Day 31 – 32: Tsumeb to Shankara

Caro already felt better the next morning, but when she got up to get something out of the car, the remote didn’t work. She tried to open the door with the key the alarm started to go off. Nothing seemed to be able to stop it. We tried locking the door again, starting the car, and evening changing the remote battery with the alarm still going off. Finally Hugo just took out the horn fuse to shut the alarm off.

After packing up and leaving just before 10:00 we went to Pupkewitz Toyota to see if they can help. After waiting for a technician to become available he just took the remote opened a ‘secret’ cover in the dashboard and pressed the remote in there to ‘reset’ it. We put the horn fuse back and everything was back to normal again.

Without thinking Hugo asked Susan to take us to Rundu. Almost an hour later when Susan told us to turn onto a gravel road, he realised that we drove on the wrong road as we wanted to go to Grootfontein first and then on the B8. We stuck to Susan’s route and had to cross several water pools in the road before reaching the B8. In Rundu we refueled and did some shopping before heading to Shankara, about 70km from Rundu along the Kavango river.

We got there by 16:00. Hugo was feeling ok all the way, but the second we stopped he couldn’t even get out of the car.

Caro put up the roof top tent and Hugo immediately got in. Hugo started to get cold shivers and stayed in the tent until the next day.

The Brudis made Spaghetti with relish, boere wors and garlic bread for dinner.

Day 32: Shankara

The Monkeys barely slept at all with Hugo having fever and Caro trying to cool him down. Sometime between 03:00 and 04:00 in the morning Caro decided we need to do a Malaria test. She got the test kit and tried to get blood from Hugo’s finger but almost no blood came out. The needle included in the kit was only for one-time use (the needle retracts), so Caro went to get a regular needle. After poking several more holes without success Hugo begged her to stop.

Early in the morning Caro forced Hugo to a shower. The Brudis and Caro closed the tent and then Caro took Hugo to the clinic 4km’s away. We had to wait for the clinic to open at 08:00. The nurse let us jump the line of mothers and babies and tested Hugo’s fever: 39.5 degrees. She gave him paracetamol and then tested for Malaria, which luckily returned negative after 15 tense minutes. She told us to go the the Hospital to pay and for a doctor to give further advice. The hospital was 20km in the other direction, it felt like forever as Caro was driving. At the hospital there was an enourmous line so we decided to just pay and go back to the camp.

Hugo basically got back in the tent and slept until the next day.