Water, Water Everywhere

As I sit in my new apartment in Outapi, enjoying a day off after two weeks of solid travel and conducting workshops, the thunder crackles. The tin roof pings with rain, and occasionally lights flicker when a good bolt of lightning threatens our electrical system. This sort of day has become common this year, during a particularly heavy rainy season in Namibia.

This year, since the skies first opened around mid January, hardly a day has gone by without rain. Sometimes it’s just a few drops, others it’s a late afternoon or evening thundershower, and occasionally we have a couple of days of rain without end. Because of the flatness of the landscape, I can see huge thunderclouds slowly advancing on Outapi, the borders of the dark cloud stretching for a few miles either side of the city. When a storm passes by, you can see the flashes and forks of its lightning as is creeps to the east. For a country with an average 300 days of sunshine per year, I don’t think we’ve had more than three days in the past 35.



Because of all the rain, the landscape is completely, utterly transformed. Normally, Namibia is a landscape of earth tones: white rocks, light brown sand, the occasional scraggly, withering tree. But this year, because of the good rains, the palette has changed completely. It's green everywhere. Fields that were just dry sand changed in a week to shallow pools with grass growing in them, and they look almost like rice paddies from southeast Asia.

The oshanas¸ large, shallow depressions in the terrain, have completely filled with water. Although the water is rarely more than waist-deep, the oshanas look like lakes, stretching sometimes a mile or two in length and nearly a mile wide. Getting anywhere can be a challenge. It’s common now to see women with their dresses bunched around their thighs, walking through what looks like a lake. Men will roll up their pant legs or just wear shorts to work. I spoke to one principal who lives in Outapi but works at a school perhaps 7 miles from here. He and his teachers were leaving for work at 6am, because walking there through the oshanas would take over two hours.

The roads in some places have become impassable. The nearest WorldTeach volunteer, Jocelyn, is at a school 10k down a gravel road. The road has washed out in at least four places, when oshanas on either side of the road linked up. Driving to town after work one day, their pickup struck stalled out in one of these sections. The water was so high that the bed of the pickup flooded, and everyone had to get out and push. Now, most of the teachers have just moved into the village because they can’t go back and forth. For a few days, even the main tar road between Outapi and Ruacana flooded!




I’ve also heard about one group of teachers who were walking back from school one afternoon through an oshana. One of them saw something floating on the water. Thinking it might be a dead cow, he wandered over to investigate. Just a moment later he shrieked, and tore off at full speed, running through the water. The others followed him, terrified, until they reached dry land. What they thought was a dead cow turned out to be a live crocodile!

Now, I think that story might be more of a ‘rural legend’ than a true story. However, I’ve asked several colleagues about it, and while none of them could confirm if this story was true or not, they all acknowledged that it could be. They say that when the rains are heavy enough in Angola, just about 15k north of us, then the Kunene river can flood its banks and the crocodiles escape into the oshana system. The oshanas, when full, actually flow like slow rivers. The oshanas link together and eventually flow into the Etosha pan if there is enough rain. This year, from what I’ve heard, there’s enough rain. I’ll be checking it out this weekend, but keeping a careful eye out for crocs!