Project updates
Meet Patrick: a life on the Namibian coast
Patrick was born in Walvis Bay. He reads dunes the way some people read maps. After a decade of guiding for others, he is ready to start his own.
Patrick was born in Walvis Bay. Most of his family still lives there. He has spent his life within driving distance of the place where the Namib Desert meets the Atlantic, a stretch of coast few people have ever heard of and even fewer have walked.
He started guiding at nineteen, working for a small operator out of Swakopmund. Day trips first. Then multi-day expeditions through Sossusvlei, Damaraland, the Skeleton Coast. Patrick reads dunes the way some people read maps. He knows when the wind is about to shift, where the springbok are likely to be at six in the morning, and which lodges actually do what they say they do.
Over the past decade he has worked for three different operators. He has seen them grow. He has seen them sold. He has watched the people who started with nothing build companies worth millions, while the guides who made those companies what they are kept earning the same hourly rate.
Patrick decided two years ago that he wanted out. Not out of guiding, but out of guiding for someone else. He wanted to build a business around what he knows best, with his own name on it, his own routes, his own standards.
The plan is small on purpose. A handful of multi-day trips a month. Two to three guests at a time. Working with local lodges he trusts. Hiring his cousin as a driver. Not scaling fast. Just doing it well, the way he has always wanted to do it.
What he is missing is start-up capital. Permits, a reliable 4×4, a basic booking system, marketing budget for the first season. Not a fortune. But not nothing, either, especially when you are starting from a guide’s salary in southern Africa.
So we are closing that gap. Together with anyone who wants to help.