Story and Photos by Alison Moran
Despite its bucketing heat, the sun was beginning to set.I was afraid of what the nighttime might bring as cicadas buzzed a foreign tune, and motorists and pedestrians were far and few between. The town was eerily vacant and I had no idea what to do with myself.
I walked aimlessly down the main drag, as my stomach made spastic noises similar to a dial-up modem. The streets darkened and I was in desperate pursuit of a salvation of sorts.
Outside a restaurant with a spectacular view of the lagoon and the setting sun, I met up with a group of friends and watched flamingos eat crab. Once inside, I watched people devour flame-broiled birds. At a closer look, I watched alcohol consume people. I had stumbled upon the “Serengeti” of dining and its circle of life.
A smart-looking South African man with a mop of James Dean hair introduced himself  (Jeff), handed me a medicinal-colored green drink (spirit cane and cream soda) and asked me to dance (no thanks). The rejection, however, didn’t stop him from sharing his history. It was hard to swallow the cocktail after hearing Jeff’s “dodgy” tales of racial
tension, the ritualized humiliation of blacks by whites, and his resentment and anger towards post-apartheid South Africa.
Waking Up Wondering
The next morning I awoke with more questions. After an expensive phone call, which nearly robbed me of my remaining South African rand, Jeff agreed to escort me and my girlfriends to Namibia’s capital, Swakopmund, where he took us directly to a bar and bought us a lion’s share of Savannah Dry Cider for breakfast.
I recognized the dangers of getting into a stranger’s car in a foreign country, but I felt blissfully ignorant, intoxicated by wanderlust. It’s funny how humans can be so trusting of complete strangers.
On the car ride there, Jeff continued his life story: he is in Namibia as a dredger, excavating rocky material from the shallow seabed. He comes from an Anglo family of farmers who live outside Durban, the South African city where white people are the minority and Zulu is the chief language. I asked him to say something in Zulu, and he complied: Akulanga lashona lingendaba. No sun sets without its histories.
I noticed that Jeff’s calloused and rough bare feet somewhat resembled his character and, for that matter, much of Namibia.
Throughout his talk, I took notes, an action Jeff goaded me for.
“What are you like some foreign correspondent?” he asked as we pulled up to the beachfront-shack-turned-bar.
I changed the subject: “Let’s go do something,”
“Like what?” Jeff replied. “Visit a reptile farm? Build a sand castle? There’s nothing to do in Namibia.” He had a point, and I had no comeback.
“So white and black people marry in the states?” he asked later that day. “People don’t do that here.”
I watched my friends’ jaws drop.
“That’s completely devastating,” I said. “Especially, in this day and age where…”
He interrupts: “You just don’t know what it’s like here! You just don’t understand!”
I may never.
I’m starting to regret the company I keep, my new racist friend, I wrote down. It’s hard to read my handwriting at this point. My thoughts, scribbled and frantic, resembled chicken scratch or indecipherable hieroglyphics. I realized, however, that with every word I wrote, an opportunity to experience something new was lost. That is the travel writers Catch-22. So I put down the pen.
Digging for Diamonds
Sitting at the restaurant for hours, comparing lifestyles, drinking rounds, getting wasted, and arguing about right and wrong, did invariably feel like a waste. Odd stuff, alcohol. I turned my back on the ocean to drink in the view of the desert because it reminded me of nothing and that was refreshing enough.
It was then that Jeff, now drunk, confided in me something I wasn’t expecting:
“The real reason … the real reason I’m in Namibia,” his breath smelt like rum and his devil-may-care grin was giving me the creeps. “I’m here because I’m looking for diamonds.”
A diamond might symbolize love, happiness and – those for those the size of ring pops – a girl’s best friend. But to many Africans, the precious stone represents a different, more agonizing story.
Though Namibia is currently conflict-free, rebel armies in underdeveloped African nations have for generations forced people into slave-like conditions to mine diamonds to financially support their illicit and violent movements. As late as 1998, an estimated 20 percent of all diamonds on the international market were reportedly tainted with blood and conflict.
Jeff informs me that if he and his friends “strike gold” they plan to hop borders and sell diamonds on the black market, merely to avoid the “majah, majah paperwork” associated with the Kimberley Process, the multi-governmental procedure established to ensure trade in diamonds does not fund brutality.
“Turns out dredging is a front,” Jeff said.
“But isn’t that undermining the system? Isn’t that criminal?” I thought to myself, too afraid of how he might respond if I asked outloud.
Out to Sea, Again
By then it was dusk and I wondered how time had slipped through my fingers. I collected the empty bottles of cider and staggered my way toward the ocean. I tossed them to the waves, but they kept washing up to shore. I had messages I wanted to send to people.
I thought of home and the people I missed. Some of the people going to work everyday, some of them just killing time, some of them dead, and some of them comfortably tucked away in far away places.
Yes, I had several messages but no pen. I had lost it in the midst of heated debate. I tried to explain that losing my pen was like losing a diamond, both vehicles of escape, both priceless, but Jeff and his friends didn’t understand. Their eyes were too glazed over with money signs, their bellies too full of beer to help me search.
I got on all fours, dredging the sand for my buried treasure
“You American girls are easier than clubbing baby seals,” Jeff suggestively winked.
I loathed this innuendo, and I loathed him. How dare he liquor me up; how dare he tell me that racism is “just a fact of life.”
To be born white and male, I thought to myself, is like winning the lottery of life.
The sky turned pitch black but Venus was so bright, “like a diamond in the sky.” I put on my sunglasses. I shared the shore with the exotic and tall seabirds, methodically dipping their beaks in the ground as if slapping their heads in remorse. The birds and I: eternal foreigners.
“What are you like some American spy?” Jeff asked me.
In many a hero’s tale, the traveler goes inside the belly of the beast, fights adversity and prevails a winner. I let Jeff and his Namibia eat me alive, and under the influence, I put up a very weak fight. Yet inside the guts of the country, in those deep, dark moments, I was able to look beyond the superficial and into the substance of the world. Here is a world many do not know, or choose not to.
I was vomited out of Namibia three days later, safely back on the ship, disoriented, violated, and a little bit wiser.

Read the first part of Alison’s story and learn about another of her Semester at Sea adventures.