If you have a PayPal account, please send your donation directly to linhdinh99@yahoo.com, to save me the fees. Thanks a lot!

For my articles, please go to SubStack.

Thursday, February 24, 2022










Woman selling kapana in Democratic Resettlement Community on 2-23-22--Swakopmund copy






Democratic Resettlement Community. She's selling grilled meat, or kapana, as it's called here. In South Africa, it's braai. Talking to some folks yesterday, I astounded them by saying I had eaten cat and, even more astonishingly, snake! They told me that dog is eaten in Namibia, but mostly in the north. The Hereros and Damaras find it disgusting.

In 2007, Conde Nast Traveler asked a bunch of writers to recommend some travel writing, so I mentioned Evelyn Waugh, Gontran de Poncins, V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux, with these caveats, “The only flaw with Naipaul is the fact that he does not drink alcohol, which curtails his access to many social situations. You get to know the locals best by drinking with them, I believe, and by eating what they eat. In that sense, Theroux is also flawed, by simply being a vegetarian.”


5 comments:

Zeno said...

This looks like any regular "favela" in Brazil. Poor black people live the same everywhere. But it's not all bad. They drink (cheep beer), they eat (cat?), they screw. They seem happy. Life goes on. Namibian slums do not seem to have the problem of violent narcos, as they have in Brazil, so it's all good.

Linh Dinh said...

Hi Zeno, they don't eat cat, actualy. I do.--Linh

Linh Dinh said...

P.S. To eliminate a possible misunderstanding, I just took out "also" from "dog is also eaten."

Wesley Bellairs said...

Kabloona is a book which should be required reading.

Jimbobla said...

Travel writers: Peter Fleming, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ella Maillart, Redmond O’Hanlon, just to name a few of my favorites. Redmond O’Hanlon, the most recent on the list, wrote “No Mercy” about a trip to the Congo. Either heroic or insane, or maybe both, I would not travel to the local pub with him.