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Windhoek, Namibia – Part 3

The ceremony

Saturday night was the actual purpose of our visit to Windhoek.

We attended the Namibian Children’s Book Forum (NCBF) prize giving ceremony in the Goethe centre in Fidel Castro avenue.  My wife’s children’s book, “Wat is jy Kartoffel?” has been nominated for the prize in the category of illustrated children’s books.

Sandy Rudd, the master of ceremonies, kept the atmosphere light with a live wire approach.  A TV crew from (I assume) Nam TV was there, and a few photographers.  This contingent made it a bit difficult to take pictures from where I was seated.  The girls of the Greenwell Matongo Library Dance Group did their thing. Energetic, alive, loud, fun. The faces are alive;  it’s such a pleasure watching them.

Gcina Mhlope is a renowned South African story teller and playwright.  She does a story telling in which she involves everyone.  She has rythm in her whole being.  Amazing.

Mrs Kovambo Nujoma, wife of the erstwhile president of Namibia, has been the patron of the NCBF for years.  She presented the prizes.  She is an elegant lady.

My obervations not only at the evening, but also otherwise, are that the racial relationships in Namibia appear to be a lot more healthy than is the case south of the Orange river. This evening was no exception.  OK, Mrs Nujoma’s body guard was not unnecessarily friendly, but I assume that goes with the job description.

Of all the prizes handed out, my interest obviously was primarily with my wife’s award.  I was very proud of her when she was called forward to receive her award.  Well, now I can say I know somebody who shook the hand of the wife of the ersthwile president of Namibia.  This, of course, now makes me a bit of a celebrity myself.

Last social

After the proceedings there is a light meal and wine.  When everyone left, our hosts took us to the Hotel Thule for a drink.

Wow! This hotel /restaurant must be on the most prime real estate spot in Windhoek.  It sports a bird’s eye view to the North of the city.

It was an idyllic evening.  Probably still about 27 degrees, with only a slight wind cooling down the ambient temperature.

Going home

Sunday morning at six-o-clock we get picked up.  It is a nice drive out to the airport.  The sun is just rising over the Namibian plains.  OK, I’m lying about the plains; it’s a bit of poetic licence.  There are no plains here – that’s the reason why they had to go 40km’s outside Windhoek to get a big enough flat spot to build an airport.

At the check in counter the man attending to us check our passports, check his computer, check my printout of my electronic booking.  The frown between his eyes keep on deepening.

“I will be with you shortly,” he says.

He takes our passports and booking, and disappear through a door.  I’m sure I hear the theme from the 007-movies playing in the background.  After a while we become (more) concerned.  Even later I see the guy walking past, and follow him into an office where a security guard gives me a hostile look.

I explain to her that those are my papers, and that I just want to know what the problem is.

“No, there is no problem,” says the chap assisting us.  I walk with him back to the check in counter.

There is a slight problem, he says without explaining the nature thereof.  But it only means he has to issue us handwritten boarding passes.  A few minutes later we are sorted, and sit down for a nice coffee.

Over my coffee I peruse our boarding passess.  And choke in my coffee.

I grab my wife’s boarding pass and my booking papers and run back to the check-in counter.  The official looks disturbed when I bash in on him again.

“You booked us to Johannesburg, and we want to go to Cape Town,” I explain.  I hand the boarding passes to him.

“Oh, don’t worry, you are going to Cape Town, the flight number is correct.  You can just change JHB to CPT,” he says.

By that time the first boarding call came, and I did not have time to argue with the man.  So I rush back to my wife, take two gulps of coffee, and head for the passport control.

The boarding passes I fix as suggested by the official.

There, I fixed it

At passport control we start filling in the forms.  However, the form asks me which address in Windhoek I will be staying.  So we decide that these forms cannot possibly apply to us.

At the counter I explain to the lady behind the counter that we have not completed the forms properly, because it does not seem to apply to us.  After a long winded explanation she gives me a smile the way my sub A teacher used to smile at me, and waive us through.

Boarding the plane, just for safety, I present my boarding pass to the attendant with my thumb concealing the destination.  We get in undetected.  I’m sitting in row 23, my wife in row 27, says the boarding pass. But there is only 25 rows.  Oeps!

So my wife heads back to the attendant.  She re-interprets the boarding pass, and concludes that the “7” is actually a “3”.  And so we end up sitting next to each other.

And so we went home.

PG JONKER

OCTOBER 2012…