The Delta (33 page)

Selma had suggested they head straight back to the construction
site office where she could brief them on the consortium and its development plans for the area. When they arrived at the site they filed into a cabin furnished for meetings. There was a drop-down screen on one wall and a podium sporting a laptop that was connected to a data projector slung from the ceiling. Selma looked at the projected image of the computer's desktop and clicked on a PowerPoint file titled ‘presentation vers 2'.

‘It's great that you've already seen the hardship under which the rural people live in this part of Namibia,' she said, flicking mercifully quickly through some slides that showed the scenes the crew had already captured, including more women with water containers on their heads, and children with distended bellies. ‘We can skip these.'

Sam glanced over at Sonja, but she was looking out the window of the airconditioned cabin, over the construction site. She was interested in neither the presentation, nor him. He already knew she had a dislike of small talk, but she seemed to have become even more withdrawn.

‘GrowPower,' Selma said, raising her voice as if to make sure they were all still awake, ‘is going to change the lives of rural people in the Caprivi Strip and north-western Namibia. The Okavango Dam project will supply water for irrigation which will open up hundreds of thousands of hectares of currently barren land for commercial farming.' She paused to advance her slide presentation. The next image showed large swathes of the country turning from brown to green with a single click.

Selma's English was precise with a trace of a German accent. GrowPower, she had explained at the beginning of the presentation, was a consortium whose shareholders included the Namibian government and its power authority, although the majority partner was a German agricultural company, AG Schwarz. Its president, Klaus Schwarz, Selma said, was currently in Windhoek
involved in meetings with the president of the republic and had sent his apologies for not being able to meet the American TV crew in person.

Schwarz did, however, make an electronic appearance, via an MPEG video that Selma clicked on next, and then stood deferentially aside from the screen as her boss picked up the commentary, in heavily accented English.

‘Thank you Selma,' he smiled, and turned his head awkwardly to the right, and nodded. Selma grinned back adoringly at the little piece of computer-generated trickery. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure Selma has passed on my sincere apologies at not being able to meet you in person during your trip to this beautiful country of Namibia. Beautiful, but barren.'

Sam thought from the wooden performance that Schwarz was reading from an autocue, and it seemed like it was the first time he'd read the words.

‘Beautiful, but barren. GrowPower is going to change all of that. We are going to turn this dry, underutilised corner of Africa into a fertile, verdant Garden of Eden where the quality of life for everyone living in the region will be improved appreciably. Northern Namibia, including the Caprivi region, will become the new breadbasket of Africa, growing and exporting crops and grain and beef and dairy products throughout the continent.'

Sam wondered how many more clichés the guy could fit in before having to draw a breath.

‘As well as supplying clean water for drinking and irrigation for agriculture, the new water storage facility will also bring,' he coughed to clear his throat, ‘how you say, power to the people. Demand for electricity is growing throughout Africa, but power generation and distribution infrastructure is struggling to cope with existing requirements. One only has to look at South Africa to see how disastrous the situation is. The Okavango project will
generate enough megawatts to supply the whole of north-eastern Namibia well into the future, and to feed excess power back into the national grid.

‘Our company, AG Schwarz, has committed in excess of the equivalent of one hundred million US dollars towards this project, to help finance construction of the new water reservoir, and the development of other infrastructure essential for the development of intensive agricultural practices in the region. We expect some three hundred people will be involved during construction, and the same number, at least, in our agricultural precincts.'

Sam gave a low whistle. It was a lot of money, and the private sector was in on the project in a much bigger way than he had realised.

‘Much has been said and written about the environmental effects of construction of this new reservoir. I would like to assure you all that AG Schwarz has a proud record of environmental compliance at all of our sites around the world. This project is being constructed under the tightest environmental safeguards ever seen in Namibia and will operate under the same tough environmental regulations. The impact on flows downstream has been assessed by independent environmental experts as negligible. The wildlife of the Okavango Delta ecosystem will continue to flourish but, more importantly, the
people
of Namibia will have clean water for their children, food for their bellies and valuable dollars for their economy through a major expansion of the country's agriculture production and export capability.

‘Ladies and gentleman, again, my apologies for not being there in person, but I wish you a pleasant and informative stay in Namibia and, if Selma might assist me with one other matter,' Schwarz turned stiffly once more to the right, ‘perhaps you would ask Mr Chapman if he would be kind enough to autograph one of his DVDs for my ten-year-old daughter, Liesl?'

Selma turned the lights on in the cabin and held up a copy of
Outback Survival
, grinning broadly.

‘Fascinating, thank you, Selma,' Cheryl-Ann said.

‘What?' Rickards's head snapped up and he looked around him, wiping a tendril of drool from the corner of his mouth.

Selma walked around the data projector to Sam. ‘I'm so sorry you couldn't meet Mr Schwarz. He's a great guy. Would you be willing to sign the DVD for his daughter?'

‘Of course. My pleasure.'

‘What did you think of the presentation?'

Sam handed the DVD back to her. ‘Very informative.' In fact, Schwarz's use of weasel words such as ‘water storage reservoir' instead of dam rankled.

‘That was great, Selma,' Cheryl-Ann said, coming between them.

Sam smarted. He wondered if, in the wake of what had gone on with Tracey, Cheryl-Ann had now appointed herself as his chaperone for the duration of the trip. He would have liked more time to quiz Selma – not because of her beauty, but because of some nagging doubts he had about the dam project. The more he saw and heard about the consortium, the less comfortable he was feeling about making the documentary. Still, he knew there was no way to back out of the contract at this late stage.

‘Selma, let's get you miked up so we can film your part of the video now. You've rehearsed your script?'

Sam heard the unspoken ‘not like your boss' in Cheryl-Ann's tone.

Selma nodded. ‘I'm a little nervous though. I can speak to an audience, but the camera is quite intimidating.'

Cheryl-Ann patted her on the arm. ‘You'll be fine.'

And she was. Sam stood off to one side and watched as Selma delivered her prepared spiel about the benefits of the ‘water storage facility' and the associated ‘intensive agricultural
precincts' to the good people of Namibia in one perfect take. She was beautiful, black and a woman, exactly the sort of spokesperson the project needed. Watching her glistening, sensual mouth and seeing her bright, animated eyes, and her smile – interspersed at all the right places – made him want to believe the dam was every bit as good as she said it was. The balding, middle-aged white German with slightly crooked teeth hadn't convinced him, but Selma Tjongarero almost did.

Mathias Shivute, the regional head of the Nampower corporation arrived just as Selma was removing her microphone.

He was sweating profusely and had loosened his tie and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt, which was stained with a grease mark. His black suit pants were shiny with wear and the knees scuffed with white dust. He wiped his hand on his belly and introduced himself around the room.

‘Sorry I'm late. Two punctures – can you believe it?' he said. ‘I can be ready in half an hour to begin my presentation.'

Sam heard Rickards groan behind the camera. Cheryl-Ann took Mathias aside and politely suggested that as they were running late it might be better if they simply interviewed him for his piece to camera in the corporate documentary. That way, she said, they would gain an understanding of Nampower's involvement in the project and have his comments on the record at the same time. He looked a little put out, but agreed.

While Selma started packing up her things and Cheryl-Ann talked Mathias through his lines, Sonja slipped out the door of the cabin. Sam followed her.

She stood in the shade of the hut, her eyes scanning the construction site in the valley below. She reminded Sam of a predator surveying its savannah hunting ground.

‘I wouldn't have thought it possible, but you seem quieter than ever.'

She turned and looked at him, not speaking, and he gazed out over the dam.

‘You're taking their money to make a propaganda video for them, aren't you?' she said.

He shrugged. ‘Cheryl-Ann and I are hired by a production house that makes films for Wildlife World. We also make corporate videos for people who pay us.'

‘And you don't ask questions.'

‘I've turned down requests from the hunting lobby and the Japanese whalers to make documentaries for them.'

‘So whales are important but the Okavango Delta isn't?'

‘You don't think people are as important as animals? What about all that stuff about electricity and food and water for the local people?'

She shook her head. ‘The Okavango Delta supports thousands of people in Botswana who make their living from the safari industry, including, by the way, professional hunting. This project isn't about food and water, it's about money, and that,' she jabbed a thumb towards the door, ‘confirmed it. If you can't see that, Sam, then nothing I can say will convince you otherwise.'

He was about to follow her towards the Land Rover when Cheryl-Ann called him to listen to Mathias's interview.

When Sam walked back inside Sonja opened the Land Rover and found her daypack. She took out her hairbrush, slid the rubber band off her ponytail and brushed her hair, leaving it hanging loose. She had no makeup, but she licked her lips and checked her teeth in the rear-view mirror before closing the door. She undid the third button of her safari shirt and turned up her collar.

The site office was made up of three cabins, set in a horseshoe arrangement on the ridge overlooking the dam. Cheryl-Ann and the crew were still in the cabin used for meetings and presentations.
Sonja watched Deiter Roberts leave his office, walk to the meeting cabin, disappear inside, then re-emerge a few seconds later with a laptop under his arm. It was the computer Selma had used for her presentation.

Sonja waited a couple of minutes after Roberts had returned to his office, then walked over to it. She knocked on the door of the one next to it and asked to see Deiter. An African woman called through a partition and Roberts came out to greet her.

‘Yes?'

‘Hi, Deiter. I think I know all I need to about hydro-electricity and water storage facilities, so I thought I would see if I could get a coffee.'

He looked past her, towards the open door and the next hut where he had just come from. He was clearly distrustful of the media people, even if they were here at the company's invitation. The laptop he'd taken from the conference room was on his desk, next to his PC.

‘To tell you the truth,' she said, lowering her voice, ‘I need a break from my
friends
. Yes, but they're worse than Englishmen.'

A smile fractured his face. ‘Come into my office. The aircon works better so it's cooler in there. Frieda,' he said to the African woman at reception, ‘please, bring us two coffees.'

‘Yes, sir,' the woman said.

‘What did you think of the presentation?' Roberts asked her.

Sonja shrugged. ‘It was pretty interesting. There are obviously a lot of sensitivities about this project, though.'

Roberts nodded and motioned for her to take a seat. ‘Hell, you don't know the half of it. We have to watch every word we say and the Germans in head office check everything ten times. They're forever changing brochures and documents and presentations to make sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed. The big boss, Schwarz, is fanatical about communications – I only just loaded
the version of that presentation half an hour before you arrived. You say the wrong thing to the wrong person on this project and it could cost you your job.'

‘Very political, hey?'

Roberts rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, then relaxed a little in his chair. ‘You came up from Botswana, but you're not from there, I think. South African?'

She shook her head. ‘I was born in Okahandja.'

His eyes widened. ‘So you're a Namibian.'

‘It said South-West Africa on my birth certificate. My family moved to Botswana after the war. I grew up in the swamps.'

‘Quite a change from Okahandja. What did your parents do there?'

‘In Namibia?'

He nodded.

‘My dad was a cattle farmer, but he was called up with the SWATF when the war got busy.'

‘Me too.' Roberts looked out his window over the dam, and she could tell the mere mention of the acronym of the South-West Africa Territorial Force had brought back a cascade of memories. ‘They put me in an engineering unit after I graduated so I wasn't in a lot of combat, but …'

Sonja picked up the thread. ‘There was no escaping it, I suppose. Not even us, on the farm. We were attacked by terrorists while my dad was away on call-up. My mom and I were fine, but things changed after that. She wanted to leave the country – she's English – and he wanted revenge. I went to live in England with her for a while and he transferred to
Koevoet
.'