Day 15

On our way to the gate to exit Etosha, we saw funky looking bird that we had seen before, but did not know the name of. Six years earlier in South Africa, Willem and I had introduced the ‘vale kuif’ and here in Etosha, we christened this particular bird the tofu-uhu (description: it is interesting to see, but tastes like crap – the exact spelling of its name is still under debate by the way).
At the gate, there was a slightly obese lady in army-like uniform entering our truck, asking us twice in a cheerful tone how we were doing, only to climb out the truck with visible difficulty. Nobody knows what that was about.
North of Etosha there is a huge fence that was used during the period of South African reign to keep the black and white population segregated. It’s sad to see that fences and walls have been introduced throughout history to solve non-issues that have only been turned into issues to obtained political power. Nowadays this infrastructure is however being put to use to somewhat contain the spread of mouth-and-foot disease, which is hard to control as wild-life and cattle roam the grounds side by side. As a remnant of history north of this line, you could still see that the surroundings are very different. The landscape is not empty anymore and filled with small communities and communal farms, populated predominantly by black people.
That night we slept at a campsite along the Kavango river which forms the border of Namibia and Angola, is called O-kavango when entering Botswana and is infested with hippos and crocodiles.