Home is where the heat is.

The one thing I did not expect to miss about Namibia.

No one chooses a harsh environment as home without being special (or a little touched in the head) and Windhoekers are as special as they come. Hardy and humorous, tempered by the heat.

Windhoek, for me, has always been the place that I wanted to leave. There are many reasons for this. When I was growing up here I remember thinking about how small it was, how it was possible to drive around the city in less than a day. I remember how disappointing it was to know that the Namdeb Building in the centre of town barely met the skyscraper requirements set by New York or Tokyo. The shops closed too early. The only gaming arcade in town was too expensive for my siblings and I to visit. There was a public pool, but we could not swim. We did not have all the distractions that children from other big cities seemed to have. Green parks with rust-free swings, bicycle trails, cul-de-sacs where you could ride a scooter or play some projectile sport.

Mostly, though, I remember thinking Windhoek was a large geographic transit lounge for people on their way to something better. I, however, felt like I was the only person on my way to something worse. I thought Windhoek was purgatory, a middle ground for judgment. I was either going to some faraway heaven or I was going to be condemned to hell.

Because of the heat I felt as if I was halfway through my punishment.

You have to put aside all ideas you have about what you call hot until you arrive in Namibia. I was born in a tropical country, and like an equatorial flower I was used to rain and humidity. Namibia is something different. The heat is constant and insidious It is best thought of in the standard degrees of comparison - hot, hotter, hottest. It never fluctuates. Back then, to me the heat was quite unbearable. It dried my youth, scorched the skin and blighted the landscape. A cool day was still a hot day. A sweltering day was normal. What I wanted was a way out: away from the heat, the dust, the transit lounge, a way out of purgatory.

In many ways my life so far has been an adventure in learning to like home. Once, in Taipei, in the wintry depths and rain I thought of Windhoek’s elusive rainfall and how comforting it was to know that the sun would come out again. When I lived in Cape Town the weather’s mood swings were discombobulating. I never knew what to expect. Another time, on a sunny day that suddenly chilled with rain, I yearned so desperately for the certainty of Windhoek’s heat. Strange, but true. I yearned for purgatory.

Recently, when travelling through Germany, I have been asked numerous times what Windhoek is like, and what I like about it. Without thinking, without pause or hesitation, I said I liked the heat. When I landed in Frankfurt the skies were flat and grey - early autumn weather, the pilot said. In the ensuing days the sun broke through only a handful of times. There were some warm days, but warm is not a temperature I know. I am used to blasting heat - hot, hotter, hottest. Is, ja!

I really said I missed the heat. I missed the cool mornings that evaporate into bright, sunny days, the afternoons that shimmer with light, and the sunsets that trail red, orange, pink, and violet hues in their wake. I said I missed how hot Windhoek is.

But that was shorthand for something else. It is not the heat that makes Windhoek what it is. It is the people who have chosen the city as their home - an optimistic and amusing people. No one chooses a harsh environment as home without being special (or a little touched in the head) and Windhoekers are as special as they come. Hardy and humorous, tempered by the heat.

I remember being on a drizzly street in the centre of Berlin thinking about the summer weather in Windhoek and realising that I missed what I least expect to miss about Windhoek. Purgatory was no longer purgatory.

Home is where the heat is.

Rémy Ngamije is a Rwandan-born Namibian novelist, columnist, essayist, short-story writer, and photographer. He also writes for brainwavez.org, a writing collective based in South Africa. He is the editor-in-chief of Doek!, Namibia’s first literary magazine. 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 are also forthcoming in Azure. More of his writing can be read on his website: remythequill.com No one chooses a harsh environment as home without being special (or a little touched in the head) and Windhoekers are as special as they come. Hardy and humorous, tempered by the heat.