flew
over the river's mouth. There were the mud flats, the sand bars, the
bright ribbon of vegetation, and there as we came lower was a flight of
flamingos heading upstream just beneath us.
"The
bridge. Look at the bridge," said one of the men. He was not speaking
to me but I looked too, without seeing anything at first. The men were
all staring down and making shocked noises. The bridge was under
water—I saw it now, or anyway I saw a line of posts, the tops of posts,
around which swirled chocolate water and logs and broken bits of things.
"Looks
as if she's holding," said the pilot doubtfully. Everyone agreed that
if the Sir Ernest Oppenheimer Bridge stood up to that, it was a pretty
good bridge. It was a new type, and the first ever built in that place.
We circled and came down at the airport, where people were waiting for
us. They had brought Land Rovers specially fitted, like nearly all the
cars in the township, with sandproof tops. We drove toward the town
across low-lying dunes.
Like
everything built by the Oppenheimer group, the town is carefully
planned. Every single thing that has gone into it, wood and metal and
cement, furniture and paint, animals and plants with which to Stock the
farms and gardens that supply food, has had to be brought in, by sea or
road or air. This being so, it is as well that expense was no object,
for it had been an expensive proposition. The "boys" are imported
mostly from Ovamboland, in the northern portion of South-West Africa,
and to a lesser extent from Portuguese West Africa. They used to travel
overland and it took three weeks, but now they are flown in, and flown
back when their eighteen-month contracts are expired. White workers and
their families are compensated
