The morning came in with a clarity that August knows how to bring, the kind of light that makes even the ordinary edges of the city look like they have been polished overnight. I woke in the guesthouse on the edge of Klein Windhoek, the room still cold from the night, and I lay there for a while listening to the first birds and the distant hum of a car engine, the sounds of a city that was still deciding whether to stretch or roll over. Today was my last full day here, the last day of this first chapter, and I wanted to spend it not in motion but in attention, the way you spend the last day in a place you have only just begun to understand.
I made coffee in the little kitchenette, the kind of instant coffee that tastes like nowhere and everywhere, and I stood by the window watching the street come to life. A woman in a blue dress walked past with a bag of bread, a man on a bicycle wobbled under the weight of a box of vegetables, and somewhere a dog barked twice and then stopped, as if it had made its point. I thought about the week behind me, the visa paperwork at the ministry, the bank account that now holds my name in a small blue folder, the SIM card that has slowly learned my habits, the rental car that waits downstairs like a patient horse. It is strange how quickly a place becomes familiar, how the foreign becomes the everyday, how the names of streets stop being exotic and start being directions.
I decided to walk, not drive, because walking is the only way to see the small things, the cracks in the pavement where spring flowers will come, the way the jacaranda trees along the avenues are still bare, waiting for the warmth that is still weeks away. I walked down into the centre, past the Christuskirche with its sandstone walls catching the morning light, that landmark from 1907 that still anchors the city's heart, its stained glass a gift from a Kaiser who never saw this place. The city was already busy, the pavements filling with people in business clothes and market sellers arranging their wares, and I stopped at a small café near the Parliament Gardens, a place called Vinyls Music Cafe, because the name made me smile and because I needed a proper coffee.
The coffee came in a heavy ceramic cup, rich and dark, and it cost about forty-five Namibian dollars, which is not cheap for a city where a full meal at the market can be less, but it was the kind of coffee you sit with, not rush through. I watched the room fill with morning regulars, a man in a suit reading a newspaper, two women laughing over something on a phone, the sound of jazz playing low from speakers near the ceiling. The barista, a young woman with bright eyes and a quick smile, asked where I was from, and when I said I was living here now, she nodded as if that made perfect sense. Moro, she said, the way you greet someone who belongs, and I felt a small warmth spread through me that had nothing to do with the coffee.
From the café I walked the short distance to the Namibia Craft Centre, the old brewery building that now holds stalls of handcrafted things, wood carvings and baskets, jewellery and paintings. I wandered for a while, not buying, just looking, letting my eyes rest on the colours and textures, the work of hands that have made these things for generations. A woman at one stall showed me a set of small wooden animals, giraffes and elephants and oryx, each one carved with such care that I could feel the patience in them, and she told me how her uncle had taught her to carve when she was a girl. I bought a small oryx for my shelf, something to mark this first week, and it cost about a hundred and fifty dollars, which felt like a fair exchange for that kind of memory. She wrapped it in paper, and I tucked it into my bag like a promise.
By midday the sun was high and the air held that dry, crisp warmth that makes winter in Windhoek so agreeable, the kind of day that makes you forget that the night will be cold again. I walked back towards the guesthouse, taking a longer route through the streets of Klein Windhoek, past the embassies and the quiet guesthouses, the gardens with their aloes and succulents, the streets that are leafy and calm and almost village-like. This is the part of the city that visitors see first, the part that feels safe and orderly, but I know now that it is only one layer, that the city has many faces, and that the Katutura market with its kapana stalls and its noise and its life is just as much a part of this place as these quiet lanes. The two exist together, like memory and hope, and I am learning to hold both.
I had lunch at a small place near the centre, a restaurant called The Stellenbosch Wine Bar and Bistro, which sounds grander than it is, a comfortable room with wooden tables and a menu that does not try to impress but simply feeds you well. I ordered a plate of grilled chicken with rice and a salad, and it came with a side of something like chakalaka, that spicy relish that you find across the region, and it cost about two hundred and fifty Namibian dollars, which is about right for a city restaurant. The room was half full, mostly people on lunch breaks, the quiet hum of conversation and cutlery, and I sat longer than I needed to, letting the meal settle, feeling the strange satisfaction of being alone in a place that is slowly becoming mine.
After lunch I went to the bank, the Standard Bank Windhoek Main Branch on Independence Avenue, because I needed to sort out a small issue with my account, a card that had not arrived in the post. The teller, a patient man with steady hands, took my passport and my permit, typed for a while, and then said it would be ready in a few days, that I could pick it up before I left for the north if I came back on my way through. I thanked him, and as I walked out into the afternoon sun, I thought about how much of this week has been about waiting, about forms and counters and quiet conversations with strangers who hold the keys to small doors. It is the bureaucracy of becoming real in a new place, and it has its own rhythm, its own pace, and you learn to move with it or you learn to be frustrated.
I spent the middle of the afternoon at the Independence Memorial Museum, the free museum on Robert Mugabe Avenue that tells the story of this country's long road to freedom, the North Korean-built building that rises above the city like a monument to memory. I walked through the galleries slowly, reading the panels about the colonial era, the resistance, the long struggle, the day in 1990 when the flag was raised for the first time. The museum was quiet, a handful of other visitors moving through the rooms like ghosts, and I found myself standing for a long time in front of a photograph of a group of women who had marched for freedom, their faces worn and resolute and full of a light I could not name. I thought about how young this country is, how young my own time here is, and how much there is to learn.
In the late afternoon I climbed to the rooftop restaurant of the museum, a place with a view over the whole city, the hills and the towers and the streets I have walked this week. I ordered a glass of water and sat by the window, watching the light change as the sun began its retreat, the shadows growing long and soft. I could see the Parliament Gardens below, the green lawns and the paths where people were strolling, and beyond them the tower blocks and the dusty hills, the city sprawling in all directions. It is a strange feeling, to be at once a stranger and a resident, to know that this city will keep moving when I am gone, that the streets will fill again tomorrow with the same people and the same routines, and that I will be somewhere else, heading towards the dunes of the Namib.
I came down and walked back through the centre as the evening began, the air cooling quickly the way it does here, the sky turning that deep winter blue that seems to hold the last of the light like a treasure. I stopped at a small supermarket to buy bread and cheese and a bottle of water, things for the road, and the total came to about a hundred and twenty Namibian dollars, a reminder that the ordinary costs of living here are not so different from anywhere else. The streets were quieter now, the office workers heading home, the market stalls packing up, the day closing like a book that has been read slowly. I thought about the week behind me and the road ahead, the drive west to the coast, the nights in Damaraland with its ancient rock art and its mountains, the long road north to Etosha where the animals will be gathering at the waterholes.
Back at the guesthouse I packed my bag for the morning, folding the few things I had unpacked, the small oryx carving wrapped in paper, the notes I had taken about the roads and the distances, the map of the country that is already starting to crease along the folds. I stood by the window for a long time, watching the lights of the city come on one by one, the stars beginning to appear in the sky above the hills. There is a particular stillness in Windhoek at night, a quiet that feels like the country itself, vast and patient and full of time. I thought about the word moro, the way it carries both greeting and farewell, the way it holds the space between two people who are about to become part of each other's story. I whispered it to the city, and the city whispered back in the rustle of the wind and the distant sound of a car, and I knew that this was not an ending but a beginning, that the road ahead was already waiting, patient as the desert itself.
Tomorrow I will drive west, towards the Atlantic and the Skeleton Coast, towards the great dunes of Sossusvlei and the red earth of the interior. But tonight I am still here, in this city that has become a kind of home, in this room that has held my sleep for seven nights. The last light has gone from the sky now, and the city is dark and quiet, and I am writing these words by the small lamp beside the bed, the same lamp that has lit my notes all week. I will sleep soon, and in the morning I will close the door of this room and walk out into the cold dawn, and I will take with me the dust of Windhoek on my shoes and the memory of these days in my bones. Moro, Windhoek. Moro, road. I am coming.
The last sound I heard before I turned off the light was a dog barking somewhere in the hills, a single, clear call that seemed to hang in the air like a question. And the answer, I think, is in the driving, in the dust, in the long road that lies ahead. This is Helena Shipanga, and this has been the end of the beginning.
I am still here, but only just, and the morning will come faster than I want it to. I will leave the window open a crack, just enough to let the night air in, and I will lie in the dark and listen to the silence that is the truest sound of this place. Moro, I say again, to the city, to the road, to whatever comes next. The journey continues.