“Gobabis!”

Klein Windhoek got a little weird while I was gone. I know this because I’m walking out of Hidas Centre and three men in matching floppies and identical limps are skulking around a car in the parking lot with no business but the bad in broad daylight.

Though their matching attire, shiftiness and general lack of purpose should put the car guard on high alert, the man is too busy receiving a measly N$2 from a meme simultaneously trying to shift her large posterior into the front seat of her Range while fellating a hunk of biltong.

So the fellas case.

They peer into cars, grin below their chapeaus, slap each other on the back and chuckle under the mid-afternoon sun because they are young, free, upcoming botchochos.

Eventually they catch me staring and one thrusts his pelvis in my direction while the other two look at me quizzically. Probably because I’m narrating all this in my mind and, when I do, sometimes I move my lips as if I’m in the beginning stages of stroke.

Nobody is impressed with what they see and we all move on.

Me to see if OK MiniMark has a copy of the newspaper and them to pastures so green they don’t have random women talking to themselves in parking lots.

Outside MiniMark the situation is just as seamy.

The gambling house next door has coughed up a trickle of squinting drunks who step out into the world with looks that can’t quite believe the lack of slot machines, neon lights and the sound of money circling down a drain.

Some look at their cell phones and mumble things about a better life and others make their way towards the Shell garage while the faction of taxi drivers camped out in front of the defunct Engen across the street yell as if their ability to run red robots depends on it.

They don’t care where the gamblers have been, they don’t care about the likelihood of puke in their car, they just want them to go to Gobabis.

And I bet some of them do.

Drunken, destitute and half asleep, I bet they murmur something about Grysblok or a swanky home mortgaged to the hilt in Hochland Park and find themselves broke and baffled on Gobabis’ main street wondering where their life took a wrong turn and just kept going up the B6.

Back in MiniMark, I’m standing behind one of the gamblers. He smells like beer, cigarettes and a man who struck it lucky enough to buy a N$30 porshie tjeps and a whole grilled chicken with a little extra left over for a 1.5 litre coke.

He whips out N$100, I catch sight of three more in his beaten up brown leather wallet and I smile at him quietly as he fights a losing battle with a phlegm ball lodged deep in his throat before stepping out into the sun to shouts of “Gobabis!”

I pay for my paper, ignore drivers who have no idea where I live and bump into the bum who accosted me outside Pastaleria Lua de Mel last year.

He’s sober which is as surprising as a finger in the ass, he’s traded his stock smell of urine for something that vaguely resembles soap and he has a car guard’s vest on which indicates gainful employment although he’s mostly just begging and bumming smokes.

We greet each other, apprehensively, and he thinks better of asking me for money before asking me if I have an entjie.

I don’t.

But I do have a little word of advice so I tell him cigarettes are suicide.

At this he scratches his head in a way that implies bewilderment but which goes on long enough to simply imply lice.

On my way home I walk past the new prison being built on Sam Nujoma Avenue.

Sand has spilled into the road, the bright orange safety cones are positioned to ensure pedestrians either walk through patches of rubble or fear being mowed down by traffic with every step and, to add to my walking pleasure, the construction workers keep up a hearty commentary on my ass.

Just in case I was in any doubt about having one.

It’s been a weird day.

The once posh central hub of Klein Windhoek has been a walking tour of drunks, bums, botchochos and a prison being built by the same n’er-do-well glad-eyes who’ll probably spend their share of time behind its bars.

Though it helps as much as whistling, I bury these thoughts in a yell at a catcalling construction worker just as a taxi driver slows to a crawl beside me with a with a yell of a “Gobabis!” that sees me jumping with fright while holding onto my hat.

And then we laugh.

Me, the construction worker and the man intent on “Gobabis!”

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