A Tale of Terrible Travel

Just so you don’t start to think that traveling around Namibia is all rosy, I am about to tell you a tale of terrible travel.

It’s necessary to preface this by telling you that taxi and combi drivers are a breed of their own. It would be a horrid idea to generalize their personalities to all Namibians. Please keep that in mind.

On our last day of holiday, the three of us needed to get back to the North. The most common way to do that, especially for local Namibians, is to take a combi (a Namibian mini-bus, as I explained in an earlier post). When the receptionist at our hostel told us where the departure point is in Windhoek, she skeptically added, “but you really shouldn’t take one.” I think she worried that we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, as white Americans. I’ve taken several combis before, but what I didn’t know was how crazy this experience would become.

We arrived by taxi and our driver found us a combi that only needed three more passengers – perfect! Combis do not depart until they are full, which can sometimes take several hours, so it’s best to be the last passengers to arrive. However, as soon as we loaded our bags into the trailer, we were told, “oops! Just kidding, we don’t have room for you.” Ugh.

But no worries! Another combi whipped around the corner in no time to snatch us up. The driver insisted he was leaving “now now now!” and upon inspecting the passengers, it seemed as if he was nearly full.

What we didn’t know was that four of the passengers were squatters. This is an annoying practice among taxi and combi drivers: paying regular people a small amount of cash to sit in their vehicle and make it look fuller so as to attract more paying passengers. Unfortunately, the paying customers think they’re loading in a vehicle that will leave “now now now!” and instead they don’t leave until “now.”

Our combi had been sitting kitty corner from the actual departure point, perhaps to attract customers before they reached the service station. However, after over an hour of sitting and waiting, the driver decided to take off and drive across the street. We whipped up door-to-door with another combi and found three German volunteers sitting in its threshold. Apparently their combi fooled them and didn’t actually have room for all three of them, so we encouraged them to join us since we didn’t need many more passengers. They started to load their bags into our combi and the fiasco began.

Combi drivers typically have 5-10 assistants with them to help load bags, attract customers, and collect money. These assistants are ruthless. As soon as the Germans started to switch to our combi, the assistants came out of the woodwork and started grabbing at their bags, pushing and pulling them, and yelling. We had stolen their customers and they weren’t happy one bit. What we learned is that they’ll go to any length to secure customers for their vehicles.

What was only typical yelling and minor physicality quickly escalated into scores of expletives, physical harassment, and bags flying all over the place. At one point, we turned around to see OUR bags quickly disappearing from the trailer of the combi. Bret leapt out to get our bags back as more and more assistants were congregating to join the fight, in hope of making us paying customers their own. Soon, our driver decided the best course of action was to drive away quickly, which seemed insane at the time but was probably the best option.

As we drove off to make erratic circles and figure eights around the parking lot, Bret jumped on the trailer to hold down our belongings. He was soon joined by three or four other large men who he had to fight off as the combi was moving. Eventually, we returned to our “turf” across the street and the other assistants eventually ceased and desisted.

However, shortly after we left we received an SMS from another WT volunteer who had apparently been in the other combi. The simple fist- and word- fights had escalated into a ROCK fight! Of all things!

Eventually, we obtained enough customers and departed for the North, but not until after seeing several other women physically harassed as they arrived at the departure point, and pulled off onto the median of the highway no less than one minute after leaving and were told to all debark and go to the combi behind us because ours needed to be serviced. Couldn’t have told us earlier, nee?

And thus ends our Saturday Saga. Combis are not something I will miss about Namibia. No siree.