Plains of Peace

Few South Africans don’t have a soft spot for neighbouring Namibia: it’s a country of plains and dunes and not many people, a place that tugs at the heart strings and has visitors returning again and again.

- Hanné Koster

Eagle’s view

A light aircraft offers you one of the best and fastest ways to see a large part of Namibia. With my brother, Henk, piloting a Jabiru aircraft, I went on a tour of the country a few years ago. For a landscape photographer, this is a great treat. In some cases the landing strips belong to the establishments where you’ll be over nighting, or to a local flying club. The pilots always do a fly-by first: they scan the length of the runway to see whether it’s okay to land there and to make sure there aren’t any animals you wouldn’t want to meet quite like that. If it’s level and the rocks have been scraped away, you can land – like Francois Snyders of Namibia Wildlife here with his Cheetah. 

I was born in the Free State, which might explain why any open space makes me feel safe and at home. Plains where you can look beyond the trivialities and restrictions of the here and now, and can spot potential an hour from now and tomorrow and next week. Namibia is such a place. So it’s no wonder that I got the first stamps in my passport there.

The long distances give your mind time to find its own road, or sometimes reach new insight via a detour. I like the fact that there aren’t many people, and how this affects the way people look at one another and talk to one another. The colour of the earth and the dunes and a sometimes wrathful ocean. The silence.

I visited Namibia for the first time over the December holidays of my first year at varsity – as one of a group of students who kept kids occupied on Swakopmund’s beach. We drove there in a small car, five students crowded in the heat. A year later we were back, this time among the tents on Mile 4.

Ever since, I’ve been back as often as possible: at least once every two years, when I can make it.