before flopping down to sleep again. Another young elephant does the same as the adults feed and rest around them in the midday sun. It is a most wonderful sighting, made even more special by the obvious joy of our two guides (Barracus tells me the next day with a smile that he went back to watch them on his own after dropping us and Big Mattias off). Long may he be protected and nurtured by this remarkable herd, both elephant and human.

I am sorry to leave this beautiful, peaceful campsite, but 2 nights is enough for now. And we are booked in somewhere special further north.

Practical information: you can book camping or glamping at EHRA, who will also cater for you. Ozondjou Trails next door have a close working relationship with EHRA and will look after you well and take you elephant tracking with a guide. Expert Africa will book you in there but not at EHRA.