Chasing Brangelina

And now, for something completely different...

 

Who says covering Africa is all about war, famine and pestilence? Occasionally, it's also about sex. Or, in this case, the Sexiest People Alive.

 

Unless you live on Mars - or, let's face it, parts of Africa - you know that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are vacationing in Namibia. She's very pregnant with their first child, and she loves the country, having filmed a mediocre movie there in 2002. Not many people have heard of Namibia, which is in southwestern Africa, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the attraction was for Brangelina, aka the Sexies.

 

Let me just say at this point that I've never done the paparazzi thing, lacking both the long camera lenses and (I like to think) general sliminess required of a full-time celebrity-chaser. This wasn't a pap mission though - I was hoping for an ironic piece about the world's sexiest couple on a relatively unsexy holiday.

 

They had holed up in western Namibia, a massive desert that basically tumbles into the Atlantic Ocean, with a long, flat highway and some decent beaches in between. Last Tuesday, I flew to the coastal town of Walvis Bay and met up with a Namibia-based freelancer named John, and together we drove out to the Sexies' oceanfront resort, called Burning Shore (below, behind the green fence, erected especially for them):

 

 

A few Africa-based photogs had spent much of the past month hanging around the resort and got no love whatsoever. We weren't any luckier; the staff at the hotel basically told us to get lost.

 

Undaunted, we went back late the next afternoon, this time with John's 3-year-old daughter, a beautiful blonde named Eva. This time we avoided the main entrance and went around back, to the beach. Eva brought along her new Beach Barbie, John his pocket-sized digital camera, and with John playing the role of Dutiful Dad, they sat in the sand a few yards from the hotel's back lawn and hoped for the best. I made myself scarce (John had suggested we pose as a gay couple, but we quickly dismissed that idea). Because it was a public beach, the stocky Namibian dude in the dark sunglasses who had camped out on the lawn - obviously a member of the Sexies' security detail - couldn't tell John and Eva to scram.

 

They sat out there for about an hour while I sat behind a restaurant a few hundred yards away, pondering the state of my young career. There was little action around the hotel so I figured the Sexies were out for the day, but as it got closer to dusk I thought we might get lucky. A few times, small planes flew overhead and I wondered each time whether it was the Cessna Grand Caravan they were using to hop around the country, which has few roads.

 

Finally I saw the stocky security guard get up and take a long look at John, so I got up and went toward them. I arrived just in time to get strict instructions: "Get the (expletive) off this beach. I know you're journalists and I'm (expletive) tired of your (expletive). (Sometimes, "expletive" looks harsher in print than the real thing, doesn't it?) Having heard from one of the other photogs in town that the security team's preferred method of dealing with journalists was to grab them by the neck, John, a veteran journalist who raised some hell here while covering the bloody independence struggle, opted against the verbal confrontation he so badly wanted. Eva, oblivious, grabbed her Barbie and made off for the car.

 

So we were denied our exclusive access, and our chance at a big payday. With Jolie due next month and the security around them so tight, magazines are reportedly offering $5 million for a photo of the baby. That could feed a lot of Namibians for a lot of days, but generally the locals - many of them descendants of German settlers - are happy to give the couple their space. Every person in town that I interviewed about their visit rolled their eyes at me. All my leading, irony-laden questions were deftly parried by the their practical, Germanic sensibility. To them, I was just another celebrity-obsessed American. In the end, we silently agreed to disagree.