"This is Namibia, you need at least two spares"

To give my parents a real taste of Namibia I had decided that we would be traveling on the back roads of Namibia, which are mainly dirt roads and not all are maintained regularly. We had left Sossusvlei early in the morning in order to get to Luderitz by early afternoon. An hour or so after leaving we were in the middle of a canyon trying to make our way out of it on the rough dirt road. All of the sudden we hit a sharp rock, twice, the front and back right tire. My father shared a few swear words and my mom just kept saying things like “Are you serious?”. We got parked the car on the top of a hill and walked the 500m to the last farm we had passed. I tried to ask the guy for help but he kept saying, “White man not here”, thanks buddy. Luckily it’s National Immunization Day time and the Ministry of Health is out driving to all the farms to immunize all children. They saw our car and stopped to help, unfortunately they were not going in our direction. The did however help us flag down a nice Afrikaner couple who with the help of their worker took the tires off our car and flagged down another car, a Dutch tourist couple to drive me the 50km to the nearest town to try to repair the tire. I left my parents in the middle of the Namib Desert, somewhere in a canyon with little water, food, no cell reception and a nice car with our entire luggage – this must have been the highlight of my parent’s trip! At the nearest town I was saddened when they couldn’t repair the tire and instead I had to buy a new one, problem they didn’t have the exact tire. I took what I could get and prayed it would work and then sat on the side of the road for 3 hours waiting for a hike back to the canyon. The elderly Afrikaner couple finally showed up at noon and drove me back and luckily the tire worked, using the other spare we were finally up and running.
Seeing how we didn’t have another spare, we drove very slowly to Luderitz (it’s official my mom hates dirt roads by now). We got there in the evening and luckily were able to buy new tires the next day. I felt horrible. I mean it’s really common but you never want your own parents to experience real Namibia. Luckily Namibians are super helpful. Every car that passed my parents offered to help in whatever way they could, giving water and what not. My gratitude goes out to the older Afrikaner couple that really went above and beyond in our situation. My poor mother stranded in the middle of nowhere for more than four hours, I’m surprised she survived with how worked up she can get as a worrywart. Luckily we were ok and everything turned out ok but my favorite part was one guy who stopped told my dad “This is Namibia, what were you thinking, you need two spares to travel here”, lesson learned. TIN