In the anxiety of the unfamiliar, a little help from our friends

Tall grass punctuated with sprawling trees lines each side of the highway, and what lies beyond is protected by chain-link fencing.

After 10 minutes of waiting for the snake to move, a truck turns off the road.

Solomon strides back to his truck, reaches inside and pulls out a bag and cooler.

In less than a minute, he’s set the picnic table and laid out his meal to share with me.

Concerned e-mails from home ask if I’m staying safe and locking my hotel room door, tell me to watch out for strangers (which is everyone), and advise me to “be careful in Africa.”

When asked by the country’s tourism office if I felt comfortable driving a rental SUV around by myself, I hesitated.

[...] when I checked in at the rental car agency and was presented with a two-wheel-drive car instead of a four-wheel-drive SUV, I realized that my tire-changing skills were more than rusty.

There’s no such thing as an auto service club in Namibia, and obstacles abound — from deep water holes to families of warthogs that seem to wait until the last moment to hurl themselves across lanes of traffic with their skinny tails in the air.

Nobody is here to help if things go badly.

[...] many people think that’s the only way this scenario can end, as if Africa is too dangerous to bother trusting.

The cooler is packed with frosty bottles of Hansa Urbock, a bockbier that gives a subtle nod to the country’s German settlers.

Back at home,” he says, “if you have car trouble, do you wait for help?

[...] every time I spy another animal — no matter if it’s an elephant, leopard, cheetah, honey badger, oryx, jackal or baboon — it’s as if I’ve seen it for the first time.

“That’s how it should be with everything,” he says, and looks into the distance after the giraffe.