vertigo
this one is long, and i am not sorry.
i’ve been having sudden gestures of vertigo, recently. recently being the whole of the year. it’s not quite nausea, it’s sitting at my desk and feeling both farther away from and rather closer to the white wall, ever recoiled away, ever gravitated to you, to understanding. in an instance which might float away. or in a moment of regarding someone with words, it’s in my head. trying to coil out of my head.
last you heard from me was one schoolweek away from spring break, or ‘mid-semester vac’ as they call it here, as it is their autumn. after family lunch, we sat down to figure our adventure in a common area. this was superseded by an hour of red king (or cambia), a game initially taught to me by my cousins ethan, gideon and nadia, and now spread about to many friends. we doted around online, scrapping and unscrapping potential plans for the following week. after 5ish hours of consideration, we swallowed, decided to rent a car and shoot to namibia.
you may have seen my note from Lüderitz, and i must again apologize for skipping out on last week’s opportunity of writing. so much suspended in my atmosphere, it was in a shudder of relegation that i decided to forego the edition all together. i was entrenched in experience; thank you for bearing me as i learn to meet my own deadlines, to hold commitment in the same hand as possibility. this constant unfolding of how i understand.
the memories now sit in my mind like an episode of vertigo, feeling so close to the heart, yet bounding out away from me. this writing is remembrance, an attempt at sharing with you now is also an attempt at storing for the self that will forget.
tears in my eyes. the journey loop round back here has been a little bit magic. we set off on the 12 hour drive from cape town to Ai-Ais the morning of thursday the 21st, around 10am. the drive through south africa held mountains, which we thought would end, but they refused. a proud postured landscape held us as we began to know one another.
my travel mates were sway, christian, and eleanor, all of whom have been referenced in this newsletter in one way or another. they each erected their own unique lenses for view in namibia and in thinking about the world. i felt like a treasure to be able to hold all of their perspectives thrown together, and at points isolated. and we had plenty of time to talk. the minimum driving time our sweet baby deacus (given name of the suzuki swift that braved sand and gravel, past moons, giraffes and into cities) would have taken is 53 hours over the past ten days. that would be with no stops, of which we indulged in many. the nature of our dynamic made it feel that we weren’t passing time; time was passing over us, like waves soothing over rocks submerged at high tide.
most drives had us questioning how whole days had passed, the beauty through deacus’ windows held our eyes in trance. our first day of driving took a whole 12 hours - i didn’t even flinch to consider how tough that could have been for christian, the only one who knew how to drive deacus at the time (a manual car - they don’t say stick shift here). this was in part because we stopped multiple times to play red king (we kept a running score the whole time we were together). it was also in part because got held up at the border between namibia and south africa, a post called noordoewer. eleanor, christian and i were no problem, but sway, having entered south africa on her Ghanaian passport, containing her study visa, was not permitted to enter namibia on her american passport. she would have needed to get a visa as a Ghanaian, but did not need to as an american. in past experience, i have only seen dual citizenship benefit someone, but here, the willful south african customs woman would not let sway leave south africa on a passport she did not enter on. we went back and forth between the border posts for south africa and namibia, which clearly had some sort of beef. the south african immigration officer finally issued us a plan, if we could get the namibian side to stamp, saying that we had left namibia on sways passport, she would stamp sway back around through. the moon and wild gleaming warm colored clouds smiled over the orange river, which marks the border between the two southern african countries - a natural welcome during our two hours in the purgatory between the nations. eleanor and sway went into the namibia departures and ground the officer down, who looked defeated when we finally rolled back in for sway’s entry stamp. the afrikaner south africa had jurisdiction over namibia until 1990, aand a competitive tension still holds in some ways - which sway’s passport problem was a fuel for. she remarked poignantly as we rolled away - ‘had i had a ghanaian and nigerian passport, i wouldn’t have gotten through, which is sad.’ our odd giddy elation in mischief lasted us all the way to our campsite that night.
before this final destination we made two stops, one to refuel and acquire a map from a blond braided namibian, which served in place of gps for us in our time in the desolate country, and the other on our first c road, where we got out to watch the heat lightning and feel sparse droplets of rain, out of place in the 105º heat. it was a wild sight, this dim lit desert unknown around us, sudden flashes of electricity finding pathways through the clouds, sometimes striking the ground through lower, thinner clouds. they seemed ancient dragons dancing in the night, swooping and careening to the visual spectacular. we had no clue where we were. now, after much study of the roadmap, i have a better idea. the namibian roads are made up of a, b, c, d and m roads. a and b are major highways, made of bitumen (rediscovered word! meaning asphault/tar). c, d, and m roads are gravel, sand and dust, with 4x4 recommended for d roads (we traversed none of which in our smaller 2WD). deacus swerved and slid over the c roads, especially that first night, moving at 120kms/hr through that unknown space. we arrived at this first campsite ai-ais, to meet a nameless man who asked us what we thought we were doing in namibia. his comment indeed made us question our trajectory, accompanied by the sweaty flybound sleep we tried to get that night, the baboons screeching under the stars and almost fully waxed moon. we woke up with the baboons coming near for investigation, and to the man and his son - we could not believe he was a father, his antics and pessimism left him seeming unfit.
we drove, our first full day, on to fish river canyon, where we met our first history and information. the five day hike which goes down through the canyon to the hotsprings at ai-ais is proclaimed the driest trek in the world. we saw quiver trees and peered into the canyon, frolicking at new beauty, looking over the edge into newness. we were in the succulent karoo biome, which has super weird plants and is renowned for its biodiversity. the trees are super wacky, the aforementioned quiver tree grows a distance from an elephant trunk tree, or halfmens. one, which i could not find a name for, looked like an exeggutor pokemon. eleanor led us on to Lüderitz from this turning point.
this is the point in the drive where i started to learn stickshift. christian is a patient and encouraging teacher, eleanor and i agree after both having a few days practice with deacus.
at the canyon roadhouse, i bought a blue giraffe 102 deck of playing cards, fulfilling an intention i had for being down here, the woman who sold it to me was the first to shuffle them. then christian ushered me to the driver’s seat. on the wide open C12 dirt road, i had a perfect learning ground. the feeling of the car in it’s correct gear at my direction is far greater than the drive on my family’s automatic minivan. it’s erotic: the hum of the engine as my left foot is knowingly hovering the tensing clutch at it’s bite point, my right edges the gas slightly. or maybe it’s just fun, a reflection of my childhood obsession with the fast and furious franchise coming to fruition. either way, it was a great time to learn with eleanor and sway as classmates, our friend teaching us something new. new fuel for a desire to always be learning.
the conversations and credence of one another stood as a pillar of the time spent in the car. along with the overflowing gawking awe, we also spent time playing games. i feel like i opened up a whole new world of interpersonal car games that i had not accessed despite a large chunk of cartime in my childhood. one was essence - describe the essence of someone or something based on prompts from the rest of the participants… getting to the root of something without saying what it is. another, the number game - all but one agree on a number from one to ten, and the other has to ask guided questions to try to discern what number all of the things round out to on a one to ten scale. play: what a wonderful way to sync minds. let us never lose play; that which is empathy.
we stopped at a big pile of rocks to climb up. play. i was inspired as we finally got a good look at desert grasses of the namibian dwarf shrubs, mustard and lighter hues of brown, spiked and holding their ground surrounding the boulders. partly sketchy, mostly a ton of fun. doing yoga at the top, we felt the wind in our hair, and the sun crept westward towards the horizon as eleanor held her dancer pose, as christian did his first half wheel. yoga is a whole lot harder when you have a sheer drop on either side and are wearing sandals. no vertigo. you let go: it is easier.
slinking down with the sun, we rolled on to Lüderitz. the view on this stretch of flat road is one that stands bold on my memory as i reflect on the week’s adventures. the left side had electricity posts, black in a state of silhouette, the mountains the same, but showing indigo in the sun, which knelt low in a celestial type of prayer, the crown of it’s head directed towards us and deacus. the desert grasses performing a silvery golden sway, a mirage of a plain against the burning, the beckoning of the sky ahead of the straight open road. and yes, the dark, wild horses of the namib on either side, feeding in a glow that they own, blaring horses by maggie rogers in my imagination.
the unreality of these images may very well leave me dreamless.
pulling into Lüderitz, doing my first street stick shift driving, the first thing we did was dunk into the chilly chilly atlantic ocean, what a cleanse. we found a hostel for the evening, where we met our friend jon. jon was on the final leg of his cape town to cairo trip. mode of transport: hitchhiking. this man inspires me, this man blew us away. we went to dinner at his recommendation, and tried three different types of fish: kingklip, hake, and snoek, one of the only fish to change sex during their lifespan. jon joined us for a drink. sway and eleanor were skeptical of our new friend at first, but his stories were too flowered in authenticity to be a wreath of lies. sitting on the water at a picnic table, he told us how he had to postpone his journey from cairo because of the outbreak of war in sudan and consequential atrocity in south sudan. this january, he flew back out to addis ababa, ethiopia, and continued south. he eagerly shared his encounters with the maasai people, gifting a leader a sword he had previously gotten, spoke us some of the maasai (language) he had picked up by virtue of spending time with them. he spoke japanese and russian well, and with a humble gravity told us he only spoke them “a little bit.” he had a memorization template for different languages so that he could easily learn basic phrases. he carried a little notebook, and so enscribed his tales. we had a strange fulfillment of eye contact that night at dinner, as our crew tried to teach him red king, but got caught in the enveloping nets of his stories. he has a goal to hitchhike across each continent, and has done north america, south america, europe, australia, asia, and just completed his pursuit in africa by arriving in cape town. we just got back from a drink with him, exchanging hugs and stories of the past eight days.
jon is an american who really cares. a fisherman in washington and alaska half the year, he studies the cultures he finds himself discovering on the road before he gets there, takes physical notes about the language and culture he encounters, and talked about how far that little bit goes. it made me uncomfortably aware of how few americans do this when about in the world, and supplied me with an inspiration to take care with each moment, every time i find myself some place or some culture new. to be a student, to be always learning. maybe after school i’ll go find a job on a fishing boat out west. jon sent me a poem about the boat his captain loved, the challenger, which burned down.
we slept well in beds, and awoke to head to Kolmanskop, an abandoned mining town fifteen kms out of town. we split up and walked around the derelict once-town, half buried in sand. some buildings were completely submerged. it was well worth our namibian dollars, and strange to feel the presence of a town gone, to imagine the last person left in Kolmanskop, relinquishing an empty dream of diamonds. the mining in southern africa has been hotly pursued since the first hint of potential wealth. in 1908, Zacharias Lewala discovered the first diamonds in namibia. the diamond field was dry just after the first world war, and so life in the town vanished. in namibia, they paid their workers this early on, unlike the mining industry in south africa, which remains deathly and vicious to its miners today.
we left with an exhale, driving towards sesriem, the camp before sossusvlei. the drive there was perhaps the most awe inducing yet. we stopped at an airfield, we saw the red sands. i think i’ll have trouble really describing what happened here, these golden moments shining in my mind.
i have tried to write a poem about it, so here you are.
we arrived at night, greeted by a man named escravitan, which he said means gravity. we laid our heads under a thick trunked large thorned tree, with leaves like little eyebrow rounds. sesriem entranced me with it’s vocal candor, aurally similiar to “delirium.” we were close to this state as the beauty enraptured us to breathlessness. sesriem is afrikaans, and really means ‘six belts,’ referring to the method of gathering waters from the canyons in this area, using ox hides as rope. i barely slept as my eyes were full with the moon’s brightness.
we were up at 5am to get to the dunes as early and as cool as possible (the park opens at six). just in time for an intoxicating yellow moonset. the drive was an inhaling warmth of light that crept out behind us, this asphalt road in the middle of the namib desert. we hit something while driving, a desert cat, and collectively reflected on this guilt before our day opened out of tiredness, out of the purple hazy morning. this day will sit like magic in the mind farther than the dunes that stretch 200km to the ocean. we parked, deacus unfit for the sands that would take us to the affectionately and somewhat obsessively called ‘big daddy,’ hopped in a park vehicle that took us there for N$90 apiece. the sun rising out of mauve, the wind rushing in our heads, the 4x4 drifting comfortable around the trees and bush in this riverbed, the sand pluming behind us, the moments of awe unreachable by words. an oryx out to the right.
off the vehicle we hopped to run up the side of the dune. hard work in a sweater and flowing pants, sweat soft and welcome as we ascended, taking pictures and yelping, believing. at the top of this first shoulder dune we sat, looking down at deadvlei on the cold side of the dune to the right, eerily insignificant, especially with the sun on the warm side, prominent over miles of dunes. the early shine on these brandy dunes had light feeling funny. christian and i gave our bags to eleanor and sway, and we fell down the dunes, willingly. rolling, eating sand, losing hats, feeling free with gravity and fine grain. at the foot of the dune, when sway and eleanor had slid down, christian taught us how to do head stands in the sand. we played a hand of red king, and walked on across the cracked flatness to have an intimate encounter with a camel thorn tree. the shimmering leaves surround large thorns, and the tree holds a strange, banana shaped eucalyptus lime colored fruit, which smells sweet, kind of like banana, kind of like menthol.
shoes filled with sand, discarded for scalded foot-palms on the ascent to big daddy. i read a travel blog which said this was the tallest dune in the world, but i now believe it is not so, and neither the tallest dune in namibia, so apologies for leading you astray. but certainly the tallest in the area, with three sixty views of dunes stretching out to all horizon, laying stolid. we couldn’t help but imagine all the people that might have died out here, as we were grateful to have packed water in our day bags. we wondered whether the khoi-san indigenous people had mastered these lands, we played in the sand atop the dune. i tried headstands on top of the world, i saw a namib sand gecko skidding across the top, making little indentations in the duneside, and then burying itself back in the sand in a search for the cooler layers of earth. beetles and flies: an exciting and rich ecosystem exists out here, where we could not envision life for ourselves.
we found consciousness for of words: and decided to track our swearing by giving one another dares each time we uttered an unwarranted curse. it happened a lot, and is just one way in which i feel that our squad was able to collectively explore an idea. i haven’t stopped tracking this for myself, and have realized the ways in which i persist to be unconscious and unaware of my words - as with the vomit of this newsletter, as the regurgitation of speech patterns, a reflection of thoughtless ebbs and flows.
sensing the heat and a time to return, we fell back down this biggest dune. this time on a much longer stretch, and due to the sun hitting for a few hours now, a much hotter stretch, especially as we approached the cracked plain known as ‘deadvlei.’ it felt like a flow art, spinning and letting your body go with the downward pull, splitting and flecking your corpus down the sands. that smooth, ruby alluring powder sparkling in the sun, making hot vibrations as it shifted below our feet, finding homes on our scalps, in our ears and gums. down on the flat, we met some barcelonans who had just run down the dune as we did. we walked together to deadvlei, which is a set of 900+ year old trees that cannot decompose because of how dry it is. they are weathered camel thorns, having left life almost a millennium ago. they stand stark and dark against the red beige landscape and the cloudless blue sky, one of the most special places to walk through, their water source cut off by shifting dunes.
as a swear dare, christian asked the barcelonans, arman, luke and elena for a ride back to our car over the sands. they happily agreed, and gave us some of their water: a moment of kinship in the desert. they only had five seats, and so christian and i hung on the outside of their 4x4 namibia rental camper. arman drove around 50km/hr, we swerved and ducked under trees on the outside of their suv. christian remarked it felt like windsurfing, and i’m sure that my face was gridlocked in a toothy grin with the air whipping my scruff of hair behind me.
we returned to sesriem and to showers, to a game of red king and to escravitan. to glass mugs of ice water. gravity of oasis. the drive out was dreamy. at sunset, eleanor and christian hung out of the car under a full moon and approaching dusk. sway and i talked about spirituality and the moon as we began to look for a place to camp. we came upon a bridge that ran over a riverbed, and christian went to go check it out. our first night illegally wild camping, we pitched the tent surrounded by rock faces that stretched up 60 feet. we gathered wood for a fire, and i led a moon ritual, where silence and feeling played their biggest parts. this special riverbed we all felt quite close, i think.
i want to take a second to praise the friends i spent time with. part of that moon reflection was bonding, part of it was gratitude. part of it was respect for life. part of it was the acknowledgement of unknowing. the thoughts and collective conversation we shared will be special to me as long as i am, and i know it will be to them too. i am thankful for three alternate perspectives and versions of love and understanding, of breath and pace, of style and swagger.
getting to spend time with people i love continues to feel of the utmost importance to me. human interaction remains a focal gemstone of my life, and in new ways.
in the depths of the eve, we shared the light of the fullmoon, and a night craven shriek of some desert cat, magical in a stupor of sleep. was it a dream we shared?
onward to walvis bay and swakopmund through the namib-naukluft park, a new coastal vantage that morning. at walvis we saw flamingos and the salt flats. at swakopmund we went to a casino, my first time in one. we went all in on blackjack, and lost everything (around $10). we had similar reflections about how gutturally awful it felt to be in there, and the practice of it. to see the people wasting, genuinely looking unhealthy. the intensity, i could see, how it is addicting. to waste life away pursuing nothing. there were kids in there with their parents. it felt like eating week old french fries. later in windhoek, the capital, we asked a waiter why there were so many casinos in namibia. he told us that it is namibia’s vice: every one in two people gambles, including himself. there are more gambling houses than grocery stores.
after our night in swakop, we sent our last day as a band of four in a race to windhoek, where sway and eleanor had a flight to catch to joburg, which would be an experiential pit stop enroute to maputo, mozambique. yes we found our way to the airport with no maps, only asking locals on the street! hectic driving manual in a city for the first time, in a rush and maneuvering windows like traffic to holler at locals. heard a bit about their further wild journey at drinks tonight with jon, a wild ride, but not my story to tell! shoutout eleanor shoutout sway.
the many racked up hours in the car gave us lots to consider together, as i have already said. some of the things i will be continuing to think about for a good longtime hereafter are many. one of which is sway’s idiom “truth over harmony.” meaning disruption is worth the truth. i think this is something that i have a hard time with, and will partly pursue. we talked about death, which is a fact that i don’t have the means to yet understand. it escapes me like a breath, it is something i feel that i should intuitively understand though do not, at least consciously. we talked about gratitude, which i am feeling intensely for the people mentioned, the natural land, the country of namibia, the exchange program in which i am partaking. i will continue to think about how gender functions as both a vector and a foothold, and i will continue thinking about play. about conversations, human interaction as play. i will continue to think about how i do and don’t use language consciously, about how often and why i swear. this is all to say i will continue to experience vertigo on my yellow brick road to understanding
christian and i dropped them off at the hosea kutako international airport, and our one on one bonding reactivated. the song “i’ve been in love” by jungle bumping as we group hugged goodbye, that tune eleanor kept singing. christian: i love this kid. he’s is hectic, man! he is confident, endowed with clarity, loves music, is bold and daring, cool and casual. he’s also sexy as helllllll (consciously used). we found a hostel, the chameleon backpackers hostel, and stayed two nights to figure out where we wanted to go and to get some work done. windhoek was not super active, especially when it rained. the town cleared out. the parking worker who we intended to pay was disappeared when we returned to deacus after a days work, when we hada heartsinking moment of thinking he, and all of our stuff, had been stolen. he was perfectly hidden behind another car. whew! we made friends with one of the employees at the hostel named lydia. we enjoyed bargaining over beanies together.
christian and i felt conflicted about where to go, and we ended up sending it south to the kalahari desert, to mata mata, the kgalagadi transfrontier national park, sharing boundaries between botswana, south africa, and namibia. we saw giraffes, wildebeests, secretarybirds, ostriches and baby ostriches, springboks, gemsboks, red hartebeests, steenboks, northern black korhaans, ground squirrels, suricates, red mongoose, pygmy falcons, and luckily, rarely, a cheetah. the proportions of the cheetah are baffling. it is much longer than you would think, and walked with an athletic gait that accentuated it’s tiny waist, held between its thick torso and strong hind legs. it’s lithe was powerful to behold. we had to spend two nights in the park to stay there, but all the campsites were booked up for 11 months in advance, or so the desk person said. the border people have had enough!!!
so, we spent the day in that park, and then drove close to noordoewer, picking up hitchhiker farmers that smelled like a slaughterhouse on our way to keetmanshoop. this was the most poppin town we saw in namibia, maybe because it was friday night. everyone was out, kickin it on the corner! we got the traditional kapana dish at a restaurant here, and then trucked on. christian and i looked up at the most amazing stars, belly up on the roof of the car. and slept near the highway, with deacus’ protection, under the moon. the sun rose over a new and unseen daylight expanse, rich over the cracked desert, worn us down. the first landscape we had experienced in namibia, though in the dark christian finally admitted to me that i stunk. we were worn from ten
days desert, from seven days camping.
the drive back was just as beautiful, but spent more in a comfortable, knowing silence, or some tunes jamming. we played more red king, one on one, a repetition my sweet little baby ribnuh knows well. we traversed to the end of the games fun, matching in skill level, replaying all scenarios and combinations.
dragon new warm mountain i believe in you’s “it’s a little bit magic, like a river of morning geese” was locked in my mind the entire trip, it was a little big magic.
shoutout jorgen, the running club parent who lent us all the camping gear. shoutout to jimmy, my little brother who just committed to northeastern.
christian and i got back yesterday and immediately dipped in the atlantic. cleansed, ocean to ocean, renewed by an adventure.
this newsletter has been an indulgence, a motion of gushing gratitude.
there was a second when we thought deacus meant knowledge. it’s greek, and it’s really spelled diakos, a renowned commander during the 18th c. greek war for independence.deacus feels paternal, but also like our child. it has a sticker of a green paw print under the back right taillight, four toes. four travelers, returned home.
we have the suz for one more week. we might head east.
for now, i have two essays due tuesday, and a summer position to lock down. i’m bursting, leaking with gratitude, with a sensitivity to change.
i’m two months through my time here, i’m two months away from my leaving. reflective about the changes i have gone through, the metamorphosis that continues second by second. together. there is so much to continue to be conscious of, to consider and discover, to unwrap and retangle. more questions than answers, life a sputtering motion of gathering questions. i’m thinking about language and agency, about beauty and utterance. the gravity growing vertigo out of my floating soles.
im thankful for maggie, who just wrote a newsletter than brought it out of me, that had me missing all you friends i love so much back home. these tears torn from my eyes like medals. life, an active holding of the people we leave behind. if anyone wants to read her reflections, i do highly recommend. let me know and i’ll add you to her newsletter.
so, two maggie journal prompts for my indulgence of an extra week to write this doubly overbearing letter out of sorts. vertigo. play.
first: “do you think you could settle in cape town for an extended period of time?” yes. this place is amazing. as much as i feel on the outside, this place would be constantly stimulating, and i could never call it mine. i would be able to learn everyday, fulfilling an intrinsic value of mine. the community is super active, and there are tons of hikes and beaches to explore, like the maiden’s cove tidal pool christian and i found ourselves traversing for the first time upon our return. the coffee culture is rich, and so is the literary. the music scene is in flux, and would give me a lot to write about and discover as it transforms. it would be hard without winter, but worthy giving a season of life to, if the opportunity arose.
second: “have you felt angry about anything as of late?” those who know me well will know that this is the hardest emotion for me. i have a hard time being angry, at anyone or anything. the closest i have experienced to this emotion recently is anxiety, and maybe some sort of anger at myself for having felt this anxiety, and at what it took away at my ability to perceive, to learn, to grow, to understand.
third: i hope you learn something today. i love you.
ps: the wind is changing in cape town..
This looks incredible. Miss you gman
Thanks for sharing all the many journeys that you are on. Love seeing the world through your eyes - it’s truly wonderous!