11 July, Monday  
   
All of us had a good night and are ready for the day. We stop at
Kamanjab for diesel and drive to Twyfelfontein through breathtaking views:
rolling golden savannahs, acacia trees, stone hills covered with tufts of grass
and at places through actually water! Willie and I keep on commenting on the
beauty and the fact that rivers have water in. 
 
Our first ever 4x4 experience was in 1985 when we visited friends
of ours in Khorixas, Werner and Carien. They took us on a 4x4 trip to
  Twyfelfontein, known for its palm trees. The existing fully developed lodge was
  in its beginning phases and we slept in one of the unfinished bungalows on
  mattresses. Just before we went to bed Werner spotted a zebra snake of the
  spitting cobra family and considered the second most dangerous snake after the
  mamba, outside the bungalow. It was a cold evening and the next moment the
  snake slithered into the bungalow through an unfinished drain pipe. Pandemonium
  followed. We grabbed the sleeping kids, ran to the landdrover and shoved 3
  screaming toddlers, by this time, to safety. Werner finally managed to kill the
  1 ½ meter snake with a shovel - a very scary experience that has a little twist
  in the story which I cannot tell here. (Ps Willie likes to tell the story...)

From Twyfelfontein into serious 4x4 terrain: Damaraland! We crawl
slowly past the rhino stones and organ pipes through breathtaking beauty as far
as the eye can see. Hugo and Andrej sit on the roof and we hear them talk and
laugh kilometer after kilometer. The sun is on its way down and we need a
place to sleep. Willie drives into a narrow river bed, but we find a good enough
spot to pitch our camp and find hard pieces of wood which burns for hours. 
 
It is so awesome to be back in a place that we loved and that we
are familiar with. We play backgammon, sit around the fire and have a thick pea
soup with smoked sausages for dinner.

Click Play

10 July Sunday Damaraland 
 
We say good bye to Juta, Birgit's mom and it is back in the car for me! I have to work on myself, because I really do not want to get back into dust, sticks for hair, black nails, rough
  hands and skin…I’m complaining. It will not be that bad once I’m in! Sammie is
happy and when the car door opens for the first time he is in. He is definitely
not staying behind again.

 We stop at Spar to buy 4 days of supplies for our trip through
Damaraland. I cannot go to the store without Andrej and Hugo. I love to have
them with me. They are excited about the menus and help make decisions. They of
course twist my arm for extra treats. We also have another problem: they twist
my arm usually not to buy something, “no we have more than enough!”and then
comes day 4? No we do not have enough!

 Namibia is beautiful beyond words. The last 4 years rain were
showered on her, and earlier this year at places more than 1000 mm – the most
rain since 1934. So, she has dressed lavishly with 2-3 feet high rich-golden
grass fields. I personally have never seen Namibia’s dry semi-desert areas like
this. Grass and green cover rocky hills and plains –areas once so dry that one could
not imagine the riches that were lying dormant in the soil – waiting, waiting,
waiting for rain. It is an insatiable feast for the eyes.
 
 We drive to the Northern Finger of God, a rock formation, close
to Khorixas. The more spectacular sandstone rock formation, also called Mukurob,
was in the south of Namibia, but it collapsed in December 1988, the result of a
sandstorm, leaving only debris behind. Mukurob was one of Namibia’s biggest
tourist attractions. 

An interesting anecdote: Nama oral tradition foretold that the power of the white man would collapse when Mukurob collapses. A few weeks after the collapse South Africa, Cuba and Angola signed the New York treaty which paved the wave for Namibia’s independence in 1989! 
 
We drive a few more hours and then start to look for a place to
bush camp round about 4 pm. Willie finds a dry river bed and with some bundu
  bashing find us a fine camping spot – our first river camping! We pull big logs
  closer and make a lion fire in the still of the night under a vast canopy of
  stars.

3 July, Sunday Mamili to Doppies
  
It was a busy and interesting bush night with high traffic of
elephants and hippos. Willie and I woke up a few times to add logs to the fire.
It gives a feeling of a little more safety for what it is worth. In the early
morning hours we hear our first lions roar in the distance!  

We have a slow start, have breakfast and then the pack up thing,
with which we are well acquainted by now. Willie drives in the direction where
we’ve heard the lions, with the guys on the roof, but flooded marsh plains
  finally stop us and we decide to drive to our next destination by the Kwandu
  River – Camp Kwandu where we camped with Ruco and Hugo in 2003 when we were in
  Namibia for Operation Sunrise.

 Willie wants to see ‘Doppies’ where we camped with Handré and
Marianne 25 years ago. It was used by the South African military during the
  border war and had an amazing view over the Kwandu and marshes. Ruco and Roné,
  Handré and Marianne’s youngest daughter went to explore and came back, very
  excited, about their find: an old mortar! Willie recalls all our previous
adventures as we drive and it is so special to come back and retrace our foot
prints and car tracks of the past.

 Poor Sammie unwillingly receives stow-away status again, as we
are not sure whether he is allowed in the Conservation Area. All the plots by
the river are taken of the community campsite and the wardens show us a
  non-official site where we can camp. We are disappointed and Willie decides to
  check the camp out for a possibility of a different spot. We are thankful when
  camper-travelers from Kleinmond in South Africa graciously invite us to share
  their site with them. We meet the friends whom we met at the border again and
  they walk over to invite us for dinner – a real South African braai with meat,
  pap and wors.(porridge and sausage). 

Hugo is so excited, because this will be his first real taste of
Afrikaans speaking South Africans doing the traditional thing: a braai. We have
a wonderful evening getting to know one another better, listening, sharing,
laughing, eating, enjoying till late. We are used to going to bed often before 8
and we reluctantly say good bye when it is midnight. Not a random encounter is
what all of us realized and I am excited to see how our paths are going to cross
in the future. 

Poor Sammie is not a happy camper, and has to do all his toilet
routines in the cover of darkness before he retires with the boys into the tent. 

Click Play for Photos:
  

2 July, Saturday  Katima to Mamili 
 
I’ve shed a layer of emotions since entering Namibia and am left
with a glowing skin devoid of stress, anxiety, fear and concern. I left Germany
with some of these emotions already imbedded and others have joined without us
realizing – simply as a result of the lifestyle that came with traveling for so
long, so far through different seasons and countries. No more border-crossings
which is huge for me; no new languages, no foreign cultures, no more
‘fish-out-of-the-water’ feelings: we’ve arrived in a place where I have a sense
of belonging; where there are more things familiar that unfamiliar; where I feel
part of; where I share culture, traditions and languages with others different
from me, but strangely similar…

 We stock up: meat = Namibia = meat and Hugo is a happy boy:
  boerewors, lamb chops, steak – not even expensive. We are on our way to Mamili
  Game Reserve and it is ‘Memory Lane’ for Willie and me. We have wonderful
  memories of 4x4 trips with some of our best friends, Handré, Marianne and their
  daughters, from Western Cape when we traveled in this area 25 years ago. I am
  amazed with Willie as he remembers roads and places as if we’ve done it a week ago.

 Mamili is true wetland – the only in Namibia, and we have to
  cross through a river to enter the park. The car swims through like a fish. We
  stop at the ranger’s office and he tells us that most of the park is flooded
  with all the rain they had the last 2 years, but we are welcome to go as far as
  we can; we can camp anywhere we want to, because we are the only visitors in the park! 

Andrej and Hugo sit on the roof as we drive through the park.
Although there are signs of elephants and hippos everywhere, we don’t see them,
but lots of deer, warthogs and birds. We find a beautiful spot to pitch camp and
watch in awe as the sun sets in burning colours of red and orange. As soon as
the sun disappears hippos noisily surface at first suspicious about the human
activity in their territory, but not too long and we hear them chomping away on
the reeds and grass in and outside the water. 
 
The guys make a huge fire and we enjoy our carnivorous meal
  rounded off with ‘braaibroodjies’ – toasted cheese, tomato and onion
  sandwiches. We drift away to dream land with the chomping sound of grazing
  hippos and feeding elephants ripping off leaves and breaking branches from the
  trees behind our camp.

Click Play for Photos:

1 July, Friday  
   “we did it, 21  border-crossings, 27 000 km: Namibia!” 
 
I could not sleep last night and was awake till 3:30. I am so
excited and it feels like the day before I got married, or had a baby or did
  something spectacularly exciting. I am actually going home after 17 years…and I
  did not realize the depth of the emotions churning around in me: 
 
nervous – the long-awaited day has finally come

 overcome with thankfulness for so many things that I’m afraid I might leave something out: 
        
protection through almost 6 months of traveling– we never felt unsafe or in danger, but for what happened in Harare; health: minor problems here and there, but nothing
significant; no serious problems with ‘Old Faithful’ after almost 27 000 km
which is remarkable, especially after hearing what could go wrong and did with
other over landers; 
       
no accidents on treacherous roads shared by almost anything and anyone you can think of –
wheels, people, livestock and much more you cannot think of
        
faithfulness of friends and family over the world who ‘traveled’ with us in thoughts, prayers and messages of love and care; 
        
although we are running tight - financial provision to bring us here in spite of unexpected and
unplanned extra expenses with visa problems and border crossings; 
         
growing closer and knitting together of 4 hearts for life through shared joys, hardships,
difficulties, emotional ups and downs– and this is a big one, because we know of
splits, fractured and very strained relationships during and at the end of the journey; 
       
basic, but good food most of the time – we never went to bed hungry; 
          
amazing opportunities where we could fellowship, and share in the lives of friends in ministry that we worked with for many years; countless experiences of meeting new friends planned
and unplanned –sometimes in the most unexpected and strange circumstances and
always with a strong sense of: this is no coincidence and…and…endless…
        
I want to cry and I’m not sure what to cry about? I’m not unhappy or sad – filled with wonder about what we’ve seen and experienced; filled with awe for grace bestowed on us;
filled with the unspeakable for the mystery of life.

 It is a cool crisp morning and we pack and strap in record time.
Our excitement is palpable – we enter the last stretch like marathon runners who
can finally see the end. Yesterday, on our way into Botswana we passed a
 supermarket called Choppies! Choppies – I love it – ‘see you later, I’m going
 to Choppies to buy choppies’, so I have to stop at Choppies and we buy sausages
 and chippies for breakfast at Choppies!

 We arrive at the Botswana border in less than an hour and are
joined by a group of Afrikaans speaking South Africans from the Orange-Free
  State who are 4x4-ing through Botswana and Namibia. It is fun to speak
  Afrikaans and hear about their experiences. We fill the small office to fill
  out the exit forms and I feel closer to home than ever before when the Botswana
  immigration officer speaks Afrikaans to all of us. I wait outside and there across the Otto Beit Bridge, a stone
throw, Namibia. The crisp air has warmed up and as I look across to our final
destination it almost feels as if time has frozen; even the atmosphere is
 holding her breath for the last crossing!

 Across the bridge with Willie Nelson singing in my mind, ‘Good
  morning, Namibia, how are you? Say don’t you know me, I’m your native
daughter…’17 ½ years of leaving, visiting, leaving, visiting, but always having
to leave again. This time is different though: we are back with no leaving
lurking in the distance. 

We take pictures outside the border post – we’ve made it! It is
hard to curb the emotions racing, chasing and crashing into one another. We
  drive to Katima Mulilo, the capital town of the Caprivi and are so surprised
  with the growth and development since we visited 25 years ago. Spar supermarket
  is our next stop and we buy genuine ‘boerewors’ (home made sausage) to barbecue
  and treats that we’ve longed for. 

Our camping spot is on the banks of the Kunene River where we
meet André and Anne from Hout Bay in Cape Town. We hear and speak Afrikaans
  everywhere and I realize how much I’ve missed it. It did not happen often,
  probably when I was in a nostalgic mood, that I would pass my friendly
neighbor, in France, with his pipe suspended from his mouth, or walk into a
store in America, or go for a walk with a friend in Germany, and have the
fleeting wish that they could greet me or talk to me in Afrikaans. Reality
quickly pushed the moroseness and wishes away for life to continue in a good
way.

 The 4 of us share an unspoken, strange and unfamiliar sense of
accomplishment; filled with humble thankfulness I want to shout it out to the
world, “we did it, 21 border-crossings, 27 000 km: Namibia!” 
 
 

1 June, Wednesday    Moshi  
 
June…I remember when we started in January the end was not even in sight- it was so deeply tucked away under snow and an unknown filled with many questions, uncertainties, fears (for me at least), and now ¾ of the distance lies behind us. I can almost smell home! 
 
June – no more teenagers – both Andrej and Hugo have their 20th birthdays, the 10th and
17th – on an unforgettable journey, in an unexpected place will they leave their teen years
behind! 

Our next stop is Arusha where we have to go to the bank, fill up with gas and stock up on food supplies. The town is super busy: streets lined with activity, markets, business and people, but we slowly negotiate our way through the energy. We find a Shoprite – a South African grocery store. All of us are so excited and I find it interesting and humorous that a bottle of Mrs Ball’s
Chutney, Marmite, biltong and boerewors can cause so much enjoyment. We spend more money than we should have on little treats that make all of us happy– even Andrej who has heard and seen some of the products in our home during the last 4 years. The experience makes me realize how much we’ve missed home and the familiar things that are associated with it. 
 
Our aim is to sleep in the Honey Badger Lodge campsite in Moshi which is another 1 to 1 ½ hour drive from Arusha. Most of the way there Kilimanjaro flirts with us – showing her snow p eaks and then hiding it in the clouds again. We stop to take pictures a few times, because we realize how fortunate we are to see her. Friends of ours have been around the mountain for
  a few days and have not even had a glimpse of the top. 
 
Honey Badger is secluded, clean with friendly staff – hot showers
and flushing toilets! The guys have asked for fries and I was not too excited
about the prospect of peeling mounds of potatoes, but with Andrej’s help we are
done quickly and fries in the bush is definitely a treat.


Click Play for Pictures

Tumaini Counseling Center 
 
Willie, Hugo and I paid a visit to the Tumaini Counseling Center, here in Nairobi. As long as we are involved in Member Care have I heard of Tumaini in Kenya. I’ve met Dr Roger Brown at one of our Member Care Conferences and Willie has had contact with him over the years. 
 
We are invited for lunch and meet Shirley, Roger’s wife and their daughter Hannah. We had a wonderful lunch: toasted ham-and cheese sandwiches with a crunchy, fresh salad that we cannot get enough of! We had such a special time of sharing, listening to Roger and Shirley’s story, their vision for a counseling center, all the foot work done over a period of almost 10 years to have the vision crystalize into the counseling center.

 It is an amazing complex designed and planned with such care: from the professional layout, interior decorating and thought given to minute details:  – there are counseling rooms, a well-equipped library with resources available to counselees and families, a conference room with facilities available to house conferences and seminars –all nestled into a beautiful garden which is an extension of the tranquility and peace flowing from everything and everyone.  

For more information: www.tumainicounseling.net 
 
We also meet with our friend and colleague, Dr Gisela Roth, who is a psychiatrist working at Tumaini. Gisela is from Germany and we’ve had contact over the last 7 years at conferences and Member Care gatherings. It is wonderful to see where Gisela works and to be able to have more context of where she has lived and worked for the last 7 years. We hope to be able to network in the future with Dr Brown and his colleagues at Tumaini as our vision for Member Care in Southern Africa unfolds. 

26 May, Thursday Camp Twiga 
 
We’ve heard from other campers about a place to snorkel 100 meters down the beach. There are 2 pools called Australia and Africa because of their shape, so Willie and I go to explore. The diving is not bad, but I think  we were spoiled at the Red Sea. We do discover a cave with bats hanging from the roof and it is kind of creepy – just the thing the guys will love, of course. It is the case – they went later in the day and came back with stories of diving through a tunnel to a different cave and jumping from the rocks into the water. They also took the spear gun, but had no luck with fish.

 The fish man brought the calamari and a humongous red snapper. It is the first time that I have to prepare ink fish from scratch and I do not really know if what I do is right. I have to wash it probably 6x, because of the black ink coming out of it. After cleaning and cutting I put it in a marinade.

The fish becomes a team job: Ruco descales it, Andrej and Ruco try to cut it and Willie finally does the fileting. We grill it on the fire in foil. The meal is wonderful – the calamari came out much better than expected and we all enjoy our seafood at the beach.

We had an interesting trip down from Nairobi. The road was not bad, just very busy especially when we got to the outskirts of Mombasa where the road also deteriorated to water filled potholes. Patience is not a virtue on Kenyan roads and if the wait for a truck, stuck in congestion, is a little bit longer than it should be, each one does what they want. They go off the road and drive beside it where there is no road, or worse, they race down the wrong side of the road until oncoming traffic forces them to where ever - quite exhilirating to watch as long as you are not caught in it.Dolla, our GPS lady, took us on a 9 km reroute which helped to bring us to Mombasa: a chaotic, bustling city pulsing with people, pedestrians, shops, restaurants and  more. An efficient ferry service took us across a river and by this time it was already dark which always makes driving more difficult: no signs or lines or lights.
We drove on a corrugated road to Twiga Camping, found a spot on the beach of an Indian Ocean hiding in the dark. It was more humid and warm and we were excited about the surprise waiting for us in the morning.