RAISING DUST

I am sitting quietly on a dusty rock wall in the remote Wêreldsend Environmental Centre in north-west Namibia. In the background, Dr John Heydinger is playing a slow song on his guitar that I donʼt recognise. Thereʼs a laziness to the light – and the heat and the people – around midday in Namibia. It is simply too hot to move. My two-year-old daughter is crouched in the sand. She wiggles her toes in the fine dirt and looks up at me with wonder and sunbeams in her eyes.

ʻI like the fluffy dust mama.ʼ I smile at her, entirely enamored with the way she views the world.

Dust has followed me around for the past two weeks. I canʼt seem to shake it, or escape it or wash it out of my hair. A fortnight ago, my closest girlfriend, AJ, and I left Cape Town on the long drive to Kunene, Namibia. The plan was for my daughter to fly to Walvis Bay with my husband, Bash, to meet me in about 10 days. During those 10 days, the people we met along the way thought we were