Namibia is FREEZING in the winter

Winter is in full force in Namibia, and is much colder than any of us expected. None of us have anything more than a fleece jacket, and we don't have a single sweater in the house. While it is still warm and sunny every day - usually in the low 70s, the temperature goes down dramatically at night. A few weeks ago, it went down to 25 and we had frost on the car window, but it has generally been in the 30s at night for the past month. Our house, as most houses here, has no heat and no insulation. So we sit around every evening under blankets and sleeping bags on the couches. I bought a tiny space heater a few weeks ago, and we now all crowd around that at night. My office at UNAM is also quite cold, and I have to sit leaning against the window to warm up by the sun. Last night was the first night it only went down to 50 at night, so we are hoping the worst is over.

The kids are still swimming in the pool though, but only for 10 minutes at a time. Bill discovered a solar panel on our roof which "heats" the swimming pool. He now has an obsessive routine involving opening and closing the pool cover and turning on the pump at exactly the right time of day to gradually heat the pool. After two weeks, he has now got the water temperature up to 72 degrees. I'm waiting for 80.

Girl Guides

Maxine and Alice have joined a Girl Guides troupe here in Namibia. It took me awhile to figure out what was equivalent to Girl Scouts. We hard about the regular “Scouts” program, which was a co-ed program that seemed to be mostly white Namibians. We didn’t want to do that one. After some searching, I finally found the Girl Guides of Namibia. The Girl Guides of Namibia used to be part of the South Africa Girl Guides, but broke off a few years ago to be independent. They have a tiny little office that is opened one hour per week and staffed by three lovely older volunteers. They have written their own Girl Guides manual (which is photocopied), and the uniforms and badges are all hand-sown! I’ll post photos when our camera is back from the shop, as the uniforms are very cute (this is our second camera to break since we’ve been here!). The group that our girls have joined meets every Saturday morning. They do some of the regular types of things, playing games and working on badges, but there is a definite Namibian flair. For example, a few weeks ago the girls worked on their “Making Tea” badge. Tea is important in Namibia, and there are two types. “Five Roses”, which is regular tea – referred to by its brand name, and “Rooibos”, which is southern African decaffeinated tea. The girls learned how appropriately to brew tea, and to serve it appropriately on a tray with the right accompaniments. They also have a “fingernail clean” check and expect the uniforms to be ironed! I think they will be doing some rallies and maybe even going on a trip later on. The leader of the group is very nice, and Maxine and Alice enjoy all the girls in the group. This has been a great complement to the girls’ experiences at Windhoek International School.

Oranjemund

I had the opportunity to go with some of my colleagues in early June to the far southwest corner of Namibia on the border of South Africa at the Orange River to work on a consultancy about substance use in this town. Oranjemund is a very unique town! It is a closed company town that is essentially run by a diamond mining company. I needed a special permit and police clearance just to enter the town, and you get a badge when you arrive that you must keep with you at all times. When flying into Oranjemund, which entails flying on a small plane with layovers in the coastal towns of Walvish Bay and Luderitz, you fly over a closed area called the Sperrgebiedt (which means forbidden zone). About 200 or so miles of the southern coast is closed off to all people, and you can see various “ghost towns” in the middle of the desert – middle of nowhere. This area has been one of the richest diamond fields in the world. It used to be that you could find diamonds laying in the sand, but now they are doing heavy excavation and apparently getting less returns for their work. Diamonds are still a huge part of Namibia’s GDP.

The town itself was very interesting. Because all the people in town are there because of the diamonds, this is one of the wealthiest towns in the whole country, maybe even in Africa. The town was a little oasis in the desert, with grass lawns, wooden fences and palm trees – it looks a little bit like Central California. The town is still owned by the company, and while there now are some private businesses, the company still owns all of the houses (workers are assigned a house or hostel room/dorm room based on their job classification), provides free water and electricity, and provides free health and social services (it runs a hospital, a private school for the kids, etc.). The town is still very, very safe – kids walking around at night, no burglar bars, people leave their keys in the car, no one locks their doors, etc. It has the lowest crime rate in Namibia, because the criminals can't get out of town! The town has about a dozen sports clubs, most of them that aren't appealing to the majority of Namibians (squash club, lawn bowling club, etc.). Many of the workers are bussed down here from the far north, returning only several times a year to visit their family. One of the neatest parts of the town is that because it is green oasis in the middle of the desert, there are wildlife in the town. Gemsbok, my favorite antelope, wander around the streets of town! it was so surprising to see them grazing on the schoolyard and walking in front of the Spar grocery store. The company is planning on helping to “proclaim” a municipality there sometime soon, which will change the nature of the town drastically – making it an open town. I’m happy I got to see it beforehand! We had a busy, exhausting week, interviewing about 75 people – from miners in the mines to top management to school learners. We're busy working on the report, and will return in August to deliver it.

The research team by the town entrance

Code of Honour and Oath Taking Ceremony

The Code of Honour Ceremony is an important day at the Social Work Section at the University of Namibia. The second year students, who have just finished their first term of their second year, had a big ceremony where they took an oath to uphold social work ethics, as they are about to begin to do work in the community. These are the students that I just finished teaching, so I know quite a few of them very well. While the Social Work section usually has very little funds for events, this year, due to an accounting error, there was money to hold this event off-campus. We had it at a little lodge on the edge of town. The students came dressed to the nines. While the students generally can’t afford to buy books, they can afford to buy shoes! It was worth the whole event to watch them teeter about in their leopard print or polka dot heels, or their knee high, shiny boots.
The event consisted of two separate singings of the national anthem (which is a beautiful song that makes me cry almost every time I hear it -- (you can hear a version of it on youtube at this link, though wish there was a better one!), a scripture reading, three singer/songwriters, some raunchy dancing to gangsta music, a point where we all got up and danced, a speech by the deputy Minister, and lots of protocol. I gave the “keynote” speech, which was a pleasure because I really enjoy these students and know that they are going to make such a difference in their countries. The main part of the event was when each of the student was called forward, signed the oath, and lit a candle. After all the candles were lit, they read the oath out loud together. It was very touching. After the event, thousands of photos were taken. I only took a few, but will try to get some more from some of the students.

An Africa Day Trip to the Dinosaur Footprints

Memorial Day week-end in the US was the Africa Day long week-end in Africa. Africa Day is celebrated sort of like Labor Day or Memorial Day in the United States. There are a few events, but most people just think of it as a long holiday weekend. On Africa Day week-end, we took a trip up a few hundred kilometers north to Otjihaenamaparero farm . The farm is about 200 kilometers up on the paved highway, and then a long, bumpy drive on a gravel road for 80 or so kilometers. This farm is famous in Namibia for having several long dinosaur footprint tracks. The footprints are supposedly those of a Ceratosaurus (a horn billed dinosaur). The tracks are about two inches deep into sandstone, and you can follow the footprints for over 100 feet. The owner of the farm gave us a detailed history of the geology of the area, which was quite interesting. What was strange about the whole thing, is that the tracks were out in the open, with white paint drawn around the tracks so that it would be easy to find. You can see evidence where someone had tried to steal one of the tracks by cutting it out of the sandstone – but they didn’t succeed. Maxine, who as younger kid was very interested in dinosaurs, was quite thrilled to see these footprints. Our camping sport was about ¼ miles away from the footprints, so we got to go over several times to take a look at them. It was a very beautiful spot. Alice also had an especially good time because we brought Tadiwa, her friend of UNAM village, along. All the girls also had fun playing in a creek and in the interesting rock formations, tending the fire, and telling stories late at night in the tents. Another excellent weekend in Namibia.

May Day Trip to Naukluft and the Red Desert

I've been too busy lately to post anything, but have written some notes about the last month that I'll share now. We had a lovely trip over the May Day holidays to the Namib-Naukluft National Park and the Sussevlei sand dunes. Since we just moved, we only went for a few days, but it was a wonderful trip. The first day we drove down to the Namib-Naukluft Park, which encompasses a huge area that is the boundary between the red deserts of the Namib with the interior of Namibia. The drive was essentially a 4 ½ drive southwest from Windhoek on well-groomed gravel roads. There are hardly any towns, and very few people living in this region. The scenery was simply breathtaking. We camped at a little campground in the park along the river, and the only campers in the entire park were our party and another group. Every time we go camping, we think the stargazing was the best possible ever. Well, at Naukluft it was even better than that. There is no light pollution whatsoever here, and I’ve never seen the stars anywhere like this before. Across the stream from our campground was a big limestone cliff, which as the home to a large troupe of noisy baboons who kept an eye on us. We camped with another family, and had a very nice time out in the wilderness. At night, our friend heard a noise, and a Genet was about two meters from our campfire. Later we saw these nocturnal creatures in the trees.

The next morning we planned to go on a hike to a series of pools in the river. But unfortunately, we got too close to a red wasp’s nest, and the mother wasp chased after us, stinging Alice, Ruby (twice) and me. These were nasty, painful bites, so we abandoned our hike. Instead, we drove off ahead to our next campsite only 100 or so kilometers away. Bill’s GPS listed a site in the middle of nowhere (only 10 Km off the road) that said Neuras Winery. Since we were early, we thought, why not? We found this beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert, with no one around. Bill searched around, and finally found one of the owners, who was a wonderful German woman who had retired from Windhoek 10 years ago. Although they are in the middle of a very dry desert, they are able to have a winery because of a few natural springs. Beautiful, high palms and reeds line the springs, which create the nutrients for the pools. This couple irrigates the way the Ancient Egyptians did, flooding their one-hectare vineyard with a series of irrigation canals, and the wine is organic. The woman gave us a complete tour of her vineyard, gave us onions to rub on our wasp bite, and we bought a few bottles to save for later. It was the neatest winery we’ve been to.

That night, we met up with our friends again and stayed in a campground by a lodge. The only thing memorable about this place was the millions and millions armored ground crickets which were everywhere. These are huge bugs that I found particularly gross. There were probably 1,000 of them at our campsite, and you had to watch the ground constantly when you walked so that you wouldn’t squish one (even more gross).

The next morning we woke up and went to the red desert of Sossouvlei. Many people associate these huge, red sand dunes with Namibia. We didn’t have a lot of time there, but we did climb up to Dune 45 (Maxine and I made it all the way to the top) and ran down. It really did feel like climbing a mountain it was so high. We are already planning our next trip down there, where we will camp right in the national park and stay a few days.

Missent to Myanmar

The post office assured me that it was no problem to forward mail internationally before we left. We have probably received about 30 pieces of mail total through mail forwarding until last week. Last week, I received a HUGE stack of mail the other day – more than 60 pieces of mail in a bundle. This stack included quite a few Christmas Cards sent in December, as well as correspondence from Wells Fargo informing us that our house was in foreclosure. We already did know about the foreclosure, fortunately, but not in time to cause extreme stress and headaches. Wells Fargo had made a mistake in our automatic billing (well, they essentially cancelled it for no reason), and while admitting their mistake, had refused to correct it. We finally had to get an attorney in the states to get them to agree to fix our credit, waive all fees, etc. Ugh. We will be avoiding Wells Fargo as much as possible from now on.

We had wondered why we hadn’t been receiving mail, like the Wells Fargo letters that we'd never received. But when looking closer at the stack of mail we received the other day, we noticed that each envelop had a stamp on it that said “Missent to Myanmar”. All of our mail had been forwarded to the post office in Rangoon, instead of Namibia! So we had quite a few pieces of mail that took 4 or 5 months to reach us here in Windhoek - and this is all well before the tragic cyclone that hit Burma a few weeks ago. The only explanation we can think of is that Myanmar (aka Burma) and Namibia are next to each other in the alphabet, and when sorting the mail they are accidentally putting it into the wrong country’s mail slot.