A Weekend in Windhoek - The Driver, The Navigator, and The Historian...Why is Fidel Castro's name on that street?

The Series: This is one of several posts in a series on our Weekend in Windhoek… if you're landing here first, you may consider going to the Intro Page to start at the beginning. The order is relatively inconsequential, but it helps with the story line a little.

Once we arrived in Windhoek, the world was quite civilized. We rented our car and Paul immediately became adept to driving on the other side of the road. He's magical when it comes to vehicle operation. I'm telling you; this man was able to adjust to right side drive so quickly that as we left the airport he was confidently demonstrating his skills by rubbing the passenger side wheels along a curb for a little bit. Delicately brushing them along making an almost musical sound. Such skill. And he's humble too. "Oops" he says, as if he had done this by mistake. What a pro.

I think I already made mention of the Arizona topography, but if you didn't feel satiated with pictures of desert landscape yet, here's one more beauty.

I wanted to practice driving too, but did so in my imagination, and instead, I helped Paul navigate by saying on every turn "take a sharp, tight left," "take a wiiiiiiide right!" and the ever popular "no traffic this way or that way" we survived with only a couple near misses.


Paul was able to get the hang of things pretty quickly, and I took on my role as navigator with verve. We make a good team in that capacity. I have a pretty good sense of direction, but it helps when street names are something like Nelson Mandela Blvd, Robert Mugabe Ave, Fidel Castro Street. Yes. Fidel Castro Street. My guess is that Fidel helped Namibia gain its independence? Perhaps? Well the story is below… it's quite interesting and adds to my vault of "History I would have never known if I didn't come to Angola."

Here is the full story from Africa Online… but the excerpt below will give you the short version. I'll kick it off with the micro version. Castro was helping the MPLA in Angola and pushed South African-backed UNITA back to the Namibian border, weakening the South African troops so significantly that they had to come to the table to discuss Namibian Independence.

With the South African army in Angola beaten and Cuban-Angolan troops advancing towards South African-occupied Namibia, the power balance in the region had been turned upside-down over night. Suddenly, apartheid South Africa was no longer invincible. Its control over the Southern African region seemed to be more fragile than believed.  In that spirit, South Africa finally agreed to negotiate. "The enemy had to set aside its usual arrogance and sit down at the negotiating table. The talks culminated in the Peace Accords for Southern Africa, signed by South Africa, Angola and Cuba at the UN headquarters in December 1988," President Castro said. The Washington government "had no choice but to accept our presence" in the negotiations, the Cuban leader recalled.  The 1988 peace had great implications for the history of Southern Africa. While Cuba agreed to pull out of Angola, South Africa was forced to stop its campaigns against the MPLA government, which slowly led the the weakening of the UNITA rebels. Even more important, a plan to implement Namibia's independence was agreed upon by the Pretoria government. The power balance was changed in disfavour of the apartheid regime on a lasting basis.  Okay - let's play this game with Robert Mugabe… Here's an interesting article from 2004 in the Independent. In short, after independence in Zimbabwe, Mugabe did a land grab and transitioned lands from white farmers to black citizens. Sam Nujoma, who has been Namibia's only President called him in for his expertise… Funny what you learn from a street sign.

Some of you might have already been fortunate enough to see my gallery of Paul's profile while he drives. I'm not sure why I find this to be such an interesting topic, but the Windhoek picture is opposite; really stretching myself in this art form.

Next up? A little bit of heaven at The Olive - Serenity on a Friday Night!

Pop back to the Intro Page