Rika flings open the bathroom door of our holiday chalet. She twirls out wearing her hiking outfit. “What do you think?” she asks, striking a red carpet pose. She’s wearing a green tank top tucked into khaki shorts and neon pink tekkies.
“Even after fifteen years of friendship, your outfits still amaze me. Check daai skoene!” I say from the kitchen. “I definitely won’t lose sight of you in those!”
I’m giddy with excitement as I pack our Tafel Radlers and the birthday champagne into a hiking bag. I also stuff in a pack of sparklers and a lighter for festive flair. They’ll be a cute surprise and a great photo prop. Rika has always loved them.
Rika grabs an apple and takes a loud bite. “I had to hike in style on my birthday.” She plants a tie-dyed bucket hat on her head as a cherry on the cake. “Are we ready?”
She’s already halfway to the front door. “Let’s go, meisie!”
“I’m coming, girl,” I tease. I shrug my bag onto my back and hurriedly rub sunscreen on my face, neck, and arms.
Outside, the Namibian sun is baking everything to rusks. I put on my own hat, hiding.
“Oh my soul, look Kiara! How cute!” Rika whips out her phone to record two Damara dik-dik as they scuttle into the bushes, still chewing on the juicy green grass that shot up after the recent rain.
While we walk down the path that leads from the chalets to the main hiking trail, Rika snaps photos of the distant plateau; the Otjozondjupa region’s impressive table top shines out above the wag-‘n-bietjie and camelthorn trees that skirt the mountain like an emerald coral reef.
We mark the beginning of our hike by taking a selfie at the first trail marker. Then, with the buzz of coffee and excitement pressing us on, we start walking.
I’m sweating after a minute of trekking over stones and dodging piles of baboon dung. It’s so hot that the leaves of softer plants in the veld weep, some of them already shrivelled into husks.
Halfway up the trail, we stop for a water break.
“Kiara, look out!” Rika pulls me towards her as I’m about to take a sip. My water spills all the way down my shirt.
“What? What?” I’m instantly on high alert.
“There’s like a motherfucker of a spider above your head. And an entire brood of the little demons around it.” Rika is hyperventilating.
I look up and laugh, seeing it’s a nest of golden orb weavers. “Oh, calm down,” I say. “They’re hideous to look at but super chilled. I read on Spiders Namibia’s page that their bite isn’t even as bad as a bee sting.”
While I don’t say it out loud for fear of Rika having a heart attack, I think the spiders are beautiful with their candy-bright yellow and orange colouring.
“Uh, something that looks like it can eat your soul and your first born can’t possibly be harmless, my guy.” Rika crawls past the nest of spiders. Unsurprisingly, they don’t react.
I’m still laughing as I fan out my damp shirt and continue the ascent behind Rika.
The last part of the climb is more challenging, and we’re huffing like steam trains as we half-climb, half-crawl up the boulders.
When we reach the top of the plateau, we meet another group of hikers. I catch a voice saying “Rain will be here any minute” as they hurry around us and disappear down the trail.
“We’d better not stay too long. Looks like it might rain soon.” I look up and the clouds are indeed overpowering the blue sky in a foreboding mass. “It would suck if everything got all muddy and slippery. My medical aid won’t appreciate a broken ankle right now.”
“Jirr, sis.” Rika gasps, gulping water from her bottle. “Just let me catch my breath first!”
A gust of wind whooshes through my hair, painfully whipping the strands into my eyes. “Let’s take five, then head back,” I say. “At least the hike down is usually quicker than going up.” I look up again, then shrug. “Weird, my weather app said there’s only, like, a thirty percent chance of rain.”
“Not that those things are usually all that accurate,” Rika replies. Thunder rumbles in the distance. “Hey, please take a pic for me? I want to send it to the fam so they can see I actually do fun things.” She stands at the edge of the cliff and spreads her arms like she might fly. “It’s rare to see the world from an angle like this. I feel like a drone hovering way up above the world!”
The view is unlike anything else in central Namibia. I am so used to the local brown, yellow and gold of half-dead thorn bushes and veld grass that all the green running through the valley makes the landscape look alien.
Just as we set Rika’s phone down to take a photo together, the first raindrops start to fall—heavy and cold, they hit the ground like hail. The sky lights up, thunder vibrates through the slabs of stone below my feet.
Rika throws her arms over her hair. “That’s our cue!”
We scramble to collect our things. An empty Radler bottle falls over and clatters down a boulder. By the time I’ve retrieved it, I’m drenched. The rain comes down even harder, forming rivulets down the rock face. We clamber back down the boulders as quickly as we can without tripping or sliding into a dark crevice.
Soon, the path smooths out. We’re making good progress when Rika stops dead in her tracks in front of me.
“Oh no, which way do we go? I remember the website mentioned there’s a short and a long path down—but neither looks familiar now. Did you maybe check the map?”
“Uh, no.” I shake my head. “The trail’s so short I didn’t think it was necessary.” I pull my phone out, thinking, maybe, I can Google the map or call the lodge’s reception to let them know we’re lost, only to realise I have zero signal. Rika does the same, and well—ditto. We pack our phones into our bags before they short circuit.
It’s storming now. The wind whips the tree branches to and fro, hissing through the leaves.
Rika rubs her goose-pimpled arms, shivering. “Let’s just choose one and get moving. The other route can’t be that much longer. I remember someone saying it’s only, like, an extra twenty minutes.”
Even though we don’t want to hike any further in the rain than we have to, we decide to rock-paper-scissors with Rika voting we go right and me voting left. I win: left it is. We hear baboons barking nearby, so we start hiking, really picking up the pace.
We rush through the bushes in silence, our eyes glued to our feet as they skid over loose rocks and patches of yellow-flowered devil’s thorn. After maybe half an hour, we’re no closer to our chalet and the vegetation on the path is starting to feel like an ambush closing in.
“I think we should turn back, Rika,” I say, wheezing. “Is it just me or is the sun starting to set?”
“I’m sure we’re almost there,” she says. “It’s just the rain and the dense tree cover that’s making it look hella dark. Don’t worry.”
The ground is slippery now, the mud caking our shoes all the way to our ankles. We reach a bed of reeds.
“I don’t think we can go any further this way even if we want to, Rieks.” My shoes squelch, sinking into the mud. “It’s literally just water and reeds.”
Rika inspects the swampy landscape, and soon agrees that there’s no way we’ll make it through. “There must be a million snakes in there.”
We start backtracking.
Only a few minutes pass before Rika stops again.
Another fork.
When she speaks, Rika’s voice is missing its confidence, her usual oomph, lost as we are. “What if we walked down an animal trail, and this wasn’t actually a path at all?”
I set my backpack on the floor and rub my neck. “I don’t remember the path splitting. How the hell didn’t we see that?” I wipe at my wet eyelashes, but this only causes sunscreen to get into my eyes, stinging them. “Gah! I’m getting so over this.” I squat down, my ears ringing, my legs tired and numb. Who knows how long it will take to get back now? I was only mentally prepared for an extra twenty minutes. “Why is it so damn dark?”
Rika doesn’t hear me over the thrum of the rain.
She’s rushing back and forth between the paths, looking for a trail marker. Her clothes are soaked, her braids dripping. “I feel like we should go down this one.” She points right. “It looks more open, like someone’s been on it recently.”
She nods, committing to her choice. The silver beads in her hair flash white as lightning strikes again. The clap of thunder that follows makes me flinch.
Rika extends her hand to me. “Come on, K. It’ll be fine. We’re just a little lost.” Her tone is gentle now, a warm hug that finally gets my legs to respond. She pulls me down the path. I walk behind her, a sheep following a shepherd.
The rainfall eventually subsides to a hard drizzle. The path opens to a grove of sycamore figs. Mist curls around their broad trunks, scabbed with grey and green lichen. This scene would, in other circumstances, be picturesque, but the unfamiliar sight makes my stomach twist with dread.
“No, no, no!” I groan. “We’ve taken another wrong turn.”
Rika’s lips tremble. I wonder if she’s trying not to cry.
I’m trying not to cry.
Lightning flashes from above, and for a moment the grove lights up. I see something behind a tree that looks too structured to be part of the landscape. I walk towards it to get a better look. “Rika, look! A building!”
As I get closer, I can see it’s really just a small, empty brick shell. It has four walls, a door, and window frames without the doors and windows. But there’s a roof and that’s all that matters right now.
Rika looks at me sceptically. “What if there’s a nest of those freaky spiders in there?”
I use my phone’s torch to check it out. Stepping back outside, I say: “Don’t worry, there’s nothing but some baboon dung in there. I mean, it’s just as dark and miserable out here as it’s gonna be in there, but at least it’s not raining inside. We can wait out the storm, then try to find a path when we can see where the hell we’re going.” I step into the building and immediately feel a little warmer out of the wind. It smells musty, but not unhygienic—more forgotten than abandoned.
We settle down on the floor, propping our bags up against the wall as makeshift pillows.
“I’m starving. We don’t have anything to eat, do we?” Rika shouts over the rain, which is now once again waterfalling outside. Typical of Namibian rain—just when you think it’s about to stop, it comes back twice as hard.
“We already ate my trail mix. Sadly, I don’t have anything else.”
“Lame,” Rika jokes, but her voice sounds flat, so it comes out like an accusation, like I should have thought to bring more food.
After a few moments of silence, Rika gets up. “You want some champers? I mean, it’s not food but it might help a little. If we’re gonna be stuck out here, we might as well try to have some fun.”
She unpacks our plastic cups and pops the champagne—we both jump at the sound.
“Wow, tense much?” Rika says and we laugh at ourselves, embarrassed. She pours us each a cup and raises hers in a toast: “Here’s to the shittest birthday ever. May we get home in one piece.”
“Wait,” I say. “I have something else that will make us feel better.” I rummage through my bag until I find the sparklers.
When I hold them up, Rika’s tired face brightens. “Yay! You are amazing, Kiara.”
We watch, mesmerised, as the sparks shoot out around the metal wire, bringing some joyful light into the dreary interior of our home for the night.
“You know,” Rika says, “this reminds me of that surprise birthday party you organised for me last year. You’re always full of sweet surprises, K. Remember how Steven hid birthday cake in his bag and then totally forgot about it until he found it again weeks later at your beach party?”
“Oh my gosh, yes! It was all mouldy and you said he was trying to create his own ecosystem of worms.”
“We always have so much fun together. I mean, this is a bit different.”
I snort. “I mean, this comes close to that party you had in second grade where I ate too much ice-cream, vomited on your mom’s couch and then spent the rest of the afternoon with a massive tummy ache.”
“For reals! This can’t nearly be that bad,” Rika says in a mock dramatic tone. She smiles—a genuine smile this time. “Ah well, at least this is an adventure we’ll never forget.”
We’re about to pour ourselves a second glass, when we hear a scuffling noise outside.
“What was that?” Rika whispers, grabbing my arm. We both tilt our heads towards the sound, listening.
Twigs snap next to the empty door frame.
I hold my breath, trying not to make a peep.
Snap!
Something dark rushes past the door.
Rika’s knuckles turn white, her nails dig into my wrist.
More snapping twigs, then a series of grunts.
“Baboons,” Rika mouths.
We both jerk as two more dark figures race past and out of sight.
Snap, snap!
A figure fills the doorway, then separates from the rain outside. The baboon is scrambling over the cement floor towards us.
It’s inside.
I pull Rika up and shove her forward. She stumbles onto the floor in front of me, creating a human shield between me and the baboon.
The creature startles, kicks off the floor and scuttles out of the window above Rika.
One last baboon darts by the doorway and then—silence.
Rika is frozen in a bundle on the floor, breathing hard, her eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the door.
We stay like that for a while, until Rika finally stands. Her knees and palms are all scraped up and her hat sits skew on her head. Her pink shoes are caked in mud and baboon dung.
She grabs her bag and silently moves to a corner on the other side of the room.
***
A beam of morning sun calls me to consciousness. I smell dust, wet soil, and the mustiness of decomposing leaves. A headache throbs behind my eyes and I am pulled into the now. Rika sits in the doorway of the brick building, twisting pieces of grass into a blond braid. Birds zoom between the fig trees, twittering and screeching like the world is about to end.
“I found a trail marker,” she says softly, staring straight ahead. “Over there.” She makes a half-hearted gesture to the left. “I can hear voices somewhere in that direction now that the rain’s gone. If we head out now, we’ll probably be back at our chalet before lunchtime.”
She rises and dusts off her shorts. “Maybe if we scream loud enough, the people out there will hear us.”
The momentary relief I feel is replaced by something gross, a septic wound spreading across my memory.
“Rika, I’m—” The word catches in my throat.
How do you tell someone you’re sorry after you pushed them in the path of a dangerous animal?
As we collect our bags and make our way down the trail once more, I feel like the sycamore figs are watching me.
The silence between Rika and me seems to breathe.
Katherine Hunter is a Namibian artist, graphic designer, and writer. She received her undergraduate degree in illustration from the Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography, and her master’s degree in Art Education from Stellenbosch University. Her short stories have appeared in Dark Winter Literary Magazine and the Kalahari Review. Her short story “Eat Or Be Eaten” was published in Now Now, the 2023 Doek Anthology.