First day of our recce to Namibia. My story is about a lonely woman in a town disappearing under the sand of the endless sand dunes. Namibia is one of the emptiest countries I know. There are hardly any trees; just lots of sand. The country is overwhelming in its beauty and barrenness. We landed on a small airstrip not far away from Walvisbay, a harbour town on the edge of the desert. A 4×4 is waiting for us. Earlier experiences of my producer bring us immediately to the right man, Neels Dreyer. We drive over a dirt road in a barren landscape. Suddenly I see some trees on the horizon. The river! An empty riverbed, five houses and then the dunes. When the soft sand begins we stop and empty our tyres. I can’t believe my eyes. We drive through the soft sand. Dune after dune. No beginning and no end. Ultimate and endless emptiness. On top of a dune we stop and look deep down below us into an untouched valley. All the valleys are untouched. There is nobody here for at least the next 500 kilometres. We drive and drive. No footsteps. No sounds. Suddenly a jackal runs away. We woke him up. For the rest only empty red sand-valleys. As a ship on the ocean we move through the waves of sand. Sometimes the car sinks deep into the sand. Sometimes we drive on a hard surface. Suddenly we get stuck.
I walk barefoot in the sand. It is two o’clock. The sun is high but the sand doesn?t burn. My toes dig them self deeper in the sand. I feel. I try to understand. I know. This is Fairlands. This is the place we were looking for. After seeing some more place we all realise that the first place we saw was the ideal place for the film. Only 40 km from a town with a good infrastructure and not more then 8 mm rain a year. It seems we found Fairlands on the first day of our recce.