The first sight of the desert

Leaving the last of the so-called civilisation behind, we followed the road from Swakopmund to Damaraland. The landscape at first sight is alien, it looks utterly inhospitable, an endless loop of flat white scrubland with nothing to distract the eye from monotony. All I can think of are words such as 'barren', 'empty, 'bleak', 'hostile' and realised I was frightened of what I had got myself into. The desert. Magical words for me since I was a child, speaking of adventure and spectres in the sandstorms, beautiful palaces in the mirages. 'Desert' from the Latin desertum. English language being what it is, there are three meanings associated to the word - a barren, uninhabited place; to abandon, leave empty or alone; something that is deserved, in particular a punishment ("He got his just deserts."). I had always imagined the desert to be romantic, something about the space and solitude, the wild beauty. This was very different from what I had conjured up in my mind's eye. Nothing changed in the four hours we covered the straight, white, gravel road, until we finally reached Uis, a small, once prosperous mining town. Uis is the last stop before we really hit the desert and is home to the last vestiges of electricity, shops, houses built of brick. The camp will have none of this.

There is a mountain shading the town, with large white letters spelling out the name of the place, almost as a parody of the glittering and wealthy American district. This is distinctly not Hollywood. It has the feel of a ghost town with drifting groups of stullified people touting the semi-precious stones which made the name of this place worth displaying on a mountain. Signs are strung up everywhere encouraging tourists not to buy from these men. I was unsettled by this - someone explained to me that these men sold cheap bits of jewellery to tourists and then got drunk on the proceeds, and in order to encourage sustainable tourism one shouldn't buy their wares. Yet I couldn't help but wonder what these people who had been presumably put out of work by the closure of the mines were supposed to do. And I also couldn't help but notice how all of these 'drunk' touts were black, and all of the shop owners who strung up the signs were white.