Namibian Herero women

Some Herero women actually, truly, genuinely wear head gear like this. Most of them in villages do wear the dresses.
Hereros are a particular tribe/ethnicity in Namibia, though I am assuming that this head gear cannot be a pre-colonizarion thing! Other Namibian women do not wear that style of head dress. The dresses may not be strictly Herero, I am not sure.
I gave an old woman a ride to town one day (I picked her up in the middle of nowhere near what must have been her house and took her to the nearest village a good 50 or 60 kilometres away) and she was wearing a mint-green dress just like this, but the matching scarf she had on was an ordinary scarf. I wished I had taken a photo of her, but in my mind it would have spoiled the pleasure of given her a ride for nothing at all in exchange. She was beautiful. She smelled of peppery soap and sat quite nervous in the car at first. When I dropped her off she kissed my hand to thank me (I was so embarrassed) and walked out of the car in front of all the village women holding herself very proud. I gather white tourists don't usually pick up old ladies on the road. When she saw who I was she even stopped waving for a ride and was a little hesitant to come into the car.

second try for the zebra

Ah! It is way better this way. The photos are much much bigger in their original size and I have to shrink them drastically to post them. Usually I shrink them to be 30% of their original size. this time I crop the part I wanted (the zebra) then shrank it.

More from Namibia White Lady rock paintings

First the actual White Lady...who is a man... Really hard to photograph and quite faint now. Many years of people spraying water, or even worse, wiping a wet cloth on the painting to make it brighter has made it fade faster than the other paintings...the price of celebrity!

In this one you want to note the human legs on the antelope. The interpretation is that it represent part of what was happening to the shaman as they were going into trance and were turning into animals. A lot is made of animal with human parts or the reverse humans with animal parts and the trance. I guess I believe that it is a valid interpretation for at least SOME of the paintings.
The famous Twyfelfontein lion (I've already posted a photo earlier) who has 5 toes on each foot clearly drawn and one additional "foot" also with five toes engraved at the end of its tail is considered to also be a trance relate animal representation with human parts. Definitely, from what I saw, I noticed that when ever animals have human parts they are legs, toes etc...extremities, so it could very well be related to a common factor like the way those people reached their trance and the resulting sensations associated with the process.
What are future archaeologists going to make of present time abstract paintings?
I love that zebra but in a photo that size it doesn't show well.

Sahara rock paintings

Look what I found today when looking for some informative site on the Sahara plant life.
I am still thinking that one day I will go to Djanet an see the rock paintings.

I'm obviously having a plant "phase", in addition to my never ending rock paintings/carvings phase. Though I have no particular interest in the plants around here. The land is covered with vegetation! It makes it hard to find it "special"

The mopane tree

My favorite Namibian tree is the Mopane tree.
I am pretty sure that had I seen the quiver trees they would have been my favorite, but I only saw them in South Africa and even them they were fairly small since it wasn't there "prime territory". But I think the quiver trees are in southern Namibia only....In a way I am please that they are not my favorite because they are so obvious...If you know what I mean.

Here is a spot where you can read some interesting stuff about the mopane tree:
http://www.plantzafrica.com/plantcd/colomopane.htm

I tell you it is a lot easier to find information on a plant/tree when you know its name!!

Here are two photos from the site. I have some leaves pressed in the book I was reading at the time. I'll take photos and you will understand better why this tree is my favorite.
The leaves to me really looked like hooves prints...a tree full of hooves prints! Martin thought that they looked like lungs.

I'm sure hoping that saying where you get the photo from is the way to handle copywrited stuff!

Namibia Fairy Circles

Everybody has better be good or I will do the "lichens of Namibia" next!!! (It is nearly a joke because I may very well do it just for fun)

But now that I have started with the plants, I realized that I can't remember the name of the poisonous plant the San people used to poison their arrow heads...and can't find it on the internet YET! I have to look into it or it will bug me. Why don't I write those things down?!?

There was also a tree which I particularly like, but for some reason never took a photo off!!! Well that seals it I HAVE to go back to Namibia now!!! Anyway in the process of digging up names of the plants I saw I discovered that apparently I missed a tourist attraction...yet another reason to go back to Namibia!!

Here is good photo of it that I got from http://www.margheritacampaniolo.it/crop%202004/Fairy_circles_of_Nabimia.htm

I also found an article about them on the BBC world News site (my favorite news site on the internet). Here is the article:
=======================

South African botanists say they have failed to explain the mysterious round patches of bare sandy soil found in grassland on Namibia's coastal fringe.

They looked into possible causes of the "fairy circles" - radioactive soil, toxic proteins left by poisonous plants, and termites eating the seeds. But tests do not support any of these theories for the rings which are 2-10m across, New Scientist magazine reports.
For now, the botanists are left with "fairies" to explain the phenomenon.

Termite trenches
Lead scientist Gretel van Rooyen is exploring the theory that, somehow, toxic elements are deposited in the shape of the circle, making it impossible for plant life to get established there.
"But even if we find them, how they came there is the next problem - for the moment, we're left with the fairies," Ms van Rooyen, from University of Pretoria, said.

Tests of soil samples taken from the circles found all to be negative for radioactivity and desert plants were successfully cultivated in the lab on soil which had previously supported poisonous milk bushes (Euphorbia damarana).
As for the termites, the team dug trenches up to 2m deep in and around the circles, but found no sign of these insects or their nests.
Fairy circles occur in a broken belt in the pro-Namib region, from southern Angola to the Orange River in South Africa and have become so famous that they are included in visitors' tours.

The research will appear in a future issue of the Journal of Arid Environments.

=================

Hmmm!??! "Journal of Arid Environment" sounds interesting.

Did you notice it also mentions the poisonous milk bushes as Euphorbia damarana...Here you go, question answered! I like it when things like this happen.

Namibia desert plants

I would guess that apart from the Welwitschia the silver green bushes in this photo are probably the most famous plant in Namibia. Their milk is extremely poisonous and the San people used its "milk" as poison on their arrows. Amazingly enough some animals like the black rhino craze on it.
............added later: A finally found its name. it is a Euphorbia also known as Milk Bush but apparently there are many many kinds of Euphorbia in southern Africa...... and it is Euphorbia damarana (see post above, obviously added after this post..I am adding this afterwards)



The rest are basically just plants that I liked.
This one looked to me as if it was related to the typical household jade plant, but hte leaves were larger and rounder.


when you see a bloom in the desert it is impossible to resist the temptation of taking a photo.

Namibian desert rocks

Right now I have to stay awake for work even though things are actually a little slow. To pass the time I was going through my photos of Namibia. I thought I should post some more. First the ROCKS!
With its unusual climate Namibia also ends up with unusual and beautiful rock weathering patterns.






This last one is to show how an intrusive rock ends up weathering when in a very windy, foggy desert.

back at work...GGGRRRRR!

I'm back in Mozambique at work!
I fell like death warmed over! I hope I am not catching something. Most likely I am just way tired with all the flying, bad sleep in airports and anonymous hotel rooms, etc. Lately I have even completely given up wondering where I am when I wake up.

I feel that Namibia is way too nice and the weather in the Kananaskis country is too perfect for me to be working right now.

It doesn't happen to me very often, but right now I totally do not feel like being at work. Thankfully I know that once I have a good night sleep I will be over this. The only problem is that in the next 24 hours I have to TD the well (TD= total depth= finish the well) and then spend three to four days in the logging truck with little to no sleep...In other words, give me another week and I'll feel better.

Beautiful day in Kananaskis Country

I travel, I travel, I travel...and I forget how beautiful some of the things are not far from my house.
Today I woke up to a beautiful early fall day or was it a beautiful alte summer day?
It is cool at night but not too cold yet and as a last minute decision I decided to go to Kanasaskis Country for my last day in Canada before I go back to work.
Next time I come back it will be winter, likely there will be snow.... I wish I had gone camping this trip in, but on the other hand I feel really relax and happy having done all that I needed to do.
I went for a short hike along Galatea Creek. It was a festival of forest scents. It was wonderful...wet cool mushroom and mosses, warm pine sap and everything in between. I had forgotten those smells.
Of course Kananaskis is really about mountains...You know I think that the Kananaskis Country is more beautiful than the famous Banff Park or just about any other part of the Canadian Rockies. But it is impossible to do justice to the mountains so just one photo.
And on my drive home J. called as I was by Porcupine Creek. I stopped there as we talked and It was nice to catch up and talk from that spot to a person who can relate to the temptations of traveling, the love for other places but who also knows how beautiful Kananasis is.

Namibian Oryx

There are many different types of antelope in Namibia but here is my favourite: the Oryx. They are absolutely gorgeous looking and very elegant in the way they move.
They are quite common in Namibia and I had the chance to see a lot of them, though not in big herds.

Check them out at: http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/oryx

Other animals you really need to watch for on the road

-ostriches
-monkeys.... very common, they are terrible at crossing the road!
-buffaloes (the african ones)
-antelopes of all kind
-giraffes (only happened to me once)
-turtles (only after a light rain from my experience)
-goats and cows!!!! Happens all the time... near habitations
Various other unidentified fury creatures running with their little fury tails straight up in the air...
Oops, I nearly forgot: Chameleons!...I did post something about chameleons, didn't I?!?
Anyway, just in case here is one of them with his tail as straight as a sword, a sure sign that he is terrified... I saw him late (they are small) and the only way to avoid him was to put him in between the wheels so I wouldn't run him over. So you can understand that he had good reasons to be terrified.I guess it also shows what type of road I drive on at work...this is the road!

I was hoping for more about Welwitschia

I really meant to add something about the Welwitschias. I thought to myself "I'll dig up one of my old text book and write a summary of why I really wanted to see them and what is so particular about them..." .
So this morning I went through..not all..but most of my old text books and I found absolutely nothing significant, no papers, no articles, no chapters about Welwitschias...In fact, no good text book about paleobotany at all!
A lot of books about geochemistry , carbonates, biogeochemistry, chemistry, the Canadian Cordilleras, metamorphism, diagenesis etc... If I had to imagine the person who own the book collection I own I would never imagine myself. I had an interest in paleontology and particularly paleobotany one day long long ago (long ago enough that it was probably pre-angiosperms!)but now really it is just a left over curiosity.
Here is a little bit that I remember:
-They are believed to be some sort of link,in between gymnosperms and angiosperms.... OK, let's be clear here I mean "something between angiosperms and gymnosperms" I don't mean "the link, the step in between, the undeniable ancestor of all angiosperms...
- They are classified as some sort of weird gymnosperm...Well I have seen the female and male cones myself now.

Male cones (not a great photos. They are the small things in the centre of the plant)
Female cones. The "skinny ones have just lost all their "scales" and their seeds. I often saw those orange bugs on the female cones...no other bugs though.
You'll notice that in the original post about the Welwitschias I did post one male and one female picture.

Seeds (the cream coloured papery disks) caught in a small depression in the desert...maybe the start of something.


-Their wood is closer in structure (something to do with vessels to carry water) to that of angiosperms than that of gymnosperms...but as I recall some angiosperms...those considered "primitive" (and not as in unsophisticated or unsuccessful, just as in evolved from an earlier branch...Hmmm? "branch" bad word in this context)..so I was writing...some "primitive" angiosperms do not have vessels..right there suggesting to me that even though the Welwitschias have characteristic of both groups they are not the link between them....

Anyway, my paleobotany days are behind me but it was nice to see the Welwitschias.

You know you are in Africa when.....

one more book worth mentioning

I'm reading "28 Stories of AIDS in Africa" by Stephanie Nolen that a neighbor, Denis, lent me.
A very good book and very easy to read since it is broken down into 28 completely independent stories. And even though the content is obviously a little heavy it is quite readable and not written as a tear jerker.
Of course I started with the stories about Mozambique and South Africa. I would say that for me so far the interesting part has not been so far the AIDS part per say, sorry to say but this is just not a surprise. However peppered through the stories are a few pieces of information which are not that easy to come by otherwise.
Here is one about Mozambique that rings very true (well obviously it is true, but I mean to say that it is something shockingly obvious when you are there):
"660,000 of Mozambique's eighteen million people have formal jobs."
I want to add to this that the population of Mozambique is very young. Lots of kids, yes, but also no old people, or only very rare old folks. I have seen two old women and one old man during my stay there. The civil war, the land mines, malaria and AIDS took care of those. So I would guess that only 50% of the population is of what would be considered "working age" ...this is just a visual estimate coming from me so really it doesn't mean much, take it for what it is.

Also an interesting side effect of such a statistic is that young male Mozambicans are difficult to work with. At first they are super dedicated to their job but after a few rotations off and a few trips home, where they are now "elite" just because they have a job, they come back as arrogant as they can be. We have had a few problems lately. It is an old communist system with unions out of the ying yang (downtown Maputo, the capital city, has street names like Karl Marx, Mao Tse-tung etc) there is not much really we can do about it but grim and bear it... The same union which forbid us to pay the workers more than the prescribed rate is now telling us that the rate has to go up, tells us by how much etc...So that I cannot get the better workers to officially get a better pay...of course what ever bonuses I want to get is my own deal...I give those out of my own pocket, the client company (never mention the name of the client company on a public blog) is unaware of it too. As far I can imagine they couldn't possibly care less as long as I don't bill them for it!

I guess that all over the world it takes about four months for human nature to take for granted what ever they have.

The Welwitschias

At both places I saw Welwitschias. I was really happy about that!

Here is an extract of what " http://waynesword.palomar.edu/welwit.htm " has to say about those:
"One of the truly remarkable members of the Kingdom Plantae belongs to the Division Gnetophyta. Its scientific name is Welwitschia mirabilis, and it only grows in a remote region of southwestern Africa in the Namib and Mossamedes Deserts. Welwitschias are extraordinary plants and certainly rank among the top ten list of "most bizarre plants on earth." Old, mature plants have a short, woody trunk or crown (caudex) that protrudes above the ground. Below the ground, the caudex extends into a large taproot. The woody trunk (stem) gives rise to two, wide, strap-shaped leaves that may reach two meters in length. Like grass leaves, their meristematic region is at the base so they continually grow even though their tips get worn off by abrasion. In fact, the leaves lie on the ground and as they flap about in the wind they become split and frayed. Welwitschia plants are dioecious, with pollen-bearing and seed-bearing cones (strobili) produced on separate male and female plants."

Namibia, second part of the trip

The first part of the trip was around Swakopmund, a little German town by the ocean. After this I went further north and inland. Apart from just wanting to wonder around Namibia aimlessly I also wanted to see the rock paintings and the rock carvings, particularly Twyfelfontein (thanks to Rob who told me about them).
First, because it is the first when you come from the south I went to see "The White Lady". Amazing rock paintings. (I am quite happy with this photo, the rock paintings are great to see but hard to photograph)
This one is obviously not The White Lady, but it is better preserved and I prefer it.
Then I went twice to see the rock carvings of Twyfelfontein.
Here is me taking pictures of the giraffes...lots of giraffe engravings.

And this is the Famous Lion of Twyfelfontein. I had seen photos of both the White Lady and the Twyfelfontein Lion before but had never realized that they were in Namibia. Interestingly enough both are meant to be about 6 thousand years old....just like the rock carvings of Ireland and the rock art of Algeria.
Going back to Twyfelfontein the second time on one of the worst road I drove in Namibia I managed to get a flat tire..which you would think is trivial but turns out to be a bit of a headache when you are far from things, it is Saturday and the tires in the car are tubeless. It eventually got sorted out, it always does! The plus side of all this was that I met Martin who stopped to asked if I needed help. He is a Dutch school teacher who bikes all over the world alone on his time off.
It seems like a good time to mention the fact that I am about to buy a car in southern Africa so I can travel all over Africa alone in a car. But right after writing about Martin biking all over the word alone it does not sound so crazy, see!

All this to say that I loved Namibia and I am hoping to go back soon when I have my own car and at least TWO spare tires!

Just a last shot of blooming bottle trees.
They have amazingly fancy white flowers with a strong flowery perfume. I didn't like the scent because it reminded me of my grandma's perfume (yaakss!!). But I was told by two people that I was unfair and it really was a nice fresh scent!!!

Namibia, first part of the trip

Well, I did make it to Namibia and I loved it. To love Namibia you have to love the desert, so right here I qualify. It is a beautiful place with many types of deserts, many types of mountains, the ocean and fog, quite a few interesting animals and roads which at first fool you into thinking that dirt roads can be good! Namibia is also famous for its dunes but let's face it after the Sahara it is hard to take pictures of the dunes especially since while I was there the air was not clear either because of the fog, the sand storms of just general dust in the air. But just in case you can't quite put Namibia in a frame of reference here is probably the most famous view of Namibia.
I didn't take it I lifted it off the net.

What I liked looked more like this:


I AM into deserts! What can I say?!
Now the interesting part about this photo, and the reason while I took it is the green colour on the ground. As it turns out it is lichen.

And I am pleased that I noticed it because it turns out that it is one of the features of Namibia.

I didn't know before noticing it and only saw the sign days later.
That same day, which was incredibly windy, I also noticed the Namibian ventifacts. I don't think that they are quite as famous or quite as appreciated, but I liked them.

I'll admit that I probably did notice them because that day was so windy... so windy that it was hard to stay still enough to take a picture!

Guess which way the wind was blowing? (By the way it is a dolerite dyke)

And the garnets you can sort of see in the first ventifact eventually made it to the ocean.

I tell you Namibia is nice!