LETTER FROM NAMIBIA:
Christmas craze with us again
KIANGIOSEKAZI WA NYOKA, WINDHOEK
Daily News; Tuesday,December 19, 2006 @00:03
IT is a festive season again stretching from mid-December
to mid-January in the Land of the Brave. Gwen Lister, the Managing Editor of a local popular daily here, The Namibian, says it is a time of madness.
She is right. Very right! Everything that matters in civilian life has ground to a halt. We have frantically made sure we have enough stock of everything to carry us through. It is a long period.
That is our summer holiday; it is our Christmas time. We celebrate differently from you guys in East Africa. I wish Okot P'Bitek, that Ugandan author of Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, had been alive to see all this.
P'Bitek said the European Christmas is in winter --everything is covered with snow. But African Christmas is in summer, yet we buy Christmas trees decorate them with glittering lights with cotton wool to look like European Christmas snowing.
He would have seen how we embody the western values and customs, extolling the virtues of European society -- everything in the name of Christmas!
The Windhoek city is right now a ghost city. Its beauty and the cleanliness recently caught the eye of Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon, who unofficially flagged off the festive season. He wished Windhoek residents a merry Chirstmas.
Unfortunately he did so when all the people had already deserted the city and gone to a coastal town, Swakompund.
Reservation for bungalows in Swakopmund is normally done one year before the festive season.
There is no way you can get accommodation in the hotels now.
Revelers are coming from as far as South Africa, Botswana and Lesotho. It is a pilgrimage of sorts.
More than two thousand people relaxing on a beach stretching over 40 kilometres from Swakompund to Walvis Bay, the so-called skeleton beach.
People are playing with the sand dunes, riding on quad bikes and hosting numerous cocktail parties. A few months back the child of Hollywood glamour couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was born here. To revelers it is a place to visit, if possible annually!
Some distance from Swakopmund, a fast growing township is taking shape. It is called Hantisbay. It is our Namibian Hollywood. Retired politicians and well to do people have built castles here. It is here they spend their Christmas holidays.
The ordinary people, mostly the Ovambos, do not want to remain behind. They are heading to the north; to the four 'O' regions -- Oshana, Ohagwena, Oshikoto and Omaheke regions. Ovambos make two thirds of Namibia's population of 1.7 millions.
Traffic police have promised to deploy road blocks punctuating all the 900-plus- kilometer stretch from here to the north of the country. Good, but this week on the same stretch, between Grootfontein and Rundu, an accident killed 17 people. It occurred at the same spot where another gruesome accident claimed 28 lives last year.
And, coincidently, as the festive season began the government announced the reduced fuel prices. Revelers called it an early Christmas present. Money saved on fuel will go to beer because pub owners capitalise on the festive season and make record profits.
Bar and shebeen owners have been running around struggling to get stocks since the first week of December.
Namibia Breweries is set to produce more beer - particularly its premium Windhoek Lager - despite a record production of 1.5 million hectoliters announced recently.
It is said Namibian expatriates in South Africa, Tanzania, United Kingdom have popularised Namibia Breweries brands such as Windhoek Lager and Windhoek Light and exports have increased to those countries.
I was in Arusha, Moshi and Dar es Salaam recently as a Namibian expatriate. I saw advertisements of the brands in all three cities.
The Blood Transfusion Services of Namibia (BTS) has appealed to its regular donors to give blood before going on holidays. Do you have a kind of BTS in Bongo?
Those who have gone on holiday will be back in their offices mid-January 2007 -- those who will have survived!
For some of us we are soldiering on.
Have a nice Otjesemothing.
kiangiosekazi@yahoo.com
nyoka2006@hotmail.com
