The tale of the German, the donkeys and rural Namibia

I’ve just been writing a letter to a German painter whom I met on a long trip outdoors last February; some readers may recall my dispatches from Namibia and the Kalahari Desert, writes Damien Enright.

I was thanking him for a catalogue of his paintings which he’d mailed me from Germany. Fabulous (as in fable-inspired) animals feature regularly in his work, and among them donkeys that look distinctly Irish.

Andreas Grunert and his wife, Hanne, happened to pull into the Ochsenwagen (ancient wagon) roadhouse hotel on the outskirts of the town of Rehoboth (which, it turned out, had a very unique history) at exactly the same time as my wife and me. We were the only guests.