The half-day tour leads you through busy streets and narrow market halls, right through the smells,
colors and noisy hustle and bustle of the city. On stable California bikes, you can pedal your way directly through the pulse of the city. Anna loves cycling and she is proud of her yellow bike fleet, which she was able to purchase cheaply through BEN Namibia. Inviting us for a short test ride, she pulls out of a small warehouse, one California after another. She checks the tire pressure, adjusts the seat height and resolutely hands us neon yellow safety vests and bicycle helmets that we receive with disbelief. Not the African Style we were expecting, but safety precautions like the kind we would experience in the middle of Europe, compel us to smile. At the beginning, the locals kept thinking that the tours she was leading were bicycle races; cheering the riders on, as they tried to bring up the pace of these all-too leisurely riding groups, and taking pleasure in that it was always Anna winning the race.
As we steer the bikes off the red dirt road onto the busy streets, our camera and equipment are stowed away.
Anna knows about the balancing act her small business must accomplish. Critics compare the tourists who allow themselves to be guided through the world of the poor blacks, to visitors in a zoo. She asks us politely to not photograph the residents disrespectfully or without asking them. Katu Tours is not a slum tour to view the marginalized population of former South Africa due to the past apartheid policy, but an intercultural exchange with both women and men, who are marked by a new self-awareness and a broad optimism, and who now call their district Matutura: “the place where we want to live”.
Women like Sarah and Anna are pioneers for many Namibian women,
leading them down the rough and difficult road to social advancement in society. Bicycles can offer self-confidence and financial independence. And Anna would not be a champion of intercultural communication if afterwards we didn’t eat at a small booth in the heart of Katutura WaWaz, a meal based on a secret recipe and drink a Windhoek Lager. Full of these powerful impressions, we finally start off on our bike adventure in a stunning countryside, without the slightest idea of what awaits us.
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