Allowed in and mix it up with the top guys - 20th July
I get about three hours sleep and wake up over Angola. The sunrise is beautiful and I get my first sight of Africa. As we land in Windhoek I see springbok or eland running across the bushland and the fact that I'm here really sinks in! Thankfully the immigration queue is long and the woman was trying to get through as many people as possible. The printed e-mail confirmation just about managed to convince her I wasn't here to stay and she grumpily allowed me to pass!
My uncle Michael had a driver pick me up and bring me to his office. He works as Chief Technical Advisor to BCLME, a UN Development Programme project that manages the marine eco-system of Namibia, Angola and South Africa. He is about to go into a big meeting and asks if I want to come along. So, I put on my unironed shirt, trousers and shoes, have a shave and within two hours of almost being denied entry into Namibia I shake hands with three cabinet ministers and high ranking civil servants! My two main contributions to the meeting were setting up a backup projector when
the first one failed mid-presentation and holding up a broken window that wouldn't shut from time to time so that the hammering on the street below would be less audible!The meeting was a summary of Mick's work to date where he outlined his concerns about Namibia's fragile marine eco-system that has been hit by scandalous levels of foreign fishing fleets, a large seal population (On Wednesday in London there was a small demonstration against Namibia for starting a seal cull) as well as low o2 levels and toxic algae blooms. Mick's presentation was followed by protocol discussions over the signing of a convention with Angola and South Africa that Mick has been working towards and it looked like everyone was onboard.
posted by Niall at
3:03 p.m.
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