Chapter I – The Day the Wind Changed Direction
I cannot say exactly when my life first became intertwined with Namibia.
If I had to choose an image, I would see it like this: a blond little boy, held in his mother’s arms, stepping down from a DC-3 into the blinding heat of the African desert. A child who could not possibly know that this remote land, this extraordinary smell of salt, sand and warm air, would one day return to his life—almost forty years later—and change its course forever.
Or perhaps I should say that this story does not begin with me at all.
It begins with my father.
In truth, everything begins with him: with his silences, his decisions, and that quiet determination which seemed to belong to the generation that had grown up through war, hardship and reconstruction.
Walvis Bay, 1946
I often imagine my father as a young man, newly arrived in Walvis Bay.
He wore a light canvas hat, his shirt sleeves rolled up, and in his eyes that particular mixture of enthusiasm and recklessness that only the post-war years could produce. The shipping company Jahre had sent him there to manage a shipyard that seemed almost absurdly out of place: a few corrugated-metal buildings, machinery, tools and workshops standing in the middle of an immense landscape of sand and emptiness.
My mother used to describe it to me in a single sentence:
“There was nothing there. But it was a kind of nothing that entered your soul. It was like living on a blank page.”
And yet, that was where everything began.
It was there that my father met a young man named Sam.
He was one of those young workers who learn not by demanding to be taught, but by watching, listening and understanding. He came from the Ovambo people. He had intelligent eyes, a natural dignity and an extraordinary desire to understand the world around him.
Many years later, I would discover that this young man would become the first President of an independent Namibia.
But in Walvis Bay, in those days, he was simply Sam.
Just a young African worker who looked at my father with genuine respect, almost with the affection one might have for a father.
And my father, although he was a man of very few words, spoke about him with unmistakable affection.
He never seemed to regard Sam merely as an employee.
There was something else there. Perhaps it was recognition. Perhaps it was simply respect.
Perhaps, without knowing it, two men from completely different worlds had already begun writing a story that would take decades to reveal itself.
Genoa and the Interrupted Journey
When we left Namibia in the middle of the 1950s, I was still too young to understand what leaving meant. But I absorbed everything around me like a sponge.
I remember only fragments. A harbour wrapped in warm, yellowish mist. Then, suddenly, the light of Genoa.
Genoa smelled different from anywhere I had ever known. It was a mixture of basil, damp stone, seaweed and the fuel of the small boats in the old harbour.
We first lived in Albaro and later beneath Castello d’Albertis, in Via Montegalletto. The windows of our home creaked when the wind blew, and at night I could hear the distant calls of ships.
Those ships fascinated me. I thought they resembled the vessels my father had repaired in Africa. It was almost as if the sea had followed us. Perhaps, in some way, it had. Then came Copenhagen—and the cold.
Denmark imposed a completely different geometry upon my childhood: street lamps that seemed forever on the verge of going out, bicycles moving slowly over icy streets, the smell of roasted coffee and the fine, persistent rain of northern Europe.
Africa became a memory. But it never disappeared.
Flashback: My Father and Sam
Sometimes, at the dinner table, my father would tell us stories about the shipyard in Namibia.
I remember one evening in particular. We had been living in Copenhagen for only a few months. Snow was beating against the windows, and my mother had just placed a steaming stew on the table. My father picked up his spoon, stirred the food slowly, and said:
“Sam was fast. But not because he was in a hurry. He was fast because he understood things before the others did.”
He said it without looking up from his plate. At the time, I did not understand the significance of those words. Years later, I would.
Milan, 1987 – The Telephone Call
It was February. Milan was grey and damp, one of those winter days when the sky seems to settle heavily on your shoulders. I was working at the Embassy when the telephone rang. It was my father. His voice sounded tense—unusually so.
“They called,” he said, without any introduction.
“Who?” “I don't know. They were looking for someone who had lived in Walvis Bay after the war.”
“And then?” “They said they would call again.”
Three days later he called again. This time his voice was low, almost incredulous.
“They were looking for Sam.”
I felt a chill run down my back.
“Sam? Which Sam?”
“The young man from the shipyard. They said that today he is…”
He hesitated.
“…that today he is Sam Nujoma.”
I leaned back against my desk and closed my eyes. The name echoed inside me.
Sam Nujoma.
Leader of SWAPO. A central figure in Namibia’s struggle for liberation. A man whose name had become known throughout the political world.
My father’s voice trembled.
“They say he wants to come to our house. On the 27th of August. What am I supposed to do?”
Then, almost as if he could not stop himself, he added:
“A terrorist? In my house?”
That word hurt me more than it should have.
“Dad, don't say that. You don't know the whole story. Leave it to me.”
And that is what I did.
Oslo – The Day of the Answers
The following day I travelled to Oslo.
The aircraft landed in a clear, cold city, where the snow reflected a pale winter sun.
I went directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Knut Vollebæk was waiting for me. He listened carefully. Then he said simply:
“We have to see Torvald.”
Torvald Stoltenberg was one of those men who could make you feel both very small and completely safe at the same time.
His office had the calm of a sheltered harbour. I explained everything. He listened without interruption. Then he folded his hands on the table.
“We are financing SWAPO,” he said. “Millions of kroner every year. For schools, healthcare and education. Never weapons. Never.”
He looked directly into my eyes.
“We need to know how those funds are being used. And we need someone who can speak with Sam without barriers. Someone he knows. Someone he trusts.”
Then he smiled.
“I would say that destiny has already chosen you.”
I did not know then how prophetic those words would prove to be.
27 August – The Meeting
The day arrived sooner than expected. Moss. My parents’ home. The air smelled of pine, salt and the cold waters of the fjord. Sam arrived with five members of his delegation. He was wearing a dark, elegant coat. But the moment he saw my father, his entire expression changed.
“Mr. Johannesen…!”
He embraced him like a son returning home. My father stood still for a moment, almost overwhelmed, and then placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. I watched them silently. Two lives. Two generations.
Two men who had been separated by decades of history and yet, in that instant, seemed to pick up exactly where they had left off.
Later, we went out on the boat to check the crab pots. The sea was unusually calm for Norway. When we pulled up the first net, Sam began to sing.
It was a deep, haunting melody, warm and strangely beautiful, as if his voice were speaking directly to the wind. My father watched him with tears in his eyes.
Something inside me changed. Something I could not yet name. A bond. A responsibility. A promise.
The Future Arrives
What followed was a period of journeys, meetings and observations in the field. I travelled, listened and tried to understand. I saw schools built of corrugated metal slowly becoming proper educational institutions. I saw children receiving medical care in clinics supported by Norwegian funds. I met teachers, doctors, community leaders and ordinary families. And not once did I have reason to believe that the Norwegian assistance was being misused. What impressed me most was not the scale of the projects. It was the dignity with which people received them. They were not asking for charity.
They were asking for the opportunity to build their own future.
Then came 21 March 1990.
Namibia became independent. It would have been also my father’s birthday. I was there. Among the applause, the flags and the extraordinary sense of history unfolding before us, I thought I saw his figure in the distance, standing in the sunlight and smiling. For a brief moment, I felt that he was there. Perhaps he was.
Sam’s Call
A few months later, while I was working in a noisy office in Milan, the telephone rang.
“My friend,” said the voice at the other end.
It was Sam. Always Sam.
“We will not open an embassy in Rome. Only in Paris. We need someone in Italy whom we can trust. We need you.”
I held my breath. My life—from Moss to Walvis Bay, from Genoa to Copenhagen, from Milan to Windhoek—seemed to roll backwards through my mind like an old film.
“I accept.”
And that is how I became Honorary Consul of Namibia. But the truth is slightly different. I had become one much earlier. I became one that day on the boat, when the wind carried Sam’s ancient song across the fjord.
The title came later. The destiny had been there all along.
There are places that never quite let you go. Even when you have forgotten them. Even when you believe you have moved beyond them.
They remain somewhere inside you, quietly folded into a corner of memory. And then, one day, they return. Not gently. But with the force of a call you cannot ignore.
For me, Namibia was exactly that. After the meeting in Moss and the first steps of our renewed friendship, I began travelling frequently to the country. Every journey was a revelation. Every encounter added another piece to a larger mosaic—something I had not known I had lost, but was slowly discovering again.
Windhoek – The City Beneath the Open Sky
I remember perfectly my first return to Namibia as an adult.
The aircraft descended through layers of light and dust.
Below us there was almost nothing but red earth, an immense landscape stretching towards the horizon like a thought without an ending.
When we landed, I smelled something familiar. Warm sand. Iron. Wind.
And something impossible to describe—something that belongs only to that corner of south-western Africa. Outside the airport, one of Sam’s colleagues was waiting for me.
He wore a wide-brimmed hat and had a smile that seemed larger than his face.
“Welcome home, Mr. Johannesen,” he said.
The word struck me.
Home.
I had not called Namibia home for decades. And yet, hearing that word, I felt a shiver. It was as if a thread had suddenly been tied back together.
Windhoek was a remarkable city: orderly and almost European in character, yet surrounded by an immensity that no architecture could ever contain. Sam welcomed me into his office with a long and sincere embrace.
“My friend,” he said, “you will see things that matter.”
He was right.
The Village in the Desert
One of the first places he took me was a small village in the north of the country.
The road was a narrow white line cutting through the landscape like a pencil stroke across an ochre sheet of paper. The car shook over the stones. The heat made the horizon tremble.
“We built a school here,” Sam said.
“With part of the Norwegian funds. You need to see it with your own eyes.”
When we arrived, the children came running towards us. Some were barefoot. They were laughing and shouting words in Oshiwambo that I did not understand, but somehow those sounds warmed me. They had new notebooks, worn pencils and a sense of pride that I had rarely seen anywhere else. A little girl, her hair arranged in tiny braids, took my hand.
“Teacher?” she asked, pointing towards Sam.
He laughed.
“No, no. He is our friend from Norway.”
She looked at me with deep, dark eyes.
“Far away,” she whispered, as if trying to measure the distance between our two lives. The teacher showed us the classroom. Three brick rooms. A corrugated-metal roof. Wooden desks built by the people of the village themselves. There was no luxury. No waste. Only necessity transformed into hope. The teacher looked at me and said:
“Every coin must become a future.”
I have never forgotten those words.
The Night in the Desert
That evening we slept in a small house made of dried earth. Outside, the desert seemed to breathe, alive like some enormous creature.
The sky was filled with so many stars that it appeared almost overloaded—as though it might break under their weight. We sat around a fire. The flames projected long, distorted shadows.
Sam spoke slowly, as men do when they carry the history of an entire people on their shoulders.
“Do you know why we fought?” he asked.
“Not because of hatred. Not because of revenge.”
He looked into the fire.
“For dignity.”
He told me about the camps, the years of exile, the struggle and the uncertainty.
And then he spoke of hope.
A stubborn hope.
A hope that had refused to die.
At one point I said:
“My father used to talk about you.”
Sam looked up.
“He said you were fast because you understood things before the others did.”
For a moment he said nothing.
Then he smiled.
“Your father taught me respect. Not with words. With actions.”
That fire, that night, changed the way I understood freedom.
Freedom was no longer an abstract political concept.
It had a face.
It had a voice.
It had a history.
Bureaucracy and Destiny
The following months were filled with meetings, missions and reports.
Norway wanted guarantees.
Namibia needed trust.
I found myself in the middle, acting as a bridge between two worlds that, beneath their differences, had far more in common than one might imagine.
At times, late at night, I thought about my father.
I thought about how one apparently simple act—employing a young African man in a shipyard in the 1940s—could have shaped my life more profoundly than any diploma, career decision or official appointment.
History never follows a straight line.
It makes curves.
It crosses itself.
It disappears and returns.
And we walk along its path without knowing where it will take us.
The Decisive Meeting
One morning in Windhoek, Sam called me into his office.
Golden light was pouring through the curtains.
He looked at me for a long moment.
“Independence is close,” he said.
“We need people we trust. You will help us shape our future relations with Italy.”
I did not yet fully understand what he meant.
Or perhaps I did—but did not want to admit it.
“Why me?” I asked.
He came closer.
“Because you are not only Norwegian. You are part of our story.”
I felt those words like a blow to the chest.
I was not prepared for them.
And in that moment I understood that my life was entering a new territory: deeper, more personal and almost inevitable.
The Wind of Independence
The referendum and the constitutional process were moments of extraordinary popular enthusiasm.
People went to vote dressed as if they were attending a wedding.
And perhaps, in a sense, they were.
A wedding with their own freedom.
I played a modest role in discussions surrounding the constitutional process. As we worked, I often thought about the Norwegian Constitution, its balance, its clarity and its deeply rooted principles.
I tried to draw inspiration from that tradition without ever forgetting that Namibia had its own history, its own wounds and, above all, its own identity.
A constitution cannot simply be imported.
It must belong to the people who live under it.
When Independence Day finally arrived, on 21 March 1990, the sun was high and warm.
Sam spoke before the crowd.
His voice carried something more powerful than authority.
It carried responsibility.
And while I listened, I thought of my father.
I thought of the fact that it was his birthday.
For a moment, I imagined him standing somewhere among the people, invisible but present, watching history finally reach its destination.
The Life That Calls
When I returned to Milan, my days gradually resumed their apparently normal rhythm.
But nothing was truly normal anymore.
There was a new wind in my life.
A wind carrying with it a promise.
And that promise arrived, precisely as it always seemed to do, through a telephone call.
The telephone rang.
“My friend,” said Sam.
There was a pause.
Then:
“Now we need you.”
Chapter III – The Voice on the Other End of the Telephone
The day Sam called me, Milan seemed to be holding its breath.
It was one of those days when the sky is neither grey nor blue, but an uncertain colour, as though even the weather could not make up its mind.
I was sitting at my desk, surrounded by the usual confusion of papers, files and a cup of coffee that had long since gone cold, when the telephone rang.
I picked up the receiver without thinking.
“Hello, my friend.”
That was all it took.
That deep, warm voice.
Almost paternal.
It was Sam.
I straightened in my chair.
“Sam? How are you?”
There was a brief silence.
A silence full of meaning.
Then:
“The time has come.”
My heart gave a small jump.
I do not know why.
Perhaps, somewhere inside, I already knew that something was about to happen.
The Proposal
“We will not open an embassy in Rome,” he said calmly.
“We will open one in Paris. Italy will come under that jurisdiction.”
I listened.
Part of me already understood where the conversation was going.
“We need someone in Milan. Someone with experience, but also with history. Someone we trust.”
Then he paused.
It was the kind of pause that is not empty.
It is filled with everything that is about to be said.
“We need you.”
I had no prepared answer.
There, in that noisy Milan office, I suddenly found myself back among the dunes, the wind and the song from that evening on the Norwegian fjord.
All the pieces seemed to be falling into place.
“Me?” I asked, almost foolishly.
He laughed.
A short, warm, musical laugh.
“Yes, you. You have been with us long before independence. You were with us when nobody was watching.”
And at that moment, something inside me broke—and then came together again.
The Conflict
I ended the conversation with a vague promise:
“We will discuss it, Sam. Give me some time.”
But time was not the problem.
I was.
I walked through Milan without any particular destination, avoiding bicycles and scooters, trying to breathe.
The city was roaring around me: voices, traffic, trams, telephones.
And I was searching for an answer.
I kept asking myself:
Am I ready?
Am I worthy?
Is this really my path—or simply another accident of life?
Then, suddenly, I thought I heard my father’s voice.
Not an actual voice.
A memory.
The kind of memory that reaches you precisely when you need it most.
“Be where you are meant to be.”
It was something he used to say, with that quiet Nordic certainty of his.
And suddenly I understood.
Life does not always ask for permission.
Sometimes it simply calls.
And you must decide whether to answer.
The Return Home
That evening I returned to my parents’ home in Moss for a few days.
I needed silence.
The sea.
Time.
The fjord was motionless, like a sheet of steel reflecting the sky.
My mother made me a cup of hot tea and looked at me without saying anything.
Mothers know when their children are carrying something heavy in their hearts.
Finally I said:
“Mum… I have been offered something important.”
She put down her cup.
“Namibia?”
I nodded.
She smiled gently.
“Your father would be proud.”
Without knowing it, she removed the last obstacle between me and my decision.
The Yes
I called Sam two days later.
“I will do it.”
There was silence.
Then a soft laugh.
“I knew it, my friend.”
There were no contracts.
No elaborate formalities.
There was trust.
And that trust was worth more than any diplomatic document.
The Long Wait
Being appointed Honorary Consul is not a simple or immediate process.
There are documents, authorisations, background checks, approvals and formalities.
I still remember the cold bureaucratic corridors of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The waiting.
The signatures.
The questions.
The endless formal steps.
Yet I also remember the quiet warmth of knowing that every document represented one more step towards a new responsibility.
A responsibility that was not merely institutional.
It was alive.
The Day of the Exequatur
Two years later, the letter granting the exequatur finally arrived.
It was a thick, cream-coloured envelope.
I held it in my hands for several seconds without opening it.
It seemed almost to burn my fingers.
Then, slowly, I opened it.
The document was formal and official.
At the top was the emblem of the Italian Republic.
As I read the words quietly to myself, I almost imagined someone else reading them aloud:
“…the appointment of Mr. … as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Namibia in Milan…”
I felt a current run through me.
It was not pride.
It was not ambition.
It was something older.
Something deeper.
It was a return.
The First Time I Entered a Room as Consul
I remember my first official event as Honorary Consul.
It was an elegant reception, filled with ambassadors, diplomats and institutional representatives.
I entered quietly.
I did not want to attract attention.
But I could feel people looking at me.
Who is he?
Where does he come from?
What is his story?
And in that moment I understood that I was carrying a story that was not mine alone.
A story that had begun in an African shipyard in the aftermath of war.
A story that had begun between two very different men who had nevertheless recognised something in each other: respect, intelligence and trust.
Standing in that room, I was not alone.
Sam was there.
The song on the wind was there.
The children from the village were there.
The desert night was there.
My father was there.
They all walked into that room with me.
My First Act as Consul
My first official act was extraordinarily simple.
I helped a young Namibian student find accommodation and a university course in Italy.
He came to see me trembling, convinced that he was about to meet an inaccessible authority.
Instead, I offered him my hand.
“Sit down. Tell me your story.”
And in that moment I understood something essential.
The role was not about power.
It was about service.
It was about listening.
It was about opening doors.
It was about being a bridge, never a tower.
A New Part of Me
That evening, on my way home, I saw my reflection in a shop window.
I recognised the man looking back at me.
And yet I did not entirely recognise him.
Life had taken me to precisely where I was meant to be.
From a childhood in Namibia to Genoa.
From Genoa to Copenhagen.
From Copenhagen to Milan.
From Milan back to Namibia.
From a shipyard in Walvis Bay to the highest political circles of an emerging nation.
From a father’s memory to a responsibility of my own.
For the first time in many years, I felt something very close to peace.
And I understood that some journeys are not chosen.
They are inherited.
They wait.
They disappear into the distance.
And then, when the wind changes direction, they find their way back to us.
Namibia had never really left me.
I had simply been waiting to return.
© KNUT PETTER JOHANNESEN | P.IVA JHNKTP49C06Z125J
