World: Walvis Bay: Odd Enclave

"One thing about all this controversy. It's made a lot of people start to think a lot more seriously about us," So says J.J.J. Wilken, the town clerk and unofficial historian of the 374-sq.-mi. territory of Walvis Bay. Until international attention focused on independence for Namibia, few people had much reason to think at all about this spectacular but isolated deep-water port on the continent's barren southwestern coastline. Apart from the harbor and its railroad connections, Walvis Bay has little to recommend even to its inhabitants: 10,000 whites of mixed British, Dutch and German descent, 4,000 "coloreds," and 11,000 blacks, most...

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