It’s a Namibian Thing IV

April 5th, 2007 | Namibia

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Here is a picture of how Oranjemund was progressing from wooden crate houses to bricks and mortar. The standardisation of the house layout made for quick and ultra economic construction.

What you are looking at are the “Guest Houses” where visitors on mine business could stay over. I guess Radisson or the Marriot chains would not consider this as opposition would they?! I used to walk past these houses in later years. They looked nothing like this. They were houses, not these military accommodations!

Little by little the town grew. The brick houses replaced the wooden shacks and so the town took the look of a proper town still in development. Work at the mines was picking up too. The diamond yields were impressive. Quality product was being delivered to the diamond houses in Antwerp and New York.

Prosperity was looming and with it the founding of social amenities was also about to boom. One such sign of the growing affluence was the erection of the Rec Club. Aah yes, the Annual Diamond Ball became the must be seen at event of the year. Mum looked radient, the belle of the ball and dad looked splendidly striking in his tux and bow tie. Naturally I was too young to go. Naturally, mum and dad went. Naturally they thought I’d be safe and sound asleep at home.

Wrong! I was on the roof of the Rec Club looking down at the waltzing couples and howling and hooting with laughter whenever my mum and dad took to the floor to waltz or foxtrot around. They looked so splendid the two of them and I always voted them the best dancers at each of the gala events I snuck out of home to go climb up a tall building so that I could peer down at my parents doing their thing. Dad seemed to be able to make it look like mum was gliding on air as they twirled and spun and cha-cha’d the night away. I was spellbound.

Had the moms and dads looked up, they’d have seen many tiny smiling faces peering down at them from the skylight windows! There would have been hell to pay. But as fortune would have it, we kids were never rumbled. Only in the 80’s did I tell my dad about my nights on the roof each year of the Annual Diamond Ball. He laughed his head off, smacking his thigh in glee at his then tiny but daring son. I think he felt pride and was happy that I actually spent one night each year on a roof transfixed by the razzmatazz of the ball, watching him and mum enjoy themselves. I did. It’s a Namibian thing.