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Before us stand the skeletons of camelthorn acacia trees that flourished before Vasco da Gama made his way around the Cape of Good Hope at the end of the 15th century. The cracked whitish basin, or pan, on which the acacias are still rooted is appropriately named Dead Vlei. On three sides, reddish-orange sand mountains rise as high as 300 meters. Our group is in the midst of Namibia's dune sea, more than a 400-kilometer drive southeast from the coastal city of Swakopmund. The sand heaps that tower immediately over us are star dunes. The wind blowing from multiple directions gives them right-angled ridges. When viewed from an airplane or a balloon, they assume the namesake shape. If you've seen one dune, you haven't seen them all. Namib cousins of star dunes bear names like parabolic, transverse and Barchan (crescent-shaped). Suzie Van Der Walt, the resilient Afrikaner who is the guide on our 12-day crosscountry camping safari, which took place in August 2002 (the Namibian winter), tells me that the dune at Dead Vlei's southern end is known as Crazy Dune. Hundreds of species that have never ventured beyond the desert's borders call the Namib home. Walking to Dead Vlei, we had paused to observe a bluish-green six-legged creature that moved with astonishing speed through a valley, an indentation formed by the impress of a tourist's footprint. A tenebrionid beetle, Onymacris rugatipennis, it buried itself one moment and then rushed forth again, as if skating along the surface of infinite sand grains. Its agitated movements occurred so quickly that I almost didn't have time to snap a picture. Namibia is full of discoveries that have never ranged outside of southwestern Africa, including the dancing white lady spider (Leucorchestris arenicola), Grant's golden mole (Eremitalpa granti) and the Welwitschia mirabilis plant, which can live more than 1,000 years.

Focuses on the National Museum of Namibia. Idea that the research staff would act as facilitators for other institutions by providing other scientists with collected samples of diverse fauna including snakes and spiders; Success of the facilitator approach, according to Eugène Marais, the museum's senior curator for natural history; Mention of the insect classification systems developed by the San Bushmen tribal group.

El artículo examina el trabajo de los naturalistas del tercer mundo. Se menciona las obras del Museo Nacional de Namibia, una institución con recursos escasos. Aunque reserva doce lugares para naturalistas, su personal actual es apenas la tercera parte. El personal decidió que renunciaría la gran parte de sus investigaciones independientes y trabajarían como facilitadores para llevar a cabo estudios interdisciplinarios.