Letter in the Namibian

The Namibian has been our very favorite newspaper here, and we buy it from the guy standing on the corner every Monday through Friday for N$3 (about 30 cents). The Namibian has been around since before independence, and is a surprisingly in-depth, and balanced newspaper. It's motto is, "still telling it like it is." It is an English language paper, but it has several pages each day in Oshiwambo. There also is a government run English paper that also has sections in indigineous languages (the New Era), an Afrikaans paper (Republikein), a German paper, some free weeklies and some other local papers. One of the neat features of the Namibian is that they have a whole page every day dedicated to SMSs from readers. I think it's a great way to publish a lot of opinions daily (40 to 50 per day), and you really get a pulse of the nation reading these. Plus, most people communicate via SMS here - much more than actually talking on the phone and infinitely more than email or letter writing. I think US papers will need to copy this SMS idea in its papers.

While I am a fan of the SMSs, I was pleased to get a real letter to the editor (not an SMS) published today about my social work department at Unam in the Namibian. It's all true. Read it here!

Spring Break in the Namib (in October)

During the kids’ Spring Break in October (yes, took awhile to post this), the girls and I went with our good friends on a camping trip to the Namib Desert. The Namib, obviously, is Namibia’s namesake. It is a huge desert west of Windhoek that spreads all the way to the coast. It is famous for its red sand dunes, the white desert, and other stunning landscapes, and has lots of unique plants, many that have yet to be documented. We spent most of our trip in the Namib-Naukluft National Park.


Most of the time all 5 kids rode with me in the combi.

The first day we drove over an absolutely gorgeous pass leaving the Hochland Highlands where Windhoek is (we are at about 5,000 feet in elevation in Windhoek) toward the desert. We stayed in an extremely remote campground/lodge, which felt like it was at the end of the earth. It was about 30 kilometres off the “main road” on an extremely bumpy road, with the main road being a gravel road with nobody on it. The proprietors had been living in the desert along time; the man wore only shorts and nothing else, walking around barefoot on all of the sharp thorns. Our campsite was up in the rocks, and had an amazing view where you could see forever. The kids had a great time exploring the rocks, though I wasn’t too happy when they found a Scorpion. The campground was a lovely place, but the rocks formed sort of a wind tunnel.

In the middle of the night, the wind kept blowing down our tents and it was sort of miserable. At one point, Maxine and Alice got out of their tent, and the wind actually blew their tent away over the side of the cliff!! We all ended up sleeping in the car. The next day a worker brought it back, as she had found it stuck on a game fence a few kilometers away. After we had recovered from our windy night, we stopped by the lodge, and the owners of the place took us to see their pets, an orphan zebra and a donkey (apparently, the zebra and the donkey are “married”). The owner gives the zebra, named Linus, a cup of coffee every morning. The zebra came running down the hill for the coffee, sort of like I do in the morning for my coffee, and drank the coffee from the mug. The kids all got to ride the Linus the Zebra bareback, which was fun.


Off to an auspicious start - flat tire!


Entrance to Rooiklip - another 30 K to go.


Our campsite


Kids at sunset


Linus drinking coffee


Alice riding the zebra bareback

We then headed for our main destination, the Gobabeb Desert Research Centre, which is run by the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. The road were pretty desolate on the way to Gobabeb, as you need a permit to enter this fragile part of the ecosystem. We saw some Ostrich, Springbok and Gemsbok on the way, and had a few instances where the combi went into sand pits in the road and was covered completely in a cloud of sand. We took a little break in a cool cave, and also drove by the Tropic of Capricorn.


Cave





Tropic of Capricorn

We were able to get permits and an invitation to visit because we were on the Fulbright programme, and because the person we were talking to was a student from Grinnell College who grew up in Minnesota! Gobabeb is almost 100% off-grid, making use of the almost universal Namibian sunshine to power itself with solar energy. The interest in solar energy is growing in Namibia, but I am surprised still at the resistance to solar energy here. There couldn’t be a better place for solar energy in the world.


Gobabeb Entrance


Touring the Solar Panels

Gobabeb lies at the intersection of the white gravelly plains type of desert, the red desert, and the dry riverbeds. As far as we could tell, the main research activities were documenting the insects, plants and other wildlife in the area. We were surprised that there weren’t actually more scientists there, as they have a great location and great facilities. While we got a tour of the facilities, the highlight of our stay at Gobabeb was going on a self-guided nature walk through all three landscapes. The kids, of course, preferred climbing the red dunes and running down them!


Kids on the hike


Gobabeb from the Red Dune



Climbing up the Dunes




Girls by the red dunes


The Riverbed

The next day we left Gobabeb, stopped in for refueling in Walvis Bay, and then headed for an area known as the Welwetchisa Plains. Welwitschia are Namibian plants that have only two leaves and lives for more than 1,000 years. It is a desert adapted plant, gaining its moisture solely from the fog that comes off the ocean. This area is quite a barren part of the country, and one part of it is called the “moonscape” as it resembles the moon. We saw the largest known Welwetschia plant there, which is about 4 meters wide and 1 ½ tall. While this region is a protected region that requires permits for entry, all care for the environment goes away when mining is concerned. There is a “uranium rush” occurring in Namibia, where lots of prospectors think they are going to get rich off of uranium. The government allows uranium prospectors to prospect anywhere, so it was very disconcerting to see all of this completely unregulated activity happening in this extremely delicate environment. They founder of he Desert Research Foundation of Namibia is quite upset about this, but is trying to get the Uranium prospectors to try not to ruin the entire desert in their quest for uranium. See this article here if you are interested.


Ruby at the Moonscape


Welwetschia Plains


The famous Welwetschia Plant


Uranium



Picnic in the Swapok River Valley

We camped that night at one of my favorite campsites we’ve stayed at in Namibia, called Bloedkoppie, which is Afrikaans for Blood Hill. The campsite was at this huge orangish/reddish hill, a granite inselberg. At sunset, the rock turns bright red. Of course, we all had to climb to the top of this rocky hill, which had amazing views. On the climb up, you see rock sculptures made from the erosion, which were quite beautiful. There were six campsites at Bloedkoppie, but it was only our group and a German couple in the whole place.


Bloedkoppie campsite from on top of the rock



Rock Sculpture


Ruby on top of BloedKoppie


Another view from on top of Bloedkoppie


We stopped by an old German fort on the way home



And climbed up another pass.


This whole trip I kept thinking, if this beautiful place was anywhere NEAR the United States, it would be overrun would tourists. Instead, we hardly saw a passing car the whole trip.

Busy

We are all busy in Namibia! It is getting close to our time to leave Windhoek in middle January, and I have been too busy to post about our activities lately. The girls have been busy with end of the year school activities, like performances and science fairs. The girls finish school today at WIS with each of them having a small good-bye party, and then we begin, what they call here, the “festive season”. Christmas is a big holiday here, and decorations began appearing here and there around Halloween.

Bill has finished up his teaching at UNAM (he taught two sections of a legal writing course this term), and is still tutoring a few folks at the American Cultural Center. I am still finishing up a number of projects at UNAM and with three NGOs, and now am getting stressed about all I wanted to get done before we leave! We have also stepped up our travelling, and have been out and about seeing Namibia on weekend trips quite often. I’ll update a bit in the next week, and try to post some photos.

US Elections in Namibia

We stayed up most of the night last night to watch the election results from our African vantage point. There has been a huge amount of interest in the United States election since we have arrived here in January. By far, the question I have been asked most often since I've been here was what I thought about the elections, particularly about Barack Obama, but also about Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin. The amount of details that people know about American politics is amazing. We were at a party last week, and one of our Zimbabwean friends said, “We must not forget about the Truman/Dewey election in 1948”. I thought that was so funny, as most people my age in the United States would not know what he was talking about, but other Africans at the party did!

Last night we went to an event at the American Cultural Centre about the U.S. elections, and they had the largest turnout that they had ever had at any event in Namibia. Many of the Ministers were there, including the Prime Minister, and the Secretaries of various departments. The Namibian mock vote at this party was 78 Obama, 2 McCain, and 2 for the write-in candidate, Hilary Clinton. There were some very interesting discussions about US and Namibian politics. We went home to nap for a few hours, and then woke up at 3 am to watch as the polls closed across the USA. When Obama was declared winner, along with getting goosebumps, we also got text messages and calls right away from Namibian friends who had also been up all night or woke up early in the morning to watch the returns. We had a small early morning party at our house with coffee and a few friends where we watched the concession speech and victory speech, and there was not a dry eye in the house during either speech (probably a mixture of staying up most of the night and the historic night).

After I finally made it to the office this morning, I have had a steady stream of well-wishers. It seems that most of Namibia was up at 4:00 am watching the returns as well as the Americans. To a person, Namibians are excited about Obama being president, and loved his victory speech and the general sense of hope Obama's win brings to people in Africa. Most have also commented on the honorable and gracious concession speech of John McCain, which was quite touching.

I am very, very proud to be an American today.

Halloween in Namibia

Halloween is not a holiday that is normally celebrated in Africa. But, as we are big Halloween fans, we made the most of it. The kids first went to a Halloween party at the U.S. Embassy, where they trick or treated in the offices. Even though the U.S. Embassy has not received any threats in Namibia, it is like a fortress! Even though I’ve been there a ton of times, I have to have a guard follow me around at all times when I’m in there. However, for Halloween they did let in a pirate (Ruby), a ninja (Alice) and Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt (Maxine). I also was allowed to bring a camera in, as I told the guards that it was a U.S. custom to take photos on Halloween (then after I went to all that trouble, I hardly took any photos). The kids also got to wear their costumes at their international school, which was experimenting with celebrating Halloween this year for I believe the first time. Finally, we had a Halloween party at our house. Our Namibian friends and friends from other parts of Africa were very curious about Halloween, and I think they had a good time at our party. I kept getting text messages before the party: “what is Halloween?” “why do you wear costumes?” “what do you do at a Halloween party?” They seem to like the concept of Halloween, and we had fun trying to explain the whole thing to them. We’ll have to leave them our meager decorations when we go. At the witching hour, the kids all took off their costumes and jumped in the pool.

Last day of lecturing

I taught my last class today to my second year students in Social Development (sophomores). The students have a week off for studying/reading, and then have a full three weeks of exams similar to the British model. I think I have finally figured out the whole examination thing, but it took me all year to do so. I still have to give exams, and I’m doing the final oral examinations for the 4th year students in a few weeks, so there’s still quite a bit to do here before the university closes for the end of the year.


A UNAM classroom


My co-teacher watching, as a group tries to get the right Jeopardy "question"


It was a bittersweet class for me today. I prepared a “Jeopardy” board and we did a review game with the students, which was quite fun. They all had team names, and it went down to Final Jeopardy bidding to see which team one. There was lots of cheering and revelry. I then had to say goodbye to this group, the class I had spent the most time with here in Namibia, teaching them 2 or 3 days a week both terms. They were very sweet to me, and gave me a big Namibian cheer, which is impossible for me to do, but involves a lot of screaming at a really high-pitched level. They also told me that they liked being able to debate in class and try out different views, which we did a lot of in this class together. I tried as much as possible to draw on what they already knew, so our class discussions would involve such topics as “what good is it to raise a chicken to maturity when you are starving today” to “how many feet away from a hut you need to dig a latrine”. I had very little to add to these conservations, but they often got heated, in a good way. I was pleased to hear that it seems that I was able to run classes in a way that was useful and interesting to most of the students, and led them to some critical thinking. I told the students today how much I learned from them, which I truly did. I'm a little sad that it is all over already. I feel lucky that I had the opportunity to teach some of the brightest and most committed young people in Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and the rest of Southern Africa.


My co-teacher and I with some students


Here I am with a bunch of students.

My social work school back home sent me a bunch of t-shirts, and I gave each of the students either a bag or t-shirt (and my business card), which they loved. I think there are a number of new University of Minnesota fans here in Africa now. It was a pleasure for me to see them around campus the rest of the day in their maroon and gold.

Shannon goes to the Kunene

Our second visitor was Auntie Shannon, who came all the way from Bremerton, Washington to visit at the end of September. We were so excited to see her that I think we ran her ragged with our touring. Just a few hours after she arrived, we took her to a benefit for an NGO. She got to witness first hand how formal events are in Windhoek, with all the protocol that must be followed when Ministers and other important people are present. The speeches lasted for 2 ½ hours and we didn’t get served dinner until after 9:00. The next day she was allowed to “rest”, if resting means going to a Girl Guides meeting and having a Braai at our house. We then went off on a five day trip through northeastern Namibia. Our first stop was Etosha, where we had another magical night at the waterhole (elephants, giraffe, zebras, rhino, gemsbok, wildebeest, jackal, etc. etc.). After Etosha, we went over the stunning Grootberg pass in northern Damaraland towards the Kunene region and Palmwag.

Shannon on the game drive

The highlight of the trip for me was a tour that Shannon and I took up into Kunene region to visit a Himba village. With our private guide, we went about two hours north of Palmway on a gravel road, passing one car in the other direction and almost no settlements. This area just grew more and more beautiful the further north we drove. We then came across a few small settlements, and then came across the outpost town of Sesfontein, which is home to Damara and Herero people. This is the Wild West region of Namibia, where there are hardly any people, any roads, and anyone visiting at all. Sesfontein does have some shops, and a surprisingly nice lodge which we stopped by, that was made out of the old German fort.


Beautiful scenery on our drive

We then to pick up our Herero guide. The Himba are closely related to the Herero, and they speak very similar languages. Then we drove over to the village. We first waited while the guide went in and asked an elder for permission for us to enter, then we entered. The only ones in the village were women, children, and older men. The younger men were all out tending their goats and cattle. They follow their herds for 20-40 kilometers today, out in the hot sun walking barefoot in the harsh terrain. Sometimes they are gone for days at a time. The women were cooking, making crafts, and making buildings.

The Himba are one of the last nomadic tribes on Earth, and still lead a very traditional lifestyle. They have retained much more of their culture and traditional ways than the Bushmen, probably because they are in such a remote region. The women are famous for their red skin. They make a mixture of red ochre and fat that they rub all over their hair and skin. They also perfume themselves by burning herbs and sitting in a closed up hut (essentially smoking themselves). The women were very beautiful, and had perfect skin. They were very much into having their photos taken, but were concerned about their appearances. They had to have their hair, hairpieces, etc. just perfect, and laughed and laughed at each others’ photos. We spent a lot of time taking photos and showing photos, and they could have posed all day.


Shannon showing a photo to the women


Himba woman with her baby

One of the woman was in the process of making one of their mud huts when we arrived. She showed us how they mix cow dung with mud to make the thick walks of the huts. It is apparently very good insulation, keeping the huts cool in the hot summer days and warm in the cool winter nights. She was very proud of the hut, and wanted numerous pictures taken of it.











Many of the children do not go to school, though there are some mobile schools for them set up by the government. These women did not know how old they were are what day of the week it was. But, when they sold us crafts, they were shrewd businesswomen and were experts at accounting.



After meeting the Himbas, our guide drove the 4x4 into a dry riverbed about 30 minutes away, and we had lunch with goats, cows and children sitting around. It was quite funny.




While Shannon & I were gone for the day visiting the Himba people, Ruby and bill went on a game drive.

We then had a long drive down the skeleton coast, stopping at shipwrecks, the Cape Fur Seals and even running out of gas at one point (don't ask, but it was a small adventure). We stayed for two nights in Swapokmund and had a nice time at the seaside, before returning to Windhoek.


Skeleton Coast Ship Wreck


Alice is a big fan of the skeleton coast!

In Windhoek, we went for another braai, visited "Heroes' Acre", the Namibian national monument to the War Veterans that looks a lot like the Washington monument, and a rest by the pool.


Climbing Up Heroes' Acre


We were so happy that Shannon could come! Anyone else? Your time is running out...