Fabulously flotsam

The man, when he appears, looks as derelict as the building he emerges from: a farmstead that’s just holding firm against an ocean of advancing orange dune sand pressing in on every side from a rim of distant mountains.

This might explain why he seems completely unmoved by the person standing before him.

A stout, middle-aged woman, red-faced from stress or exertion or both. Barefoot. In a frock, the kind you’d wear to the beach, not on a desert expedition. Hair, like it’s had a few too many volts from an electrical socket. No car. No handbag.

Did I say barefoot?

I’m not even one week into a multi-year mobile journalism project, where I’m travelling around the country in search of stories that show how the climate crisis is unfolding on our doorstep, in our lifetime.

Not one week in, and I’m already in a pickle.

I point to a speck of white in the distance. I want to explain that my little plumber’s van is belly-down on the sand and I need help. A tow, a telephone, anything?

He’s still unmoved. But he does tell me something about how he washed up here: having lived in ‘Die Kaap’, somewhere near Cape Town, and how someone screwed him over in his retirement and now he’s stuck out here as a caretaker or something on a relative’s farm and…

I’d come to this part of the desert in north-west South Africa because I’d heard that parts of it are turning to dust bowl: gravelly, hard-packed desert is turning into mobile sand dune. There’s one particular dune that’s becoming something of a celebrity amongst desert ecologists.

I had the NASA satellite images, the eyewitness accounts, the expert analysis, piles of papers and books. Now I needed to see for myself. I needed to meet this dune in person.

I don’t realise, as I stand at this man’s back door, that the dune has already found me.

Barefoot, but far from a kitchen

No one sets out to get into trouble. It’s usually a cascade of small events that take you from ‘fine’ to ‘not at all fine’ before you’ve had a chance to think things through.

Which is how I find myself standing here, expecting help, and hopelessly ill-equipped for a desert outing.

I’d left the travellers accommodation of the previous night, and was taking an early morning drive along a farm’s back road, paying more attention to filming the landscape than to the landscape itself.

This was a short cut to a nearby town, I was told, and I needed to do a reccie. The view was terrific.

Travel days need comfortable frocks and flip flops, I worked that out at the get-go. So when I find myself on my hands and knees, scooping sand out from behind the front tyres of the van, which is now resting on its belly and clicking as the engine cools, I’m not thinking about sensible shoes. The plan is to slip the mats from the wheel wells behind the tyres, so I can reverse out over them and rocket to freedom, tail-pipe first.

What was that about not setting out to get into trouble?

As I inspect the shredded mats, which, it turns out, can’t withstand the punishment of the tyres trying to get purchase, I see a cloud of dust in the middle-distance. It’s moving with the kind of speed that says it is, in fact, a car of sorts. Which means a road. And rescue.

I leave the starting blocks with the intention of Hussein Bolt, if not his form. Waving, yelling, soaring over the sand like a gold medal depends on it.

By the time the dust settles, and with it any hope that the driver has seen me, I realise I’m about half way between the van and a cluster of buildings I’d seen earlier.

I set a new course, putting still more distance between myself of the van, hoping for signs of life. It’s a farmstead for sure, but the kind that looks like one of those abandoned mining towns on the Namibian coast, disappearing under a determined tide of sand. But the smell of wood smoke says that someone does, in fact, still live here.

I holler. I call. I shout. That’s when the man appears. Grey bearded, hide cured to parchment. An Afrikaans accent salting his gravelly English.

By the time it’s clear that he’s not going to be much help — no cell; no landline; no-one answering his two-way; mostly, no will to trouble shoot — I realise I’m going to have to fix this myself.

I plod back to the car — less Olympian sprinter now, more determined castaway — and gear up for the rescue mission: umbrella, running shoes, bullet-proof sunblock, bottle of water… and the make-up mirror from my toiletry bag.

I’m not too far from the farmhouse where I’d hired a rustic chalet the previous night. If I hoof it back in that direction, I reckon I can get there in about 90 minutes, give or take.

Walk-trot, walk-trot, walk-trot, walk-trot.

The sun’s getting higher — it’s about 9am now, maybe 10, I’m not paying attention — but the heat’s still manageable.

Walk-trot, walk-trot.

It’s a bit further than I remember.

Walk-trot, walk-walk-trot, walk-walk.

Don’t panic.

Walk-walk-trot.

The speck of a house comes into view, not quite shimmering through a mirage, but definitely and dramatically there.

Walk-trot, walk-trot, flash-flash-flash with the mirror. Walk-trot, walk-trot, flash-flash-flash.

Please let the farmer see me. Please let him see me. Please let him see me.

Walk-trot, walk-trot, flash-flash-flash.

There’s movement. The farm truck rolls towards the gate. If it turns left, he hasn’t seen me and he’s heading to town. If he turns right, I’m saved.

Turn right, turn right, turn right, please turn right.

YES! He turns right!

I’d come here in search of a dune. I’d come here with the satellite images, the eyewitness accounts, the expert analysis, all the academic papers.

What I didn’t know I needed was the folklore about how this dune came to be.

Before I can find the dune, the dune finds me. And in getting rescued from it I meet the people who are custodians of the local lore. Once the farmer and his entourage have pulled the van clear, we end up having a brandy-soaked evening with the locals. I get all the gossip, going back generations.

I also hear the fable of the farmer, who, in years gone by, had taken out his wrath on his animals. A donkey, in particular, got the worst of it. One day, after yet another beating, the donkey pulled away from his abuser and plodded off down the dirt track. Then, he paused, and looked back at the farmer.

A supernatural voice was heard from that donkey.

‘Why do you beat me so? From this day on, this land will forever be cursed.’

It was then that the verdant grassy plain which had fed so many farmers’ herds for generations — called, aptly in Afrikaans, ‘die grasvlakte’ — it’s then that the plain began turning to sand.

Today the dune is swallowing up the homestead where this man now lives. A man who can’t rescue himself from his own fate, let alone me.