GRIT, GRAVEL AND A GHOST TOWN

I CURSED UNDER MY BREATH FOR THE THOUSANDTH time as another clump of red sand landed on the cracked car windshield. The taxi driver was navigating the Namib Desert at a hundred miles an hour with Chris Rea singing somewhat prophetically Road To Nowhere at full blast through the sound system.

Locals in Namibia laughingly call the experience of grit meeting gravel beneath one’s car wheels “an African massage”. Red