April 16, 2018
Arriving in Swakopmund
We flew from Sossusvlei to Swakopmund, to keep from having to drive for six hours and to get the view of the dunes and the coastline from up above (see the Namibia Chapter 1. Sossusvlei post). As we approached the city, we could see Walvis Bay with its fishing boats and then suddenly the desert began being filled with homes. It was sort of amusing to see houses with sand in their yards. No lawns. Just sand. City or not, this is still the desert. But there were straight paved streets, a park or two, and as we got closer to the airport, what looked like a township (what we in America call a shanty town or a slum). This was Mondesa, a suburb of Swakopmund that was once a township for the Black people of Swakopmund and is still the poorest part of town with a high rate of unemployment. And you could tell all that from just looking at the houses, made of tin if they were lucky.