Khowarib Gorge is one of very few Namibian places through which water flows, visibly, “permanently”.
This post’s (Tunisian) musical bonus was doubtless inspired by larger waves, dancing somewhere else entirely, but Anouar Brahem’s Dance With Waves dances well with a desert river’s rippling.
(photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 5.46 pm on 12 November 2022, overlooking the Hoanib River at Khowarib)
If you were to spend five years at the Skeleton Coast hamlet of Mowe Bay – adjacent to where the Hoanib River’s mouth meets the Atlantic – you could, perhaps, still have never seen the river pour fresh water into the ocean.
Or, you could spend one month there, and see it happen twice!
Rain is rare, erratic; any substantial fall generally occurs a couple of hundred kilometres inland.
In Khowarib Gorge – close to the Hoanib’s source, in mountains with perennial springs – at least a little water flows, “permanently”.
Not much further downstream that flow usually “disappears”; only a major rain event sees water flow, visibly, all the way to the Atlantic…and only for some hours, or a few days.
As you’ll see in a future, multi-image post, Khowarib is a spectacular place.
Musical bonus
Tunisian lutenist and composer Anouar Brahem has been one of my favourite musicians ever since I first heard him more than forty years ago.
All of his ECM releases are excellent and no two are too much alike.
2017’s Blue Maqams (with double bassist Dave Holland, pianist Django Bates and drummer Jack DeJohnette) is one of his best
This piece is from 2009’s The Astounding Eyes of Rita.
Brahem plays oud.
His colleagues – respectively, Swedish bassist, German reedsman (bass clarinet, here) and Lebanese percussionist – are Björn Meyer, Klaus Gesing, and Khaled Yassine.