Pisca's Take Two - A Success!!!

This morning after breakfast, we cleaned up the kitchen and our cabins and the group of us that live in the North headed out for one last game drive before heading home. Those in Rundu, Caprivi, Swapkopmund, Omaruru and other points south left the park through the Tsumeb gate and headed home. The highlight of this morning’s drive is that we saw a rhino. Our timing could not have been more perfect. When we arrived at the watering hole, the rhino was already on his way over to the water the drink. He drank for several minutes and then headed back into the bush. We also saw an ostrich walking along the side of the road and I was able to take a fairly decent photo before we moved on. Sadly, we did not see any more elephants, but we did see plenty of evidence of their existence – gigantic dung (and lots of it), huge tracks in dried riverbeds and broken tree branches.

Since Aoife was in Ongwediva for the weekend, we had planned to meet for me to get a ride home with her. It turned out that Soini, who was also in Ongwediva for the weekend, decided to stay until the morning to head back to Edundja to spend more time with her children. And, coincidentally, Aoife was able to connect with an old friend of hers from when she volunteered in Namibia. Tomane is Portuguese, lives in Oshakati and does lots of business in Angola. He is one of the owners of Pisca’s and another hotel in Oshakati called Roche’s. He owns the Shell gas station in Ondangwa and has recently gotten involved in road construction in Angola. Aoife was planning to catch up with him over the weekend in Oshakati, but found out that he will be in Oshikango until Tuesday. So, since we were headed that direction, we decided to give Pisca’s another try, knowing that we would be meeting the owner.

When we arrived, the parking lot at Pisca’s was crowded. We headed through the restaurant and bar into the patio area and found Tomane sitting with a table of about 6 other people. He introduced us to everyone and it was a mix of both Namibians and Portuguese Angolans. We met Paula, Tomane’s wife, a handful of Paula’s relatives, a close friend named Connie, and some businessmen. Connie is a white Namibia, but could pass for either Portuguese or Middle Eastern. Beautiful face. She is from Walvis Bay and has been in business in Oshikango for almost 10 years. She was wholesaling but is now focused on exporting goods to Angola. She is in her mid-thirties, divorced with a 7 year-old daughter that lives in Windhoek with her mother and she has a home in Oshakati, an apartment in Klein Windhoek and a rental flat in Oshikango. For the rest of the afternoon, people were both joining and leaving the table, but it was obvious that almost everyone that came by was a player in the Oshikango business world.

As it turns out, one of Paula’s relatives, I think his name is Cupito (whose name translates to mean “small glass”) is the man that helped two of the other summer volunteers that were bent on going to Angola (they even skipped a day of orientation to go to the British and American embassies to get proper visas to enter) get in. Apparently, despite their visas, they still needed to pay some people off and have an Angolan sign some of the paperwork for them. We also met Shivute, who is the police commissioner for the area. He insisted that I take down his phone number in case I get into any trouble while in Namibia. Each person that joined the table and was introduced to us wanted to know where we were from Each time Aoife said Ireland and I said America. Immediately, the conversation would turn to American politics. We joked that I should start saying I am from Ireland.

We met several Angolan businessmen, both African and Portuguese. One of the African businessmen was a man named Claudino, who goes by Dino. Once we wore out the topic of American politics, he turned to Aoife and told us a story about how Ireland became under British rule – Two Englishmen were running towards big lake in Ireland. They had bet that the first one to touch his hand to the water would win control over the island. As they neared the end of the race, the one that was losing cut off his hand and threw it into the lake, winning control of Ireland. It was a good story, but Aoife was not familiar with it. Before Dino left, he offered to take Aoife and I into Angola, as did several others, and each insisted that it perfectly fine to go in with an Angolan. He also asked for my number, and as it turns out, he sent me a text on Monday.

Not too long after we arrived, Aoife and I each ordered prawns, which were AMAZING. But later Tomane insisted that we stay for dinner, as he was cooking for us. Although we were not hungry, we ate this tasty cod dish of cod, onion and potatoes cooked in olive oil with hard boiled eggs and olives on top. After dinner, we had to get back to the village, as it was already dark and Tomane insisted that we come back on Monday and offered that Connie would cook for us and said that we should stay overnight at Pisca’s.

Over the weekend, Aoife had gone to the funeral of a Deputy Minister that had died earlier in the week (she went because he was a distant relative of the Hangala’s). She knew that Leyaki Hangala, the owner of her homestead and current Managing Director of Cell One was staying the night in Edundja and wanted me to meet him. We went in chatted briefly before continuing on to drop me off at my homestead. But, when we went in to chat, we saw that there was satellite tv and world news channels. Leyaki filled Aoife in on what his children were up to and we chatted a little about New York. He also mentioned that he had seen Erikki at church that morning, so I assumed correctly that Nghimtina was at homestead.