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Meanwhile, in the coastal town of Swakopmund, Namibi-ans of European extraction are celebrating carnival: linking arms and swaying side to side, singing and enjoying life in their own traditional way. Then, at the height of the celebrations, the band starts playing the "Südwesterlied," the old anthem of South West Africa. Everyone in the hall rises to their feet and sings from the bottom of their heart: "And if you were to ask us/What it is we like here best/ We could only tell you/We love the South West." Whatever divisions may exist between the white Namibi-ans in a festival hall in Swakopmund and the black women under the vast, starry skies of the Damara region, they are united in one thing: their love for the country they share. And united in believing it's a love that calls for seriousness and dignity. That may come as some surprise to an outsider, since the object of their affection is an artificially created entity. The borders of Namibia were drawn up according to the spheres of influence of the European colonial powers at the end of the 19th century. The German Reich, a late starter in the race for overseas possessions, took the leavings of the other European nations. Borders drawn in that way take no account of ethnic affiliations. That is why reconciliation -bringing together the ten or so ethnic groups and appeasing all the conflicting forces - was one of the priorities of the Namibian government. It was also necessary because the birth of the Namibian nation was long and painful, involving tough diplomatic wrangles, civil war and the end of the Cold War. It was not until March 1990 that the democratically constituted nation state of Namibia was born, led by President Sam Nujoma, who was re-elected in 1995. But the process leading to nationhood is hardly enough to explain the Namibians' love for their country. And its barren terrain would seem unlikely to arouse patriotic feelings. Fifteen percent is made up of desert, and a lot of the rest is dry steppe. Only the north receives fairly regular rainfall, making farming possible. Our land rover jolts over bumpy farm tracks. The meager grass crop has withered to hay on the stem, turning the surrounding plains a pale yellow, with occasional patches of ochre where the barren, stony soil shows through. In the distance, mountains rise up, their brown and red rocks ablaze in the late afternoon sun. A single quiver tree, a species native to Namibia, raises yellow, candle-shaped flowers into the deep blue sky. We get out hesitantly and tread carefully. Among the sand and rocks, delicate flowers are managing to survive: fragile blue bell-shaped blossoms, bright yellow daisies, the white tufts of Namibian edelweiss. Light, color, space, the vitality of a seemingly hostile environment, the overwhelming variety of what appears to be a wasteland - all this creates a unique magic. The fascination is there -even without the spectacular scenic highlights. They're there nonetheless. For 180 kilometers, the road runs through deserted rocky plains south of the provincial capital Keetmanshoop. Fences divide the inhospitable wasteland into lots, electrical cables stretch from mast to mast in the seeming emptiness, while the railway tracks, deserted stations and solitary farms admit at least the possibility that people might live here. And then, the ground drops away before our very eyes. The Fish River has dug itself a bed more than 500 meters deep -the second-largest canyon in the world. A vast landscape unfolds. Isolated pools blink sleepily at the bottom of the gorge, vague reminders of the mighty torrents of the past. And yet the water and the forces of erosion have compelled geology to give up its secrets. The oldest layers at the foot of the steep walls are believed to be about 2.5 billion years old. By comparison, the gnarled camel thorn trees in the heart of the desert, in Sossusvlei, have "only" been around for 500 years. They were able to survive thanks to the Tsauchab River, a typical Namibian water course with a perennially dry, stony bed. In the middle of the desert, the Tsauchab "flows" into a vlei, a basin with no outlet. The soil is encrusted and scabby, littered with white salt crystals - evidence that in some distant past, there was water here. But today, it's only found at great depths, where the roots of the camel thorn trees manage to tap it. The other miracle of Sossusvlei is the dune landscape: mountains of finest sand, shimmering in myriad shades of red from pale pink to rust. The Namib is said to be the oldest desert in the world, and its dunes the highest. But above all, it is beauty at its purest: the largest possible accumulation of very simple shapes combining incomparable elegance with intense brilliance. "Place of dry water" is one possible translation of "Etosha," the name given to a 6,000-square-kilometer basin devoid of vegetation in the north and the national park that surrounds it. In primeval times, the area was covered by a lake, until the Kun-ene shifted its bed. It left a salt desert shimmering in the heat, creating the illusion of distant bodies of water projected along the line of the horizon. Sometimes, a herd of impala, all in a line like migratory birds, trot through the emptiness with a dreamlike slowness. Initially, visitors to Etosha are gripped by the thrill of the chase. They want to see lions, cheetahs, a rhino if at all possible. The park is vast, one of the largest on the African continent, and with a little luck, they can get a snap of one of these animals. But within a few days, luck comes to mean something else: discovering a small dik-dik antelope in the undergrowth, or a mighty kudu hidden among the bushes; or being able to watch great herds of elephants, giraffes, zebras and gnus, often gathered in perfect harmony around a water hole. The fascination of these African animals! The prehistoric artists who painted and scratched their lifelike images on rocks across the country valued them primarily as game animals. The quarry was magically "bound" in images which you can't help but admire because of their age alone. Drawings discovered in a cave in the Huns mountains in southern Namibia are 28,000 years old and are among the oldest in the world. Pre-colonial Namibia remains something of a mystery. The colonial heritage, on the other hand, stands out clearly. Walking through the streets of Lüderitz, Swakopmund or Windhoek, it's sometimes hard to believe your eyes. There are streets named for Bismarck, Lessing or even Kaiser Wilhelm, an old pub advertising a traditional skittle alley, or a gym sponsored by the German men's gymnastics club. The city architecture is in a cosy German style, with post-1870s ornamentation and Art Nouveau decor. In the window of what used to be a bakery in Lüderitz, tucked away behind crochet curtains, there's a kitschy arrangement of garden gnomes that's as German as you can get, and at an inn a few streets away they serve the best red cabbage you've ever had. Yet it's about 80 years since the end of German colonial rule. One explanation for the lingering German presence is stubborn self-assertion. It's the only thing that makes survival in this desert possible. What has been strenuously fought for is preserved -and loved - all the more tenaciously. Use Schatz also professes unconditional love for her country. She's the custodian of the local museum in the small town of Tsumeb, and beneath the portraits of Kaiser Wilhelm, Bismarck, Hindenburg and Frederick the Great, she tells of the way of life and the myths of the local San bushmen. She empathizes with them, seeing no contradiction. "It's all part of Namibia. We are all these things." The pithead tower only a few hundred meters away from the museum in Tsumeb is symbolic of Namibia's past and present. Tsumeb is the oldest mining town in the country, which is rich in mineral resources. Large reserves of copper have been found here, as well as lead, zinc, cadmium, silver, germanium and arsenic. With the drop in prices on the world market, however, the mining operation is starting to look unprofitable. People are worried that the wheels in the pithead tower will stop turning some day in the not-too-distant future, leaving thousands of black mine workers to join the huge army of the unemployed. The country has vast resources (of uranium and diamonds, among other things), but the mines aren't owned by Namibia, and the fall in demand on the world market has reduced their value. Foreign investors are needed to establish industrial production, but they've been surprisingly slow to respond, given the stability of this new country and the promise of profits. These days, you can't make much headway by exploiting the fishing industry, and farming has always had its back to the wall in Namibia. All that's left is tourism, and the owners of tourist ranches aren't the only ones making a living from it. But even there, the potential for expansion is limited if the country's delicate ecological balance is not to be put at risk.
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