Floods in the North

I know that we described Namibia as a dry country to people before we left, but it has been nothing but wet for the past several months. In Windhoek it rains almost daily, but only for short periods of the day. However, in the north, it has been pouring. Last week I flew up to the Owambo region for a few days in the north to do a workshop with the Centers for Disease Control. This northern part of Namibia borders on Angola. The largest ethnic group in Namibia is based here, and this is where the independence/resistance movement in the 1980s was located (it is/was called South West Africa People’s Organisation – SWAPO, and now the ruling party of Namibia). The Owambo area is also known as the four Os, as the four regions of Owamboland are called Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena and Otijoto. I flew into Ondangwa, and then drove 30 km north through Ongwediva to where I was staying in Oshakati. It’s easy to get confused here with all of these Os, though I have it straight now that I’ve visited. This main highway was quite a site. On both sides of the road the waters were flooding all the fields, the houses and the shops & shabeens (informal bars). People were fishing off the side of the road; some using treated mosquito nets as fishing nets. From the airplane, I could see many settlements that were completely cut-off. A small settlement with an extended family would be on high ground, but the dirt roads leading from the settlement would all be under an oshana (lake). There would be no way in or out. I saw hundreds of these, and hoped that people had made it out before the floods came. Many people have been displaced, and there are great worries of malaria and cholera.


The workshop itself was interesting – a workshop for health care workers in the north interested in supporting people with HIV related disabilities. Most of the health care workers were from other African countries (most notably Zimbabwe), as Namibia doesn’t have degree programs in medicine, public health, or any sort of rehabilitation (physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc.). Namibians who want to be health care professionals have to study abroad, usually in South Africa, and many don’t return home to work. Namibia is lucky to have a social work program, and many students from other countries come to the University of Namibia to study social work. I enjoyed meeting people working in the disability field in this region, and we are working out some projects that we can do together over the next 9 months.

Here's a tiny aerial shot

UNAM Life

Unfortunately, UNAM has had a rash of thefts since more faculty have been using laptops. We cannot leave laptops in our office unattended, even while we are using the restroom! I’m so glad I got a new lightweight one, as I bring it with me everywhere. Three of the people who live in UNAM village have had laptops stolen in the past two months. The thieves simply break open the wooden doors of the offices (or cut a hole through the door), so locking the door doesn’t help. Luckily, my door also has a metal gate on it, so my office is much safer. However, yesterday someone tried to break into my office while I was in it, as the gate was unlatched. I sure surprised her when I said “hello,” and the hallway was empty by the time I opened the door.

UNAM is an open-air campus. All the hallways are outside, and there are courtyards in the middle of the buildings with trees and plants growing. There are few if any gardeners, so pretty much, whatever grows, grows. But, it is quite pretty in the courtyards, and lots of birds fly around through campus hallways and classrooms. This morning, as I was sitting at my desk, a bird flew right in my office and perched on my bookshelf. It didn’t stay too long tough. I also have a pet moth that lives in my office, which is about the size of a bird. It is beautiful, but we keep our distance from each other.

Sunday afternoon in Namibia

In other news, the rainy season is still going strong here in Namibia. This means it is sunny and fine during the morning, and thunderstorms roll into town in the late afternoon or early evening most days. Windhoek is now completely green and flowers are blooming all over town, as are the surrounding hills. It is beautiful here. However up north it is a national disaster with the flooding, and they are worrying that some of the damns are getting too full and might overflow or have to be discharged.

On Sunday, we went on a day trip to a game lodge called Auas Game Lodge, which is a common activity for people in Windhoek who have the resources (like the other families at the international school). The lodge we went to is 23 K south on a paved road, and 23 K east on a bumpy gravel/dirt road that included numerous small stream crossings, with mangy baboons and herds of cattle on the road. You drive for about a half hour without seeing a house or a person, then, in the middle of nowhere, is this lovely lodge with a pool. We splurged for a fancy lunch under the lapa (thatched roof), about $40 for all 5 of us with coffee & dessert, and then went on a hike. This lodge has a large pen, about the size of a US football field, with two rehabilitated leopards in it. We only saw the male leopard, but it was beautiful – just hanging out in a tree. They also had a crocodile. A lot of the trail was washed out from the rains, so we had to hike through “quicksand” for a while, which the kids loved. There were wildflowers all over this walk, and many pretty birds. We also saw lots of porcupine burrows, but didn’t see any porcupines. There were also wildebeest and springbok hanging around, which we have seen so much now that I almost forgot to mention them. We left just in time from this resort. We made it back to the paved road just as it started raining. If we were still on the dirt road, we would certainly have been stuck. Just during our drive home, it rained about a centimeter, and also hailed. Our clothes that we had left on the line were soaked, but by the time we made it home the rain had stopped.

Classes begin...quickly!

Things have been picking up with work lately, so I have not had as much time to write. I have gone from teaching no classes to teaching two classes. What I feared most would happen. They gave me a course in which I know nothing about to teach. Despite my protests that I was completely unqualified to teach this course, I am now teaching “social work with groups” (People at UM understand how ridiculous this is for me to teach this class). The department gave me this class three weeks into the semester, only four days before my first class session! Now that I have been teaching it for a few days, I am quite happy with the course. I have 60+ sophomore students. About half of them are from Namibia, and the rest from southern Africa (except for South Africa). Some of the students will return to their home countries as some of the only trained social workers in their countries (e.g. people from Zambia, Nigeria, etc.). The students are extraordinarily respectful and polite to me, but don’t mind arguing/debating with each other. Since I am trying to teach the class in a way that is relevant to them, I get to focus on the parts of groups that I know best, so I think it is going fine. My other class is for seniors in community work, which is also fun. Students in both classes want to meet with me often before/after class, but they want to talk about the US elections, not class!!!