Day 3-055
Day Totals: 12 hrs, 13 .5 kms

I take another slow train south to Keetmanshoop, which will conveniently arrive early in the morning. Then I have a full day to kill before I catch a bus to South Africa.

Keetmanshoop again has a frontier town feel, with a mix of blacks and whites. I take a peaceful stroll through the dusty streets until I reach a hill with cool boulders stacked on each other at the edge of town.

From the top, I see a vast savannah valley, with some rugged buttes and plateaus on the other side. I figure it won't hurt to do a country hike... I head off until I finally reach a point in a canyon where I can't see any signs of civilization anywhere around... and here dedicate a parkbench concert to the wild open savannahs of Namibia...

I follow a dry riverbed a ways until I reach a road, then loop around, on sun drenched walk back to the town. A security guard at a "Department of Agriculture" compound calls me over for a chat .

"How's life here?" I ask

"It's much better in South Africa" he tells me. "Folks there are lazy and always fighting, so they prefer to hire foreigners. I go and work for 3 months and then come back. The pay is very good..."

I head back to town, grab some food from the supermarket, then wander around the middle and lower class neighborhoods with their wide empty streets...

I can't seem to find an internet cafe anywhere--and with good reason. There's free internet at the library! Cool! I can finally save all my pictures of Namibia...

Dusk is approaching as I head to the gas station where the Intercape bus stops, several miles out of town. Shouldn't be a problem, right? I mean, I've felt safe everywhere else here in Namibia...

Well, it turns out, I have to go right past the vast Keetmanshoop shantytown. Suddenly I feel very, very conspicuous, walking with my backpack down the nearly empty highway, carrying more money than some of these folks make in 6 months...

I see people walking from the shantytown, out to the desert. It hits me: they have no bathrooms. So they have to wait until night to go to the open desert to relieve themselves...

I feel a bit ashamed of myself, only thinking about my own safety and comfort, when surrounded by so much hardship. Whatever happens to me, I can quickly recover from it and go back to a life a relative luxury. For many of them there is no escape.