Leaving Swakop

The bus left at 07:30 and the driver found me sitting on the curb, bags packed and ready to go. We did the usual pickup from various hotels and guest houses and as the mini bus trundled around the quiet and empty streets I noticed all the shops which I’d have liked to have ambled around if I’d had the chance. There was Big Daddy’s Fashions for Women, Speedy Sports and my personal favourite The Deep Chic Boutique. The mini bus over flowed with towering and stocky Germans and I found myself back in the same seat squeezed tightly up against the window. This time, however, I was keeping a very firm grip on my purse. As we drove through the outskirts of the town, through the industrial estate and out into scrappy desert I thought about the last five weeks and decided it had been probably the most unfulfilling and disappointing holiday I have ever had. What I needed, I decided, was a holiday to get over my holiday. Deciding where I was going to go was as good a use of my time over the next few hours as anything. Warming to this new purpose I produced a map of the world in my head and diligently erased the African sub-continent. After this trip I had no intention of ever renewing my acquaintance with Africa again. Africa and I were done. Finito. My new edited version of the world made me feel remarkably better and still left me oodles of choice. More than I knew what to do with. But I decided my baseline criteria was clear - I wanted beach, palm trees and sunsets as standard and Mai Tais on tap, preferably delivered to my recliner along with chilled towels and a smile by a young and handsome waiter who didn’t look as if he was going to mug me. I wanted a bed you could lie in sideways and still not touch the edges if that was what took my fancy and I wanted breakfast cooked by someone else and served until midday with 27 different ways to have waffle. Langkwai sprung to mind or Mauritus or perhaps the Seychelles. Wherever it was I intended it to be a long, long way from Africa.

I think I've been legally mugged

Even though the girl at the Bureau du Change had told me to come back just before they closed at three thirty to check the money was in, it was just too much to expect me to wait that long and while I sat in Café Anton writing it felt like I was six again and had been told by my parents not to go down stairs on Christmas morning until at least 8 o’clock just to make sure Santa had been. I am a little more patient now but at 1.30 the anticipations had just gotten toooo much and I packed up my laptop, finished the last of my goulash soup (I’d splashed out on lunch) and headed for Standard Bank. There was a small queue at the till I headed for but only two or three people and I happily tagged myself onto the end of it feeling sorry for all those in the other queues that stretched right back in a long snake across the banking hall. Just give it a few minutes I thought and I’ll be back out in the sunshine, sauntering along the beach holding the kind of ice-cream sundae that was so big it would likely win some international architectural prize. I allowed myself a little smile. The queue went down and soon I was sitting, facing the window, reference number and passport in hand. The girl checked the computer, smiled broadly, and said, indeed, the money was in. What was the feeling like? Well imagine ten years of Christmases and birthdays all rolled into one and that would be pretty much right. The feeling was pretty damn good. While the teller was filling out the Moneygram form I was wondering whether I might just manage to get one of the last seats on a late afternoon scenic flight up the Skeleton coast and just as I was thinking about it, right at that moment, all the power in the bank went off and that meant so did the computer screen with the confirmation number she needed before she could give me the money. Yes, it really did. Is there some BIG MESSAGE for me here I’m just not getting? Whenever on this holiday I’ve thought about fun and exciting things to do my world seems to fall apart. I’m starting to feel like a bit part actor in a remake of ‘The Day the World Stood Still’. Well, the lack of power didn’t stop anyone else getting their money apparently, so she asked me to step aside while she dealt with the simpler transactions that didn’t need the computer and when the power came back on she assured me the final few steps would only take moments to complete. It was now 13.45. People came and went, I leaned against the wall, sat down, then went for a walk to the other end of the banking hall, looked out of the window – you get the picture - then, at last, the power came back on. She gestured for me to sit, and smiling, filled in the rest of the form and said she just had to get it signed. Speaking to someone through what looked like a letter box in the wall behind her she disappeared and then didn’t come back for what seemed like a very long time and when she did come back she wasn’t smiling any more. The amount I had been wired was too big I was told (good grief, we’re talking hundreds not thousands here) and it needed special sign-off. The manager who needed to give the special sign off was in Windhoek and they were trying to get hold of him. They were “doing everything they could”. This kind of phrase, when used by a bank always rings warning bells and my recent experiences had not exactly built up my confidence in their competency. Time ticked on. The security guard closed and locked the door at 3.30 and the fifty of so customers still remaining in the banking hall went down to twenty, and then to eight, and then to four and in the end there was just me, leaning against the wall starting to get a bit vexed. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. The teller was studiously avoiding my eye by this time so I went and sat down, square in front of her and knocked on the window until she looked up at me. I reminded her I had been there for nearly three hours, I had been broke for five days, I was leaving on the bus at 07:00 the next morning and I needed that money. If necessary I was fully prepared to tie myself to something or wrap myself around the chair but whatever happened, I was not leaving that bank without my money, no siree.

She disappeared again and this time I saw her on the other side of the letter box gesticulating wildly and conversing with some urgency with a person or people just out of my view. I saw a flurry of activity and a waving of papers and then she was back in front of me smiling again and telling me the release confirmation had just come through. She passed me the printout with the payment details converted into Namibian dollars and I was also smiling at this point and was until I looked down at the currency conversion rate. Somewhere between converting from Sterling into Dollars (all Moneygrams are in dollars) and then to Namibian dollars I had lost eighty pounds not counting the fee for doing the transfer. I’d been here since 1.30, it was now 4.15, the security guard was loitering in my vicinity and they were offering me the money at a rate that made me understand why bankers get to retire at 45. Because they rip off people like me. My choices were 1. to take the money or 2. not take the money and ring up and query it with their international division. I took the money and made a promise never ever, ever, to come back to Namibia.

Back on the street at 4.30 in the afternoon my enthusiasm for souvenir shopping has waned as has my lust for an ice-cream sundae so I know I am in a bad way. The money was presented in hundred dollar notes and not having a handbag I’ve had to push the wad down deep into the pocket of my shorts and I’m now walking around the shopping district in Swakop looking like a lady boy. I dawdle, looking in the shop windows not really seeing anything to enthuse me and decide that I’ll go down and look at the street market below the hotel instead. I go to see Bluey first. His stall is at the bottom of the steps and every time I have walked past it he has invited me to take a look. Every time I have explained in turn that I don’t have any money, I really don’t have any money. But I’d promised him that if I got some I would come and look at his stall first and so that’s what I do and I spend a few minutes looking at the bangles he hands me and the carved masks and the bowls but there’s really nothing that I like enough to buy. eHHe’s offered me ‘sunset prices’ and is obviously disappointed there’s nothing that I want but he takes it in good humour and wishes me a nice evening as I walk towards Palm Beach for the sunset and my date with a Mai Tai. I get to the Lighthouse Restaurant just as the sun is setting and I sit at the bar watching the huge orange red ball slowly dip into the sea. The waves curl around the mole and then crash onto the beach and the fronds of the palm trees are swaying gently in the breeze. There is enough light to enjoy the beautiful scene for a few minutes before the sun finally drops beneath the curve of the horizon and as it does so I raise my glass to Sandy and Phil. And then I have an Oryx steak and chips and it’s the best meal of my holiday.

What a difference a day makes

I was at the bank by nine oh three and already the queues were eye-wateringly long at every till and every information point. It is clear that this is the norm because there is a large and permanent stand by the tills with a plasma showing an international football match. Some of the customers I reckoned were likely to see the game from start to finish and in fact some of them looked so weary I wondered if they were still queuing from Friday. As I hastened in myself, I nearly tripped over a free standing sign by the entrance to the bank. This sign told me that the Moneygram service was THE proven way to transfer and collect international money immediately. This sign had not been there on Friday. And why had the rep at Neb Bank, any of my banks in the UK or anyone in Swakop that I spoken to about the problem not told me that it could be so easily rectified? No, it took two people in a city 5000 miles away with no connection with the international banking system (well, as far as I am aware) to solve in minutes a problem that meta-organisations said couldn’t be solved at all. I ask you. The girl at Standard Bank told me that indeed if money was transferred in the morning then usually it was received before closing on the same day. This meant by 3.30 pm this afternoon I was likely to be a whole lot richer. Not in time to do any activities here in Swakop but more than enough to give me a trot around the shops for a couple of souvenirs, a couple of nice dinners and my train fare back home from the airport. No hitching for me. So dear readers, I leave you at this moment to head to the bank to see if the cash is in. If it is, you may well hear my whoop of delight echoing across the distance between us. I will resume my blog in the morning in the fuddle, I expect, of a very large hangover.

Monday Happy Monday

Now it’s lucky for me that several people have been following my blog (actually nearly a hundred people unbelievably, not even counting the local paper that are featuring it on their website) and it appears that I have some friends who are able to arrange things that global banks and international insurance companies seem wholly incapable of organising (shame on you Amex, Barclaycard, HSBC). My friend Sandy’s husband Phil (keep up) emailed me to say that they had read about my plight and he had checked with his South African PA who had said that all I needed to do was have money sent over to me by Moneygram. It could be sent and received on the same day and could be picked up from anywhere that used the Moneygram system. In my case this was Standard Bank, a whole 2 minutes walk away from my hotel. Now when I heard this and rang Phil just to make sure he wasn’t having a joke (I know he wouldn’t do that actually) but really just to check a couple of points it was all I could do to stop myself jumping up and down on my bed and shouting Alleluhia. I babbled away on the phone until I had calmed down and being a careful girl at heart said I would check it out with Standard Bank the following morning as I didn’t want to count my chickens. Once I got the money I intended to not only count my chickens but to also eat a whole one. Sandy and Phil are now officially my heroes.

An appointment with God

On one of my trips around town I had come across the Catholic church outside which was loitering a nun. She looked harmless enough and of some certain age but having been taught by nuns as a child I know better than to cross them. One step out of line and they’re capable of crushing your windpipe with a rolled up copy of The Catholic Times and all while smiling as if to say ‘it’s all for the good of your soul’. Not wanting to approach her from outside her direct line of vision and therefore increase the chance I’d surprise her and take a blow in the gut for my trouble I looped around until I was in front of her and kept a safe distance until I knew she had seen me. Approaching cautiously I asked her what time mass was held on a Sunday morning and she smiled at me sweetly and told me eight-thirty. Her face as she smiled folded into a thousand wrinkles and her eyes looked merry and blue but I was not to be fooled and I thanked her and retreated back across the road keeping my eyes on her until I was well out range. Nuns, you’ve just got to be so careful with them. Mass the following morning was well attended, by the standards of my village church anyway, and there were well over a hundred people though most as usual in their fifties and older. There was a whole flock of nuns either sitting in clusters or dotted here and there and even though the service was mostly in German I knew that as long as I followed their cue I’d be fine. There were two priests residing for some reason and I couldn’t quite work out if they were both happy with that or not. But what I did like was the sermon, which though delivered in German and so mostly beyond my understanding was delivered with passion and vigour and much pulpit banging (my favourite) and with what appeared to be no reference to notes. It seems to me that back home members of the clergy no longer deliver their sermons from the heart and as if they mean it but just read from ready prepared notes and its generally very dull and sometimes its very difficult to stop yourself from yawning. Me, I like a bit of fire and brimstone on a Sunday morning and though I couldn’t understand most of what this priest was saying I am catholic enough to know that he was promising hell and damnation if we didn’t Watch Ourselves and Become Better Souls so I went away from the service happy.