Early Musings about Namibia

First impressions on a few issues to which I will undoubtedly return once I have thought about them a bit more:

“Bureaucracy”:  Let’s just say we did not get the warmest welcome to the country.  I won’t bore you with the story of our visas/permits, but the end result is that we should have been all set to enter Namibia.  Apparently we were not.  The reason why we were not is essentially because the rules are so vague that it is anyone’s guess what is sufficient for the border guards on a given day.  The vagueness provides rich soil for bribery, nepotism and other wonderful things to flourish.  We were in the end ok, but to a large extent thanks to our boss being able to pull some strings.  As great as that was for us, it is obviously not how it should be.  Immigration and home affairs is the hotbed of corruption in many countries, even though much of it could be reduced, with fairly simple methods.  When we entered Egypt a few years ago, there were big signs at the border, in English, telling all entrants what was required for a visa and how much it would cost.  Rules such as this need to be clear, they need to specify what is required, on what basis can an application be denied, how much will it all cost and what is the timeframe within which the decision will be taken.  This all then needs to be publicly and visibly explained wherever necessary, with a number to call if a person has any complaints.  But there may have been a silver lining as our adventures were the last straw for her: our boss is now preparing a memo on necessary reforms to the Minister of Home Affairs.  Watch this space for future developments -- hopefully positive ones.

“Demography”: We naively thought that since the whole country had gone through oppression and the independence struggle, it would not be suffering from the problematic aspects of race relations that its former colonial master and neighbour South Africa is still experiencing.  We were wrong.  I am fascinated by how totally segregated the society is.  There is black / coloured Namibia, then there is Afrikaner Namibia, and at the top of the hierarchy (at least in their own opinion) is German Namibia.  Whites own everything and outside of the context of work, where they must interact with their black employees, the races do not mix.  It has so far been weird, sad and fascinating in equal measures.  On Saturday we were at the Windhoek Country Club for a wine tasting event.  It will surprise nobody that there were no more than a handful of black people among the several hundred guests.  To balance things out, on Sunday we went to an Africa Day exhibition football game between Sundowns (from South Africa) and the local African Stars.  In the stadium of several thousand spectators we spotted three other white faces.  When another traveller we met asked a local white teenager whether he had any black friends, apparently the response was that he didn’t, but this was “not because they were black, but because they had not gone to similar schools or had a similar life, so they just had nothing in common”.  As I said, weird, sad and fascinating.

“Muggings”:  When it comes to safety, we’ve heard some pretty wild stories.  We’ve been told time and again that we are prime targets as not only whites, but as foreigners.  We’ve been advised that carrying bags is stupid, walking is stupid, taking local taxis is stupid … basically everything apart from staying indoors and clutching our money to our chests is stupid.  By contrast, we’ve also been told by a foreigner who has lived here for close to 30 years that she has been mugged once and that was in New York.  Apparently there are many possible reactions.  We’ve met an American couple who rented a house in the leafy suburb, bought a car and basically lived their life here as much as possible as if they were still in the United States, avoiding all contact with the “local” environment to the extent they could.  We’ve also met a backpacker who clearly relished the story of how he was robbed at machetepoint and how he was now on his way to the border region with Angola, because that was the true wild west where it was all happening.  As for us, we’ve decided that we can’t waste our time here being scared.  We walk, we take taxis (there is no other public transport) and we attend “local” places and events.  We already had a taste of the more creative side of business at the football match, where there just happened to be an “altercation” at the narrow exit gate when we were leaving, and during all the jostling the people on both sides of F “accidentally” placed their hands in F’s pockets, as opposed to their own.  We cannot guarantee that we will not be mugged, the best we can aim for is that we will not be carrying anything that we will have trouble parting with if that happens.

Rant against Poor People on Airplanes

Even when one doesn’t buy the crackpot science of so-called “climate skeptics”, one has to concede that the real culprits for greenhouse gas emissions are the coal-blazing Chinese (and to a lesser but growing extent Germans – yeah, getting out of nuclear without Plan B was a great idea, wasn’t it) and the shameless and wicked oil barons that push the black gunk on the world and fund the above-mentioned crackpot science.  Apparently also the forecasts are being revised since while the planet is indeed warming, it has recently not been warming at quite the rate as expected.  So the future generations might yet survive, hooray!  Or wait, has the rate in fact been quickening?

All this confusion notwithstanding, I’m a firm believer in everyone doing their bit.  If for no other reason, then at least for the license it gives us to wave a fist at them Chinese (and Germans) and oil barons – not to mention the snootiness we can display towards less environmentally conscious friends at dinner parties and over drinks.

I fly a lot.  I fly for business and I fly for personal reasons.  I don’t fly for “pleasure”, because I hate flying, but it gets me to places I need to go such as Berlin to see F, Helsinki to see everyone or Malaga to see mum and dad (and, ok yes, lounge by the pool, you got me).

I feel constant guilt about my flying.  In terms of personal contributions to carbon emissions, flying is as bad as it gets.  I can munch all the locally grown carrots I want and walk to work, but the fact is that all of that is dwarfed by the ecological disaster that is my flying habits.  On an individual level, my flying probably puts me in the top 5% of worldwide contributors to climate change.  Hence there has not been much snootiness displayed recently on my part.

Simply put: I should fly less.  So should you, even if you don’t fly as much as me.

The reality is, however, that as long as flying is as cheap as it is, neither you nor I will cut down on it. 

Do you remember what it was like when we oldies were growing up, or at uni/college?  We did NOT hop over to Vienna or Lisbon or Istanbul for a weekend, because we had no money for it.  The flights would have cost several hundred pounds (no Euros back then!), which was well beyond our budgets.  The 20-something kids nowadays have it different.  Even on a student budget they take mini-breaks to other countries and fly off to Mexico or Vietnam to backpack between terms, because they can.

I think that the subsidies to air travel should stop and the cost of jet fuel should actually include a huge tax to cover for the environmental externalities of flying.  If a carbon tax is ever implemented anywhere, it could take care of this.  The EU emission trading scheme obviously includes flying, but the whole system is a total dud.  If a working one is ever conceived (ideally a world-wide one), it should definitely include flying at its actual cost and impact. 

I think what I’m making here is a very sensible proposal.  Yet, when I’ve made it in conversation, it has been immediately rejected.  F, for example, has told me that I’m elitist and pointed out that if my idea was reality only I could afford to do the bi-weekly visits that are the lifeline of a long-distance relationship, since I have a job and he is still a student.

Obviously if flying was made more expensive it would mean that less people could afford to do it.  I don’t see a problem with that – in fact it would be the whole point: reduce flying.  There have always been activities that are beyond the means of most people.  I don’t own a private jet or a mansion or a Lamborghini, all of which pollute and contribute to climate change, but I don’t get called an elitist for being OK with this state of affairs and not demanding that we should all be able to afford all that.  The reason I get called an elitist for advocating more expensive flying to discourage it and cover the actual costs of it is because we have somehow come to think in recent years that being able to afford to fly (“hyper-mobility” as it is called in the green lingo) is some kind of a basic human right that should be available to everyone, regardless of their financial situation.  Well it ain’t.  It’s an expensive and polluting activity and it should be discouraged.

So I say hike up the prices, ban Easyjet and get the proles off planes!