A WHOLE COUNTRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Once all the coronavirus scares die down Namibia awaits.

To be honest, when I was growing up I used to think Namibia was a set of four claustrophobic walls. Now that I am older that opinion varies according to my frustrations. But, really, my teenage years felt like solitary confinement – I had strict parents – with the occasional release into the general population (translation: going to the mall, the cinema, or being allowed to attend a sleepover – the longest leash one could hope for).

I was not an enjoyer of sunrises or a lover of sunsets. The starry evenings held nothing but boredom for me. The same went for walks. I also hated the camping trips my parents thought we should go on as a family. I remember returning from Etosha National Park with numerous vows never to be in the wild again. The joke was on me – in school camps I was again forced to pitch tents and boil water over a fire, and the very worst of social outings: teambuilding exercises.

That four-wall-syndrome followed me from my late primary school years into my high school and into my university years when I left Namibia to study abroad. The feeling persisted when I returned after a sevenyear absence from the country. Four walls. Low ceiling. Nothing to do. It was this way for two miserable years before I Invictus-ed my way to my own personal happiness and fulfilment. But that four walls feeling never went away completely.

Little needs to be said about Namibia’s sunsets, very little indeed. Suffice it to say, if they were to be a wall then there is probably no better wall for solitary confinement, for solitude and reflection.

Now, years later, thanks to the COVID-19 outbreak that has the whole world on lockdown, with every major city practicing varying degrees of social distancing and quarantine, the four walls feeling is back. The only comfort for me is that everyone is in the same boat, and with good reason – we must all do our parts. We are all confined to our four walls for the greater part of the day, and we are all looking forward to the days when we can get out and do things we took for granted in what seems like bygone years even though it has only been a week or two in some cases.

After seeing all the details of the various four walls in my house, I am quite ready to be released back into the wild, back into the city and the country that felt like a term in purgatory.

Before the coronavirus pandemic I had become a lover of walks. If you live in the leafier suburbs, the streets are quieter, wider, safer to stroll through, and they provide the casual or fitness walker with changing vantages of Windhoek’s landscapes. With the city spread out before you, the vista of open, cloudy or cloudless sky stretches from one horizon to the next, boundless from the margin of earth all the way to the endless sky above. As far as walls go on that front, it is a pretty big and wide wall, with an infinite number of details to see and savour. Little needs to be said about Namibia’s sunsets, very little indeed. Suffice it to say, if they were to be a wall then there is probably no better wall for solitary confinement, for solitude and reflection.

The third and fourth walls are outside the city, far far away. They are in the Namib and Kalahari deserts, at the chilly coast which runs the length of the country, in the Kaokoveld and in the flat farmlands to the east. They are in the south of the country where the harshness of the land has a bleak beauty about it, and in the north where the grasslands stretch from here into the ocean mirage of infinity. They are not close, they are far away, more expansive than one can imagine, varied and interesting, and so far apart that the idea of confinement is rubbished as quickly as it is thought up.

It is thus hoped that in due time, when the world has a better grip on the COVID-19 crisis, the extents of these four walls shall be tested, that they shall be explored by everyone in Namibia – certainly not just the wealthy – and that the numerous freedoms one enjoys as a citizen of the land of savannahs are not taken for granted. That, at least, is the hope. Whether things play out differently remains to be seen. The fact remains though: nobody ever knows what they have until they sneeze or cough it away. And I, for one, am looking forward to getting outside of my four walls. I am sure that everyone else is, too. Considering that outside of those four walls Namibia waits, I think it is a pretty good deal, much better than most.

So, yeah, lockdown and quarantine now. But at least there is a whole country to look forward to in the days to come.

Rémy Ngamije is a Rwandan-born Namibian novelist, columnist, essayist, short-story writer, and photographer. His debut novel The Eternal Audience Of One is available from Blackbird Books and Amazon. His short stories have appeared in Litro Magazine, AFREADA, The Johannesburg Review of Books, The Amistad, The Kalahari Review, American Chordata, Doek!, and Azure. More of his writing can be read on his website: remythequill.com