Kuiseb Adventure - species Mosquitoes Maximus

Uncle John told the story from the days when he had to earn a living by drilling boreholes for the early pioneer government of South West Africa, today called Namibia. He said they pitched camp in the Kuiseb river, where they had to drill a hole from which water had to be pumped for Swakopmund, a nearby coastal village about twenty kilometers away. Mosquitoes had been a substantial plague here and they already started their attack on Uncle John and his team early that evening.

It was then that Uncle John decided to sleep (for protection) in one of the huge steel pipes which would eventually serve as a conduit for water pumped to Swakopmund. The pipe was about six meters long with a diameter of about 1.5 meters. He laid out his camping mattress with a blanket and pillow and turned in for the night while the openings of the pipe were sealed off by his workers with two of the wooden tolls which carried electrical cables.

Uncle John said he barely got to his favorable lying position, when he heard some mosquitoes landing with heavy thumping sounds on the metal pipe. He was lying on his back, facing upwards when he felt something burning on his face and bare chest – he always slept in only his underpants. He also heard drilling sounds and when he struck a match, he saw mosquito stings coming through the thick metal pipe – they were drilling holes in the pipe to get to him! It was the hot iron crumbs coming from the drilling process which fell on his face and chest!

Fortunately, Uncle John had a small hammer with him – he started to hammer the stings back one by one against the pipe wall. About 3 o’clock that morning, something strange started to happen when Uncle John felt the pipe beginning to move. He had hammered so many mosquitoes against the pipe wall that they were able to lift the pipe in an attempt to fly back where they came from! They started flying “downhill”, directly towards the sea.

Uncle John said it was then that cold fear got hold of him. If those mosquitoes were to reach the sea and started to tire down, they would most certainly fell into the water and the pipe would sink like, well, a heavy metal pipe. The pressure of the water would pop out the wooden seals and he would end up deep underneath the sea.

“And you know what? Uncle John said - I have never learned how to swim……….”

After a while, they were so close to the sea that Uncle John could hear the sound of the breaking waves. He took out his pocket knife and started to bend open the hammered stings in an attempt to free the mosquitoes before they got past the point of no return and hopefully the pipe would end up on dry land.

The lesser the mosquitoes became, the more the remaining ones tired down and the lower the flight trajectory became. And then the whole lot went down in a spectacular fall. The pipe went over and over - rolling like, well, a metal pipe down the sand dunes forming the coastline. Uncle John said he was like clothing in a tumble dryer. He waited for the water to rush in but fortunately the fall was short of the breaking surf.

The wooden plug popped out during the fall and Uncle John could step out of the pipe. He saw that the rolling pipe had crushed all the remaining trapped mosquitoes.

“And there I was, Uncle John said, standing to my ankles in the blood coming from the dead mosquitoes…..”

Uncle John ended his story:
“The drilling team was delighted to see their unscathed boss walking back into the camp late that afternoon. I told them to start packing – we had to leave to avoid being eaten alive by millions of mosquitoes!”