28th of October to 19th of November, 2018.
Getting in Keetmanskoop it is not difficult. A nice man picks me up just a few minutes after waiting. There, I supposed to stay with a friend of the guy I would do the volunteer work in Luderitz. So I called him as soon as I got in town. Unfortunately, just after I left the car and said goodbye to the nice gentleman who drove me there, it is when I realize the misunderstood in our conversation: he and the family have simply decided go to the farm so I would not be able to stay with them. Lovely! I should have had taken that as the first sign. And the fact that I forgot my 1.5L bottle of water in the car as a second.
So really pissed off after realizing that (again) I have not a place to stay, I do an act of revolution: to buy a Doritos for lunch. Luxury for ones, silly business for others, I know.
Sitting in a square / park, eating my Doritos, deciding where the hell I will ask for shelter, a couple with two kids arrive to also have their lunch. I do not know how but I knew instantly that the guy was not the father of the children.
The lady asks for my water to the children. The only water that I have and one of the two small 0.5L bottles that I have. But of course I say yes.
Lethia starts a conversation then, and to make it shorter, still now I do not know if she is actually a nice person or not. But the thing is she helps me. I could stay at her boyfriend’s place for the night, where they also would sleep. Her kids would stay with her family.
Next morning I leave to Luderitz. Again, it does not take too long until someone stop. This time, two guys going directly to there also. The guy drives really fast so I end up in town pretty soon. Soon also, I would realize how unfortunately that would be.
Giel come to pick me up. Since the first moment I feel that there is something wrong. At his house the first surprise: from outside to inside, it looks like an abandoned place. He keeps everything and anything you can imagined. Since quite reliable things that he might will use one day until totally crap. The whole house looks like a deposit. An abandoned deposit.
But OK, it is his house not mine. I would get a little anxious since I am quite organized and just live with the extremely necessary? Probably, but I can survive.
Then he starts to talk. One of the first things is already a huge stupidity: the fact that just because he is a nudist, sometimes he walk naked inside the house. What? Are you fucking kid me? Excuse me but this is not a CS experience, is a volunteer work. A professional business. You are might not paying me but is still a professional business. Yeah, that is what I should have told to him at that moment so then maybe the things would be more clear since the beginning and I would probably have left also. But you know me, I cannot do those kind of things. Even to a fly I guess. Maybe with mosquitoes…
Now the subject is the other volunteers he had in the past. All crap according to him. All of them with one or a lots of problems which make them looks like the bad people. I should have realized, at this point, that something was wrong. It could be that so many people who came to stay with him were that bad? It was him a crap person’s magnet?
Next day I meet Charles, a nice guy who helps Giel. He tells me everything that I need to know, including the actual true about how Giel actually fall for one of the volunteers that he now complains so much and how also she was not bad at all. She might had some problems but nothing compared with the snowball Giel told me.
To make it bad stuff shorter, he lost his mind a few times; almost broke the fridges door in a fury moment; used to lie all the time since I always could get the truth later with Charles; we could not talk about something that we had different opinions about it because he would say that was an argument and he did not want arguments in his house (just because in his stupid mind, there is no different opinions: what he thinks about something is right an end of story).
So even that I could not stand him, I decided to stay just because he would be going for almost a week and then I could have some peace.
I think the things were wrong since the beginning because I choose his place thinking that I would help an Empowering Women Project with social media, but at the end he actually wanted my help to advertise his personal projects and raise money to him and not to help anybody else. Well, I actually helped a little, since that the studio he had in Kolmanskoop sold three items after I made some changes on it. Changes that I know he was not happy with it.
OK, not a completely waste of life because Luderitz it is great, right?! Ahm… It is a nice and cute town, which you can see the whole area from the top of a small hill, but is too fucking windy. You can never open the windows of your house and walking on the streets is a huge challenge. When I was going for my diary walks I could have fun, because you know, it is me, but is definitely something that I could not do for my entire life. There are some nice old buildings in town, and some hills around that you can climb and the best thing I think it is a place called Shark Island (and I call it “place” because for me island is a portion of land completely surrounded by water and this was not), where you can go for nice views and walks.
And there is Kolmanskoop of course! Now we are talking! If you are a passionate for old stuff, this is your place! The abandoned buildings can be amazingly beautiful. Some more than others, of course. Featured to most of the two floors houses and the hospital. I did not care to much for the Casino, one of the famous buildings (probably just because of the coffee and gift shops). For me, since most of the place was renovated, it does not “smells” like the same as the other ones. Apart from the bowling building on the ground floor and some of the furniture on display. There are also a house decorated (the shop’s owner house) and some old shops buildings. You just need come with time. Three hours I think it is a good time but you can even spend more. Most of the tours take just around one so then you have to rush it all over the place. For me it was all about feeling the place and the atmosphere of a magical / fictional thing. And try to be creative with the photos. Here is definitely the place to use your creativity.
When I left Luderitz in a Monday morning, grabbing a lift with Charles until Kolmanskoop (I was holping that some of the tourist leaving the place could give me a lift) I felt free and thought that the nightmare was finished. If I only knew…
