What a fixer actually does
Ndapewa Shituula has run the Skeleton Coast for us since 2018. A day in the Hoanib, and the four phone calls that happened before breakfast.
“Fixer” is a word from news crews, and we borrowed it because “local guide” undersells the job by about four-fifths. A guide shows you things. A fixer makes sure the things are there to be shown, that the vehicle reaches them, and that someone knows where you are if it does not.
Ndapewa Shituula has been ours on the Skeleton Coast since 2018. Before that she spent twelve years with a conservancy in the Kunene region, counting rhino. Here is one ordinary morning from last August’s departure, which I was on.
5.10am, Hoanib camp
The first call is to the tracker, Petrus, who has been out since four looking at the riverbed. Elephant spoor from the night, heading downstream. That settles the morning.
The second is to the Hartmann valley airstrip, where the charter for day twelve is based. A pilot is ill; the company wants to move us to a later slot. Ndapewa says no — the later slot lands in Windhoek after two of the party’s international connections — and asks for the other pilot by name.
5.40am
The third call is to the Kunene lodge, three days ahead of us, to ask whether the river is high enough for the boat. It is not. She moves the boat morning to a walk, and tells the party at breakfast, before anyone has a chance to look forward to the wrong thing.
The fourth is to her sister in Opuwo, who knows the families we visit near the river, to confirm that the older of the two households is home this week and wants visitors. They do. They ask whether we can bring maize meal. We can.
6.15am, breakfast
Ndapewa briefs the party: elephants downstream, vehicles ready in half an hour, and the one thing that has changed on day eleven. Nobody in the party knows that there were four phone calls. That is roughly the point.
What we pay for
We pay our fixers a day rate that is higher than most operators’, for every day of the journey and for three planning days before it. We pay it whether the journey runs or not. And we do not ask them to sell anything — no shops, no “cultural shows”, no cousin with a gallery. The day they start selling is the day the party stops trusting them, and a party that does not trust its fixer does not get back in the vehicle when she says so.