Young and Reckless in Nambia

You might think that after sampling a week behind bars in a Mexican jail, I wouldn't go near any more jails. Wrong!   (See my post of March 5).   During a school break when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lesotho, a fellow teacher, Richard, and I decided to visit Namibia, which was then called Southwest Africa and controlled by apartheid South Africa.   How does one get from Lesotho to Southwest Africa without a car?  Hitchhiking, naturally.

Using this method we crossed the subcontinent and arrived in Southwest Africa, well south of Windhoek, the capital.   Our destination was Etosha Nationals Park in the extreme north, bordering on Angola.   Where would we, on volunteer budgets, stay during the nights?  Richard had read somewhere that if you went to the local jail and they had a free cell, you could bunk down there.   One problem solved.  We spent several nights in unlocked cells, not the Ritz, but a roof over our heads. .The other problem was that there was a war going on between the South African army and the freedom fighters of SWAPO (Southwest Africa Peoples Organization).  Well, we'd just have to be careful.  The jail idea having actually worked well, in due time we arrived in Windhoek.

In Windhoek we learned that all speed limits were off to the north to give motorists the chance to evade the war.  We rented a car in the capital and started off.   We encountered South African army patrols going through the woods and figured that all would be well once we got to Etosha.  So we had a pleasant few days watching the big game, confident we didn't need to worry about civil war.   There were no other visitors. Only later did we learn that SWAPO was using Etosha as its headquarters.

We made it back south where Richard and I parted, he going to Cape Town and I going back to Maseru, Lesotho.  When I arrived in Bloemfontein, the bastion of apartheid, it was evening and I had in my pocket enough money only for dinner or a hotel.  I opted to eat and afterwards made my way to local jail, where I was asked to wait for half an hour.  

Eventually someone showed up and said "I'll show you to your quarters."   I thought that sounded promising until I was put in a cell and the door was looked.   They had never locked the doors in Namibia.  "Wait!   I'm not a criminal!"  "It's for your own safety.  You'll be released in the morning."  Around 11 p.m.  the door was unlocked and a wildly drunk man, yelling and thrashing about, was pushed into the cell with me.   I immediately set about trying to calm him down with minimal success.  I may have slept an hour or two.

Sure enough, the guard opened the door at 6:30 a.m., where there was woman from the Salvation Army, handing out religious tracts.   "God bless you, my son," she said to me.

Later, when I was a Foreign Service officer in Lesotho, I told this story to the king who roared with laughter at my naiveté in thinking I could mosey into a jail in Bloemfontein without consequence.