A fellow member, Bret from my Photography forum has recently posted this harrowing experience of being robbed at gunpoint in Namibia.
http://tinyurl.com/yqo7hw

Marc

Oh my goodness. That is scary.

What a sad story-glad they are safe now. Hopefully the insurance will cover all.- Thomas

Terrible and scary.
But, "stuff" is stuff; they have their lives.

Oh geez that is awful!! I'm so glad your friend and his wife are OK, that's the most important thing.

I can't imagine how terrified they must have felt when that happened. I'm so glad that everyone was alright.

He made a good point--established camp, large group, no history of trouble there--they did everything right, yet still this happened. Very sobering.

Heading to Namibia soon. May bring travellers cheques instead of mainly cash.

For Africa, travellers cheques are a waste of time, and rarely accepted outside major cities.

Although it is a tragic incident, this occurs in all over the Western world, yet people do not put the same emphasis on it. They seem to gloss it over as it is not savage africa.

Has anyone noted how much gun crime london is now suffering from.....ofcourse not!

Shumba, that's not entirely true. I know of very few "rural" places in Western countries where groups of campers are robbed by large numbers of armed individuals.

You're somewhat right, an armed robbery can occur almost anywhere in the world. However, it seems like more and more of the violent crimes that make the news in southern Africa involve large numbers of assailants.

In a situation like this, how does one protect themself from the sheer number of people with guns? One armed guard probably isn't going to do the trick.

Unfortunate situation...As for money, I've been going to Africa since the early 80s and have always taken a combo of traveler's checks,cash, and two credit cards. As for the traveler's checks, I had no problem cashing them in Ghana just a few years back and on two separate trips. And I did NOT pay a fortune to cash them.
One other reason that I like to have traveler's checks is that if I do get robbed of the cash and even traveler's checks at least the traveler's checks can be replaced at some point...cash can not. I had a traveler's check replacement done once. Happy Travels!

Gritty,

Although not entirely true, i think that you have to look at it in a different light. Thieves will target areas where they know money is......................in europe, people visit beaches and cities.

For africa, people carry lots of cash on safari!

Guenmai, whilst it may be the case in Ghana that travellers cheques were fine, a safari in Namibia is very different, it is even different to Cape Town. There are not the facilities to change them in these remote areas..............then again, the Himda may have been busy

Won't be needing a lot of cash while on safari except for tipping but it's for my stopover in KL on the way back to Australia so will need my travellers cheques.

It's awful that these things happen, but, at the end of the day i'm happy that the group returned unharmed back home.

RE western world - too many examples of mass murder for no reason. Have we forgotten Virginia Tech already?

Scary and disturbing story. But I'm glad everyone is at least safe.

Wow! We spent two nights at Okonjima in 2005 and it was a wonderful experience - a fond memory of our year in Southern Africa. I never would have expected such an isolated place to be a target - I felt perfectly safe there (as I did in all of the places we visited). Despite this unfortunate incident, I will hope to return in the future and would recommend Okonjima to lovers of predators! Although we had booked at the Main Camp, we were bumped up to the Bush Camp, and the tents were amazing. Our close encounters with leopards and cheetahs were most memorable. I would hate to see the Africat Foundation suffer because of this incident. Robin