We were due to leave for Etosha National Park the next day, and then I had planned for a few days in the coastal city of Swakopmund before another three-day tour to the south of Namibia. After that our options were limited. Further travel in Namibia was difficult unless we hired a four-wheel drive and it could be dangerous if we broke down in the middle of nowhere. There was no roadside assistance service. Local transport barely existed in this desert country.
And then there was Botswana. I had been told that budget tourism was actively discouraged in Botswana. Government tourism policy was explicitly directed at high-end travellers. Our best option would be to just join an organised tour that took us straight across Botswana all the way to Victoria Falls.
This would put us way ahead of our one country per month schedule, but that was okay. It would mean more time sitting by Lake Malawi. Or maybe we could backtrack from Victoria Falls into Botswana again if we wanted to, or perhaps we could go to Zimbabwe. The travel guide agreed to see if there were two tickets available in around three weeks. I was happy we had a plan, but anxious I wasn’t getting Sam involved in these decisions. I’d hoped he’d be more involved in the actual challenges of travel, but these decisions were hard enough for me, and a long way from Sam’s Zone of Proximal Development.
Later that day, one of hostel’s travel guides, a genial Namibian fellow, caught up with Sam and me as we were leaving the hostel. ‘We have spoken to the tour group organising the Botswana trip and they were a bit concerned about Sam and whether he would be okay on a ten-day overland trip,’ he said. ‘They were worried about whether this would be problematic for the other travellers.’
My face dropped. ‘Oh.’
He looked embarrassed. ‘They would like to know how he goes on the three-day trip before they decide. So when you get back they’ll let us know.’ He paused and added, ‘Hopefully it will be okay.’
I forced a smile and a nod. ‘Sure.’ I could understand the company’s concerns, but I still felt gutted.
On the truck the next day was a veritable United Nations, with Germans, Canadians, Swiss, a Korean girl and a Japanese man, all headed to a safari at Etosha, world famous for its wildlife. Heading north out of Windhoek, we drove down Beethhovenstrasse, Bahnhofstrasse, Robert Mugabe Avenue and Nelson Mandela Avenue. We soon left the small city and started across the flat plains. Impressive mountains occasionally tipped the otherwise flat horizon that stretched in every direction. I was reminded of old westerns, and outback Australia. Olive green scrub was scattered higgledy-piggledy over the plains and hills, above cream and pale green grasses that sat on the rust-orange earth.
Anthills started to appear; three-metre-high witch’s hats of clay. Occasionally they surrounded black tree trunks, and some had bushes sprouting from their peaks, looking like skinny men with crazy hair. Kind of what I looked like.
On the wide open road we passed underneath a storm which covered half the sky, with crepuscular rays of light emanating from its edge. Sam was intrigued. ‘God is coming,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ I replied.
Once we had entered Etosha, we immediately started spotting animals on the roadside. There was a limping zebra, all alone, easy pickings for the lions. I thought of her awful impending fate.
Sam piped up. ‘I can see a giraffe.’ I couldn’t see it, and nor could anyone else. A confabulation? Two minutes later the rest of us saw it; my boy must have eagle eyes. The giraffe spread his legs, a collapsing quadruped, and lowered his head down to the nearly dry waterhole. Impalas and springboks scattered from the noise of the truck. A lone bull elephant was spied ripping branches off a tree, with one large eye fixed on us.
It was nearly sunset when we reach the campsite, which was more like a village surrounded by a large fence to deter lions. That day we were the ones inside the enclosure, not the animals. Sam slowly realised that there was no option besides a tent. He was not happy.
The Namibian driver and his assistant threw the tents off the roof of the truck and everyone pitched in to help. Sam decided to put his foot down. ‘I am not sleeping in a tent.’
‘Sam, you have to,’ I replied.
‘I’ll sleep over there.’ He pointed to some nearby holiday flats within the enclosure.
I tried to explain the situation to him. ‘Sam, we’re not allowed to stay there. Other people own those.’
He thrust his fist towards the holiday flats. ‘I’ll make them let me sleep there.’ While my back was turned, he took off. I ran after him, and he ran further. I eventually caught up with him as he ran through a restaurant. He was yelling as I approached him. ‘I am not staying in a tent! You can’t make me! I want a better father! You are a Voldemort father!’
The concerned restaurant staff came out to see what was going on. Eventually Sam agreed to sit down in the gutter outside the restaurant and chat and calm down. A protracted negotiation ensued. Sam should parley with the North Koreans; he would wear them down soon enough.
Eventually we walked back to the tents near the truck, which were now all assembled. He held my hand as we lumbered along, knowing he had done wrong. The driver said he could sleep in the truck if he wanted to. Sam was happy with this. He grabbed his Nintendo DS and sat in the toilet block, not wanting to have anything to do with the tent.
The rest of the group walked over to a nearby waterhole and watched the spectacular sunset but I dared not leave Sam in the toilet block so I had to sit that one out. The limitations of travelling with a child with special needs, I suppose.
After dinner I was able to talk Sam into walking with the others back to the waterhole. There was a viewing area above the lion-proof fence, and we looked down on the waterhole, which was surrounded by rocks and lit by floodlights. Like a choreographed pantomime, a black rhino sauntered down to the edge for a drink. A few minutes later a large herd of zebras played their part and came down beside him. Off in the distance a lion roared, which spooked the herd. They hesitated, appearing to decide if continuing to drink was worth the risk. But Sam’s patience had worn thin. I had to decide between forcing him to stay, so that I could see what played out in this game of predator and prey, and the risk of over-stressing Sam. We headed back to the tents.
On the way, negotiations continued. ‘Tents are for poor people,’ Sam said.
‘There’s no other option.’
‘I’ll sleep in the truck.’ He looked at me. ‘The man said I could.’
I didn’t want him sleeping in the truck, as I didn’t want him alone at night and I certainly didn’t want to sleep there when I had a mattress in a tent. ‘How about just trying ten minutes in the tent, just to see how it goes.’
‘Okay,’ he acquiesced. ‘But only ten minutes and then I’ll go in the truck.’
Ten minutes became thirty, and then Sam remembered. But the truck was now locked. Good. ‘So now the tent is the only option. It’s not too bad,’ I said.
‘Unfair!’ he whined. ‘I want the truck.’
‘Just lie down and see how you go,’ I said gently.
The others returned from the waterhole. The lions had appeared after all. At least Sam went to sleep in the tent. As the group chatted, jackals flitted around the site looking for scraps from the tables and during the night I tried to discern between the snores coming from the tents and the lion roars and elephant calls off in the distance. It was difficult sometimes. Hyenas joined the chorus before dawn.
We arose at 5.30 a.m. to get a start on the animal spotting at the best time of day. The group scrambled to break camp to hit the waterholes early.
As we drove through Etosha on the rough dirt roads, animals seemed to be everywhere. The zebras and springboks were so common the sightings soon became uneventful. Wildebeest, giraffes, ostriches, black-faced impalas and red hartebeests were spotted. At a waterhole, a yellow and red tawny eagle sat on a dead tree. A large wildly plumed secretary bird pecked the sand and rocks for grubs. It reminded Sam of the phoenix in Harry Potter. Flamingos filled a large waterway, and a hyena bloated with his night’s kill lay digesting.
At every intersection of the winding dirt roads, a sign instructed you not to get out of your car. This was lion country. And sure enough, soon two lions loped towards us across the plains. The serious cameramen on the bus went nuts with their telephoto lenses. A Japanese guy had a lens on his camera that looked like it belonged on a surface-to-air missile.
A German teenager who was sitting next to Sam teased him. ‘Do you think they have smelt you, Sam?’
‘No!’ he said quickly.
Smiling cheekily, she continued. ‘They like the young ones. You will be first to be eaten.’
‘No!’ he grinned, getting the joke.
The lions veered off. No one was eaten; well, not that day.
Etosha, which means ‘wide great place’ in Oshiwambo, celebrated its centenary in 2007, which makes it one of the oldest national parks in the world. Flat rocky plains scattered with scrubby mopane trees and saltbush surround a salt pan 130 kilometres wide. The pan was an inland sea a million years ago. We drove down onto it and walked around. It felt eerie, knowing there was nothing but salt-covered dry mud so far in every direction.
As the truck climbed off the pan, we saw some oryx in the tall grassveld, a beautiful hardy antelope that can go for days without water. It is Namibia’s national icon, surviving in the oldest desert in the world.
During lunch at a campsite, we walked to another waterhole. Five elephants slowly rolled in. Sam thought it was hysterically funny when one of them did a large poo in the water. So did I.
They were magnificent, and we were all transfixed, Sam included, as we watched them from a viewing platform only metres away. Their gentle perambulation, and the way they splashed themselves down, flinging water and mud with their trunks, showed a grace and serenity that belied their size.
Upon returning to the campsite to eat lunch, we heard there were now twenty-five elephants at the waterhole. Milner, our driver and guide, encouraged us to return, but Sam was by then playing his Nintendo DS in the truck.
‘Sam, do you want to stay in the truck?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied, not looking up.
‘Don’t wander off anywhere,’ I said firmly.
He continued to be transfixed by the game. ‘Okay.’
I left Sam in the truck and joined the others at the waterhole. By then the elephants numbered fifteen. Young males wrestled with their trunks, infants snuggled next to their mothers, and an old matriarch watched us warily from the side of the pack.
When I returned to the truck, Sam was gone. Milner said Sam had run off towards the restaurant area without answering questions about where he was going. In a quickening trot I checked the toilets and the shop. No Sam. My search widened as my fears about what might have happened grew. Surely he wouldn’t have run out the entrance to the village, past the lion-proof fence? Surely there was nothing out there he would be interested in? Surely he wouldn’t try to get himself back to Sydney?
Fuck.
Images of Sam being attacked by lions swirled through my head as I sprinted around the complex yelling his name. Milner and some of the others from the truck quickly joined the search. After fifteen excruciating minutes he was found in a toilet block in the other direction. He was merely constipated. He’d circled back behind Milner to find a quiet toilet without the latter realising. Living in your own autistic world means you are sometimes harder to notice.
‘Sam, you nearly gave me a heart attack!’ I was almost crying with relief as I struggled to catch my breath.
Sam looked concerned. ‘Don’t die, Dad.’
‘I’ll try not to.’ I thought of the difficult phone call I’d have had to make to Benison if Sam had been killed by lions—not something the parent of an Australian child normally has to worry about.
That night Milner told me the company had asked him to assess whether it would be suitable for Sam to travel with them from Windhoek to Victoria Falls. ‘I told them Sam will be fine,’ he said, with a smile and a thoughtful expression.
‘I don’t know about sleeping in tents. It stresses both of us out,’ I said.
He looked up from the fire. ‘You can book a room at all the places we stop, you know.’
I felt relief sweep over me. ‘Oh, excellent! We’ll definitely do that.’
Milner smiled. ‘He’ll be fine, James.’
Before going to bed—again in a tent but this time without any resistance from Sam—I took him to the nearby bush bar so he could buy himself a lemonade, a reward for not fussing about our accommodation. I gave him twenty Namibian dollars, which should be enough, and stood back to see how he would go. He had been improving over his many attempts at retail transactions. Two Namibians were in the bar: a woman behind the counter and a man sitting on a chair nearby.
Sam went up to the bar and spoke to the woman. ‘Lemonade. Sprite.’
The woman gave him the drink and, in her thick Namibian accent, asked for fourteen dollars. Sam misheard her, and thought she said forty.
He pointed at her across the counter. ‘Liar! That’s too much!’
She spied the twenty-dollar note in his hand. ‘Fourteen. One, four.’
‘Oh,’ Sam said. He handed over the money and got the change. He then looked at the man and said, ‘You’re bald,’ before promptly walking out. I followed, apologising profusely. Well, I thought he’d been improving.
A busy few days followed: the long drive back to Windhoek, neuroplasticity exercises and school lessons. We were getting into a real rhythm here, with Sam and I negotiating at the beginning of the day which lessons and exercises were on the agenda. As always, I would push him a little into his discomfort zone. His chess game was starting to progress, and there was now more of a competitive edge to the games. The boxing was easier for him, so I invented more difficult combinations. The cards continued to be a struggle. We took another long shuttle bus ride, this time with local Namibians, not tourists, over to the German coastal town of Swakopmund.
Skipping over the flat central Namibian plains, we watched the sun set on the wide flat horizon after yet another cloudless sky. I reflected on how the trip was going. There were some improvements in Sam, certainly, but it was still early days. The trip had still been way too busy—I was struggling to reel in the pace, and unfortunately the next few weeks were also heavily booked up. There was little I could do about it. I would have preferred to be staying in Swakopmund for a week rather than the three nights we had planned.
Sam continued to grumble about being away from his electronics, away from the certainty of binary. Yet he didn’t seem nearly as stressed as he’d been a week or two earlier and his facial rash had resolved. Since we’d introduced the scoring system, he seemed to be more focused on improving his own behaviour. He did, however, still need to improve his willingness to face his fears. To pick hot toast out of the toaster, to eat scrambled eggs, to wear long sleeves.
I was also feeling the strain. The burden of responsibility was challenging my body and spirit. My heels were bruised from so much walking with heavy luggage and I’d developed ‘tennis elbow’ tendonitis in my left arm from swinging our twenty-kilogram packs around. Backpacking had been much easier in my twenties. My forty-ninth birthday was the following Sunday, and I was feeling like an African taxi with 400,000 kilometres on the odo: still running, but wondering which part is going to breakdown next.
As well as the flesh, my spirit was also feeling weak. I was missing my wife terribly. I was increasingly excited about chances to talk to her on Skype and when I couldn’t get through I would feel very down. I worried about my other two boys and what they were up to, and issues happening in their lives.
While we were consciously working on Sam’s adaptive skills—a psychology term to describe the practical, everyday skills a human needs to function in their environment—mine were also being tested and expanded. The countless challenges each day—technology, writing, teaching, filming, blogging, supervising Sam and just travelling—left me exhausted each evening. I never knew what was around the corner, but I was getting better at going with the flow. There was the constant niggle in the back of my head that I had to get this right. This was the only opportunity I would have to help Sam in this way. I had to make it count.