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It’s been quite some time since I can remember being so astonished as the day my friend, Berrie, took me along on one of his regular Tuesday exploration outings with his friend Jaap, who has pretty advanced Alzheimer’s but still lives independently with his wife. I first met Jaap in October 2023 at his house along with his wife for tea and cake, where his failing short-term memory was very evident, yet it exposed a core sweetness of his personality in that he repeatedly asked the same questions after our comfort and the fullness of our teacups, thinking he was asking for the first time – he was perpetually mindful of and polite to his guests. (His wife, meanwhile, pretty much commandeered all conversation.) When we picked him up at his house on this morning, he didn’t remember having met me before and I certainly wouldn’t have expected him to, but I told him I remembered him. He sat in the front passenger seat and I in the back seat of Berrie’s truck. Anyway, this post isn’t about us or Alzheimer’s, but it was very interesting to me to spend the day with Jaap and his Alzheimer’s-affected brain. So I will keep him as an integral part of the post. 

I was staying in Swakopmund, Namibia, for a couple weeks --Berrie's hometown (actually I had an apartment directly across the street from him) -- when Berrie invited me on their outing. Their designated adventure that day was going to be to drive and explore in the Swakop riverbed (something they have done before). I was very curious about this. Berrie had told me in the past that most of Namibia’s rivers are dry nearly all the time. They are not even seasonally running, only on the relatively rare occasion of very heavy rains upstream, then there will be water in them for a few days. There are only five rivers in the huge country that run perpetually – they are big rivers like the Kunene and the Okavango. The Swakop is about 300 miles long, originating in the interior highlands of central Namibia. In modern times, water in the river reaches the Atlantic Ocean at Swakopmund once every 5 or 10 years. 

I spend summers exploring the mountains around me in our 4x4 vehicles but have never driven all day in a riverbed; I didn’t even know how to imagine what this adventure was going to be like.  From the paved highway that connects Swakopmund to the rest of the country, driving between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund is pretty bleak. Utterly flat land, almost equally featureless in flora or fauna as in topography. Only off in the far distance can you see small isolated mountains rising up from the sandy plains. Where could there possibly be a riverbed so big you can drive in it in this flat, featureless land? Heck, where was a riverbed of any size?

We turned off at a sign pointing toward a mine, owned and operated by (surprise!) the Chinese. At a gatehouse, a guard came out and gave Berrie a breathalizer test, which seemed a little odd to me. Berrie mentioned we weren’t mine workers, we were there to explore the riverbed. Oops. Mistake. Now the guard would not open the gate for us. “Only mine workers allowed” on the perfectly paved road leading (apparently) to the river and the mine. Berrie protested repeatedly but the guard would not budge. 

Okay, well fortunately no real problem for Berrie and his 4x4 truck. We merely drove back down the paved highway to the next turnoff, a dirt road, took that for awhile and then just left it and drove overland in the direction of the Chinese mine road. The land became significantly more interesting as we overlanded, starting to undulate into mini valleys and plateaus which aren't visible from back on the highway. Still … a river in this? It took the better part of an hour to pick our way down to the mine road well past the eyes of the guard, mostly trying to follow a set of tire tracks – we were clearly not the only ones to access the paved road like this.

Berrie seemed to think I might be worried about us getting lost but of course this is the modus operandi of Erik and me already – exploring randomly, often not consulting with maps or GPS, “let’s just go and see where we end up.” I had no worries. Plus we had a big picnic lunch packed and a bottle of wine – we would not starve even if we got lost. Heck, I even had pillows in the truck I could have slept on, because I was supporting an injured arm with them.  So we eventually intersected the paved road and continued on our merry way.

And here began my astonishment – that we descended from that flat plain down and down into the geologic wonders of the ancient riverbeds – the Swakop and several tributaries. There is zero indication from the paved highway that anything besides pancake-flat, semi-desert land exists between there and the distant hill; no indication that the land cracks and yawns and reveals a whole new world.

It’s not a whispered secret, but a secret the land joyously shouts out to you, laughing at your surprise. I was aghast that the Namibian citizens aren’t allowed to drive on this pristinely-paved road through such stunning landscape – their own natural heritage. Naturally one expects that the mine itself is not accessible to the public, but this road winds on for many miles nowhere near the mine, it’s not like the mine is right there on the roadside. 

Then the road intersected the Swakop River, and Berrie just left the road near the bridge and drove down the riverbank. And there we were.

The riverbed is huge. In the distant past this was indeed a mighty river! When it became an intermittent river it was an agent of destruction, bringing down all that had dared to grow or set up shop on its banks, fooled by the decades of dryness. Berrie and Jaap said the last time the river catastrophically flooded was 1932, and an ostrich farm built on the banks was wiped out. Jaap said flatly, “That’s when the ostriches evolved to swim.” Same dry humor and delivery as Berrie has. Jaap is full of geological knowledge – he wanted to be a geologist at one point. So he was often pointing out different layers in the rocks and explaining what they are. Sometimes several times over. While his short-term memory has been so degraded, his base curiosity, academic knowledge, and wonder at nature are still firmly intact. 

After a time we stopped for lunch. Berrie knows Jaap’s fondness for red wine, so we had stopped on the way to his house to pick up a bottle. Such a novelty to me – parking a car in the middle of a riverbed and setting up a picnic under a tree.

Berrie poured us some wine. Not even entirely sure who I am or why I’m there, Jaap cheerfully clinked cups with me in a “cheers” while Berrie captured a photo of us. He then asked Berrie if he captured the sound, as well (of the clink). Can you hear it?

It was a hot day outside but cool in the shade with a light breeze. As Berrie was packing up our picnic, Jaap called me over to the tree to point out roots that were jutting out from the trunk near the bottom, clearly searching for water, trying to find the water table. Much of the tree appeared dead, but upon closer inspection, the tips of a lot of its thorny branches had tiny budding green leaves in the crook of where the thorn attaches to the branch. I was so surprised. It’s more like a little cluster than a single leaf, which will unwind and unfurl as it grows. Maybe those searching roots have given new life to a portion of the tree. 

As we started to load back into the truck, Jaap said that since I was the visitor I should sit in front. I felt no need to do this, the back seat was fine and I tried to insist he stay in front. We went back and forth a few times – “you sit up front,” “no, you sit up front!” Until I finally acquiesced and relocated to the front even though I was significantly more comfortable physically in the back seat and I imagine, with his long legs, Jaap was more comfortable in front.

Later that night after we’d dropped Jaap back at home, Berrie asked if I noticed that while I was sitting behind Jaap in the back seat, he kept forgetting that I was there, and who I was. Berrie had told Jaap when we first started out that they should speak in English because I didn’t understand Afrikaans. It didn’t bother me at all, but Jaap continued to speak mostly in Afrikaans to Berrie. But after we switched places and I sat in the front, then he spoke consistently in English and engaged with me personally, directly, pointing things out to me, remembering I’m from abroad, he even remembered my name for awhile. At the time, I hadn’t thought about the difference brought about by our switched seats. Berrie explained that Jaap had wanted to switch because when I was in back where he couldn’t see me, he kept forgetting about me and was startled sometimes when I spoke. But Jaap had the clarity to know himself that if he could see me, he would remember me. So that’s why he insisted I sit in front of him. I thought this was very interesting  – the layers and types of memory, knowledge and reasoning in his physically degenerating brain, that he would consistently forget me yet have the awareness of how to fix this problem of the forgetting. 

We saw desiccated tree trunks of old trees on the rocky hillsides. The first one I noticed was way up high. It was a sizeable trunk in the middle of a steep skree field surrounded by solid rock. How on earth did it acquire water to grow once upon a time? I started noticing some other dead trees -- skeleton trees like at the Dead Vlei -- squeezed into the rock, or on top of a rocky hill. The latter ones you could say, okay well maybe there is a divot in the rock that catches the rain and the tree drinks from that ... but for the minor detail that there’s virtually no rain here at the edge of the Namib Desert.

Closer to the coast there is often fog, and some types of plants get their moisture from that. The green trees and bushes and vines that are in the riverbed or just a little distance up the hillside (as in the photo below), you imagine they can reach their roots down to the water table. But hundreds of feet up solid rock? The last time this area harbored a wet climate was thousands and thousands of years ago, if not millions. The tree skeletons cannot be that old. Nature is a wonder indeed, a playground for the curious ones – such as myself and Jaap and Berrie. 

Looking at these old rocks was similar to looking for shapes in clouds (one of my favorite pastimes) – they were so varied in the layers, colors and shapes, and degrees of upheaval survived during their geologic life, tilted at all angles. Some lines of color nearly vertical, some in swirls like a cape buffalo’s horns. Bold stripes of crumbled black lava. Sometimes like a zebra hide – black volcanic layer and white sediment layer. 

Jaap pointed out a lot of faces he saw in the rocks. Some of which Berrie and I would confirm that we could see also, and some we couldn’t. There was one I couldn’t, and I don’t think Berrie did either but replied with an ambiguous “uh-uh” as if he might see it. Jaap said, “Oh it’s not important.” But then as we drove directly beneath and past it, he said, “It just winked at me!” 

Berrie had told me ahead of time that Jaap usually asks over and over if they have enough gas. He only asked this once. More than any other repeated question, Jaap asked along these lines: “Berrie, are we going downriver?” “Berrie, do you think we’re heading toward the sea?” “Berrie, are we in the river bed?” Never with a tone of alarm as the riverbed twisted and turned and branched into tributaries, just a tone of tentative faith in his friend – thinking, I don’t know where we are, where do you think we are? And when Berrie tells him we’re definitely headed toward the sea, he always says simply, “Okay,” in a satisfied way. I couldn’t perceive the gradient in what seems to me a flat riverbed (but I also can’t write in a level line on a blank piece of paper to save my life), I don’t know how they can tell if we’re going up or down stream in this place long-ago abandoned by flowing water, except by judging our direction on the sun overhead -- since the river is so wide, there is plenty of open sky above it.  

Berrie had been telling me earlier about all the wildlife they often see in the riverbed, but as the afternoon wore on, nothing had presented itself to us. Then suddenly he stopped and said, “Have you ever seen a klipspringer?” as he pointed straight ahead to a diminutive antelope in the shade of a tree. No, I had not. Suddenly it turned and bounded straight up the rock face behind it. I’ve only seen animals scaling vertical rock walls like that on nature documentary TV shows. Straight up, like a spider climbs a wall, scurry scurry. I didn’t (nor did I even try) to get a photo, but it was so cool. Another one was reluctant to climb up for us to admire its skill, so we just kept inching closer hoping to convince it to run up the mountainside, but he was very defiant, standing and staring us down. Finally he scampered up, but only a little ways, then stood and looked down on us disdainfully, knowing we can’t touch him. The other one meanwhile had scampered so high we lost track of it. It was a brief encounter, but a new type of one in my book. 

Later in the afternoon the wide open riverbed became overgrown with plant life as we followed sandy tracks through the riverbed past a campground called Moonvalley, and eventually drove up out of the magical underworld back onto the flatlands.

We stopped at an overlook on top where you can see the folds of topography that make up the world of the riverbed, the gem completely hidden from the highway, like a Land of the Lost, the lost Swakop. From the paved highway, you can see only that split mountain in the far distance. 

Turning around and looking 180 degrees from this direction, you see no indication of the overlook about to confront you. 

When we dropped Jaap off at home at the end of the day, I gave him a hug, I had really enjoyed his company. From his perspective he hardly knows me, has repeatedly forgotten me throughout the day, so I expected a little pat if anything in return. Instead I received a tight, warm hug -- another indicator of the sweet core of his personality that not even Alzheimer's can erase.  

In April 2025, shortly I left Namibia, heavy rains throughout Namibia brought the Swakop back to turbulent life and water made it all the way to the Atlantic. Berrie sent me some footage of the river, which felt rather terrifying when I thought how docile and safe it seemed just a few weeks previous.

Lastly, I will mention that my friend, Berrie, founder and CEO of Alzheimer's Dementia Namibia, has himself been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Though the average person would never be able to tell; he still operates at a cognitive level and speed higher than most people without a brain disease! But his most urgent message he wants to tell the world about dementia, as someone who has spent years studying it and caring for people with it, building a care home specifically for people with dementia, as well as someone who has it himself, is that the most important thing families and friends of people with dementia can do for them is to keep them engaged with life. For Berrie and for Jaap, that also means engaged with nature. 

Here's a self-timer of us at our picnic spot. 

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Read more posts about Namibia in Archive I and Archive II

Read more Tuesday Tales