News

Gondwana promotes healthy lifestyles among its staff and as part of that supports the work of the Cancer Association of Namibia (CAN). A professional CAN team will tour the country this year and visit our lodges to provide health education and valuable advice on healthy lifestyles. It will also offer cancer screening including pap smear, breast examination and prostate cancer examinations at the lodges as well as nearby villages and settlements. The CAN team will be assisted by local volunteers.

One of the greatest wonders and geological treasures in the world is the Namib Desert, which stretches for 2000km from the Olifants River in South Africa to the Carunjamba River in Angola through the entire western flank of Namibia. It is no wonder that the country is named after such a vast and ancient desert. Very few people know, however, that the person who was instrumental in coining the name ‘Namibia’ is still alive. Even less know that he had never visited the iconic desert, until recently at the age of 83.

Some YouTube channels will run hot later this month when well-known German comedian and web video producer Simon Desue is visiting Namibia at the invitation of EES (Eric Sell). Accompanied by a camera team they will travel around Namibia from 20 to 28 March and afford people all over the world an opportunity to see Namibia’s grand landscapes, its flora, fauna, its cultures and peoples through the artist duo’s eyes.

Those were the days when people stood in a one-metre-square steel cabin during winter, coin ready in one hand, telephone receiver in the other, waiting for the lady at the telephone exchange to say when to drop the tickey coin into the slot. Only then would the call go through. For generations of people in South Africa and Namibia, especially school children, students and young men doing their military service, the phone booth, also called Tickey Box, was the only connection to home, the farm or their sweethearts.

Gondwana boasts a new coordinator for matters regarding nature conservation. Quintin Hartung started on 1 March – and he is already packing his bags! For the unique opportunity, that is, to attend the 4th World Congress on UNESCO Biosphere Reserves from 14 to 17 March in Lima, Peru. Windhoek-born Quintin Hartung is 27 years old and deeply committed to environmental protection. 

They joined in many shapes and places: Spiderman on a mission to make it rain in Windhoek, young women on the chilly North Sea coast in the Netherlands, farmers of the Maltahöhe Resettlement Community in front of their farmstead, or half of Swakopmund at the Mole beach... 31 rain dances were recorded for the #RainDanceNamibia Competition arranged by the Gondwana Collection, Bank Windhoek and EES. The dances can be viewed here. It has already registered more than 275,000 views. A phenomenal success!

“I was on my way from Ovamboland by plane that day. Flying high over the cloud cover I noticed a massive tower of clouds to the southwest, which rose to a tremendous height above the ceiling. The pilot, experienced in the country’s weather conditions, said that something extraordinary was about to happen with the weather – and how right he was.” The thunderstorm which Hans Stengel and his pilot saw as a mass of clouds made history as the Uhlenhorst floods. The downpour occurred during the night of 24 February 1960. 

The former oxwagon route from Windhoek to Seeis passes a rock with “Schwarze Klippe 14.2.04” (Black Rock) inscribed on it. On noticing this rock one cannot help but wonder what happened there. It is little known that at the beginning of the Herero uprising in 1904 German soldiers accidentally shot at their comrades in a skirmish close to this rock.  

Two passionate mountain bikers from opposite sides of the globe, separated by 10 000km, team up for the legendary Absa Cape Epic. Piet Swiegers, the 48-year-old Namibian Veteran cross-country mountain-bike champion from Aus, in Namibia’s arid south-western corner, will join 55-year-old Swedish Masters mountain-bike champion, Atle Hansen, from Hölö, Sweden, to cycle the Cape Epic on the 13-20 March 2016. And, if past achievement is anything to go by, the team will provide stiff competition to other riders in their category.