Colorful Divundu

“Colorful” is a good name for it, starting with the Elegant Grasshopper shown below, but also the various birds and, most of all, the people and culture in general. This is National Geographic Africa, quite off the tourist trail. However, enough tourists come through that it did not make us such an oddity, but most of them did not stay more than a day – if that. We stayed for a whole week. For many, I noticed, it was a place to fill up the gas tank, get more groceries and hard -nose it on to Katima Mulilo at the end of the Caprivi Strip. Or take the spur south to the more famous Maun, Botswana.

(BTW, currently we are in Malaysia, flying out to Borneo on Saturday!)

Elegant Grasshopper, Zonocerus elegans

Meves’s Starling, Lamprotornis mevesii. There are three or four shiny black birds in Divundu, not always easy to tell apart, but they are all striking.

Above and Below: Downtown Divundu. This is where a lot of Mom and Pop stores are, believe it or not.

We called this the “Business District”. Later in the day it is more alive with foot traffic. The metal building to the right is a “shebeen”, basically a bar.

Cows and people – and the occasional dust-blasting car – on the road in front of our guesthouse.

This was our digs. Notice the Springbok pelt on the wall. Not really the Radisson! But good enough for our tastes.

Fish trap on the Okavango River. This is actually a small-scale fishing weir. Bream, tilapia and tiger fish are caught in these waters.

Traveling the Okavango in traditional style. The makoros canoe – hollowed out in one piece from the African Ebony tree. This boat is not kind to sudden movements! Because there is no keel it is easy to tip over. Not a good idea for this crocodile-crowded river. Maybe “crowded” is too strong a word, but I did see them the last two times I crossed over on the bridge.

I would have to think that a sudden, loud splash might sound like a dinner bell to them.

Nile Crocodile. I was glad to spot this lazy lurker from the bridge spanning the Okovango River, and not in the canoe shown above.

I hurried across to the other side of the bridge to see this fellow floating downriver like a lazy log.
The next day we took a taxi out of town. The driver told us about a crocodile that almost pulled him in the river. He still had the scar.

Crested Barbet, Trachyphonus vaillantii. Taken at the Checkpoint where we waited for a ride on down the Caprivi strip

A bucket on her head, baby on her back, and phone in her hand. Triple-tasking.

White-crested Helmetshrike, Prionops plumatus. This was a flock of maybe ten birds, which strikes me as unusual for shrikes. Shrikes usually are just in ones or twos since they have to hunt for prey. These are definitely forest birds. We only saw them after quite a walk into the Kobe National Park.

Lilac-breasted Roller, Coracias caudatus

The White-fronted Bee-Eater, Merops bullockoides, was one of four different Bee-Eaters I saw in Divundu.

The tree that Zaccheus climbed, the “Sycamore” of the King James Bible is a fig tree with fruits growing from the trunk

Singing on their way to church.

On the way to fieldwork, some of them, others seem to be returning from the grocery store across the river.

These last four photos are from a private vehicle we were finally able to hitch. The guard at the checkpoint kindly did the “hitching” for us, asking driver after driver if they would take us. After an hour we succeeded. They called it “hiking”, meaning “hitch-hiking”!

Entering Bwabwata National Park.

Beautiful Ostriches showing off by the roadside.

This road had much more foot and donkey traffic than cars.

Next: Katima Mulilo

Traveling across Namibia’s “Finger”: Caprivi Strip

We have been slowly venturing like ants along the eastward-pointing finger of Namibia, spending time in Tsumeb, Grootfontein, Rundu, Divundu, and lastly in the town of Katima, in the region’s “fingernail”. A dirty fingernail that city was too, dusty or muddy streets and poor infrastructure. But a lot of friendly people. And some not-so-friendly animals.

This was going to be a one-off but, once again, the sheer number of pictures I pored over – and the associated memories – will make this a two or three-parter.

Tsumeb is the first of two towns where we spent less time than anticipated, the other being Rundu. We could not find a place that was both suitable to our budget and near to nature. Also in Tsumeb, on our first morning nature walk, we were warned by a passing local not to continue in our direction, saying that she was robbed at knifepoint. After that we thought twice about going venturing to far from town.

Above Left: Jeremia Evangelical Lutheran Church with separate services in German and English. Center: Flamboyant Tree, Delonix regia. Right: Abandoned shaft tower. Gold, silver, lead, and other minerals were once mined here in great quantities. The discovery to a rich mineral-producing geological pipe gave rise to the founding of the city by Germans over a hundred years ago.

Market child has a potato for a toy.

Left: Photo taken from a Grootfontein gas station where we waited almost two hours to get enough riders to go on to Rundu. It took two taxis to come up to Rundu. The driver in Tsumeb gave me the impression that he would take us all the way. But instead he did a “Guatemala Handoff”. Right: After a while I noticed there were at least some interesting birds to be seen. Above were several rare White-backed Vultures gyring far overhead, too distant for clear shots. Luckily there were birds much closer to the station like this gorgeous Long-tailed Paradise Whydah, Vidua paradisaea

Above: Hobnobbing with friends while at work. I would think the girls would not be so relaxed with the loads balanced on their heads. Below: These beasts of burden often had their own contrary agenda. It took four or five of the boys to ease them backwards into the holding area. (“Ease” maybe the wrong word!)

All four photos above were taken from our shared taxi van, waiting almost an hour for enough passengers wanting to go eastward. (We call this “achieving valence”). We made the mistake of paying the driver at first. We have since learned to try to pay on arrival. As it is, the driver made himself hard to find, in effect making us captive passengers.

Unlike in Tsumeb we did have a good nature walk in Rundu, and having a conversation of sorts with the border guards at this water crossing, just a hop, skip, and splash from Angola (the far shore seen here). After talking with them we walked a ways along the river’s edge, seeing Hornbills, Weavers, and a good variety of shorebirds.

After we were leaving a man, supposedly an official, yelled at us to come back. It seems we were not allowed to go where we went without permission (although the border guards knew where we were going and said nothing). We ignored this man, pretty sure that he was trying to soak money from some foreigners.

And this is the main reason we did not stay long here. The main nature area was ruined for us.

Left: Meyer’s Parrot, Poicephalus meyeri. Center: Millipedes don’t get any larger than the Giant African Millipede, Archispirostreptus gigas. They are sometimes well over a foot long. Right:Southern Red Bishop, Euplectes orix.

Final three photos: There were few places along the stretch between Rundu and Divundu that did not have people in view.

Next: Divundu