It is entirely possible to visit Angola for a day crossing the Okavango from Rundu. Currently Calai, Rundu’s twin town at the opposite side of the river doesn’t have any viable transport links with inland Angola. Most of the roads are still mined and there was heavy fighting as recently as 2000 during the Caprivi conflict, when the Caprivi Liberation Army was hiding over the border. Dugout canoes are serving the cross border travelers and most goods arrive into Angola the same way.

Rundu lies at the entry to the Caprivi strip, at the Namibian side of the river Okavango (Cubango in Angola), with amazing views over the Angolan highlands. A bit more shabby to Namibian standards, the influence of nearby Angola is very strong, with a Portuguese speaking community and more mixed people than in Tsumeb.

On my way to the river bank, I meet Bramley, who shows me the little path down to the jetty. He’s studying in Rundu to become a teacher, although he hopes one day to become a vet, which is difficult to impossible in Namibia. (no university course for veterinarians in Namibia) Bramley’s family was originally from South Africa, so his Afrikaans is good and we can both speak our mother tongue and understand each other. His father is anthropologist and wrote numerous books, at one time they owned a zoo in Rundu, with two lions and leopards around their house, now sadly enough only three dogs and a talking parrot. He shows me his father’s books about the tribes in Northern Namibia, with a small and interesting chapter about Cuca shops in one of them.

All over Northern Namibia you can find little shacks along the road, sign posted as Cuca Shop. At the Cuca shop, you can buy and drink beer and spirits, but originally they only sold home brewed concoctions, most often made with ginger, maize, sugar and water, and in Portuguese Angolan times, imported Cuca beer, from which they derive their name. The Cuca import from Angola is long gone, but the name stuck on. Currently there’s a government crackdown on Cuca shops, the owners have to apply for a license, and plenty of them are slowly disappearing.

Tsumeb is a small mining town about 250 km from the Angolan border. The city center looks very American, one shopping street with non-descript South-African supermarkets, a grid of suburban streets behind the main street, a small German church, a park with lawns and flowerbeds.

However, Namibia feels strange and schizophrenic after the Angolan exuberance. The original German settlers and Afrikaners (”old whites”) don’t trust the newly arrived immigrants from Europe (”new whites”), the blacks don’t trust the “old whites”, the different tribes (Owambo, Kavango and Herero) don’t trust each other, it seems socially way more complicated than it looks on the surface. This shows as well in the language people are speaking: English and Afrikaans are the official languages used in education, but in Tsumeb alone, 4 or 5 different tribal languages are used. So everybody masters 3 or 4 or even 5 languages, often without being able to speak more than one language properly.

Santa Clara is very much the average Angolan town, leaving aside the countless hostelerias and pensao’s along the main street. At the other side of the border, Oshikango looks like an American mall strip with warehouses and supermarkets lining the road, all busy with Angolans hopping across to do their shopping. Not only is Namibia vastly cheaper, choice on offer is large, mainly cheap Chinese imports of clothes, furniture, music systems, light fittings and anything else which can be carried over by hand. If this wasn’t Africa, it could be the English on a shopping spree in Calais.