Foiling burglars and hiring cars

  Windhoek, Namibia
Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The nice Namibian not only gave us a FREE (!!) ride all the way to Windhoek and fed us en route, but also, unbeknown to us, arranged for us to stay with his unmarried-but-looking-hard brother-in-law! We arrived in at Joggie's apartment in the suburbs of Windhoek not quite sure what we were in for. Joggie was lovely. A little podgy, hard-of-hearing, and a little awkward with girls, but a lovely and most accomodating host with a lovely wee house with loads of security - does one really need bars on every window, burglar alarms, and big fences with barbed wire? Joggie feed us, gave us a bed, lent us his washing machine and then drove us down to the mall :)


That night we had a lovely sleep - until 3am. Kirsty and I are both light sleepers, and woke up when we both noticed that the door of our bedroom was being opened and someone was peering in at us. More than a little disorientated and not sure what was happening, we both feigned sleep, thinking that our host must be a bit of a FREAK for wanting to peer at us sleeping girls. I started to get worried when the peering went on for far too long. The door would open, a face would peer around, then open further. Our voyageur opened the door even further, crouched down and made to enter our room. I suddenly sat up and bed and shouted "WHO ARE YOU?" at the top of my voice. Somehow, in spite of being nearly blind without my glasses I had realised that the person who was peering at us was black and therefore not our host Joggie who was Afrikaans.

The would-be rapist/burglar/thief got the fright of his life and sped to the bathroom. I jumped out of bed and into Joggie's room and shoke him awake. (I was quite relieved to find him in bed and not the freak we were worried he was!). Joggie jumped up, put on his hearing aid, listened to our story and we all walked cautiously towards the bathroom. The window was wide open, the burglar bars cut clean off the window, and whoever it was, was long gone. We were pretty freaked. Despite having us wallet, ID cards, car keys, bible, and clothes stolen, Joggie said it was pointless to call the police, and volunteered to stay up until dawn and protect us sleeping girls. What a gentleman! So back to bed we went with our hearts racing away. Just another exciting adventure in the lives of Hannah and Kirsty!


The next day Joggie went around cancelling his cards and we set about exploring town. Windhoek is tiny - only 250,000 people (Namibia itself only has a population of 1.8m ish) and we walked the one main street and visited all the shopping malls in town in that one day. Not much bought but we did enjoy being girls again! Even made it to the hairdressers to get our hair trimmed!


One of the main reasons that Namibia was on our itinerary was because of one certain Mr Frankie Fredericks, one of the world's best sprinters EVER. Frankie unfortunately had the misfortune to be a world class sprinter at the time of the even faster Carl Lewis and as such has 7 Olympic Silver Medals to his name - the gold elluded him right to the end. One of my best (or worst) Mizuno memories is at Athens Olympics watching the 200m final with Frankie's wife Jessica. Frankie had had an amazing comeback the year before, becoming Commonwealth Champion and this was his last chance for that evasive gold. He was fired up, the Americans were (too) bulked up. The crowd booed (one of the Americans in the same race was a doping suspect) and wouldn't let the race start. It went on and on and Jessica sitting next to me burst into tears saying that they were going to ruin it. The crowd only calmed down when the camera zoomed in on Frankie (a BIG favourite) and he pleaded and begged for the crowd to calm down and let them race. Eventually they did, but Frankie had lost his concentration and trailed behind the 1-2-3 American finish for a close 4th. Poor Jess and I were crying hysterically. That was the last time Frankie had raced.


Having worked with Frankie for the last 4 years, and in that time becoming a friend with his wife Jess, I wanted to catch up with them both at home in Windhoek. Jess came into town and picked us up and took us to their very lovely (and tastful) house on the hills of Klein Windhoek. There we played with their two kids, Soraya and Jamie (born in December) and caught up on all the goss and joys of motherhood with Jess. Frankie came home at 6pm and we chatted before he left to go play soccer. After he came back we cooked, ate and sat around watching Mexican soaps and pirated movies for the rest of the night before being driven back to Joggies just before midnight. It was lovely to see both Frankie and Jess at home and relaxed and just enjoying life in Namibia and with their kids. It was also very special for me to see, on top of their living room table full with photos of their wedding and their kids, a plaque I had made for Frankie in commemoration of him winning gold in Manchester.


After another couple of lazy days in the capital (and comfort of a home!) we decided to move on. We researched rental cars and hired one off the internet - we thought we had found a reasonable deal, but on picking it up, found up that the price EXCLUDED insurance, and that insurance was going to double the cost... we swallowed the big lump in our throats (and bankbook) and decided to go with it anyway.

We tried in vain to drum up some passengers by doing the rounds of the backpackers hostel, but did manage to borrow a tent from a kind Aussie guy working in Windhoek. And off we set. Destination: the sand dunes of Swakopmund.