Academia

We have moved out of UNAM village into the former New Zealand consulate. The people at the Embassy are quite concerned with security, and the management of UNAM village was pretty poor so they approved our moving to a new place. We were plenty happy in UNAM village, and especially liked the other people living in the complex – the Geology professor from Zimbabwe, the Portuguese professor from Brazil, the Engineering professor from Tanzania, the Accounting professor from India, etc. etc. It was like a mini-UN there.

However, we are very happy with our new house. It is in a neighborhood very close to UNAM, which is fittingly called “Academia”. All the street names are of philosophers. To get to our house, you go on streets named Socrates, Hegel, Hume and Calvin, though our house is on a street named after a lesser-known philosopher, Bodin. Luckily, a friend of a friend from Minnesota was on an incredibly bike trip from Cairo to Cape Town, and he happened to be a philosophy professor from St. John's University. He told us that Bodin was the French philosopher that came up with the concept of “sovereignty”. Most Windhoek neighborhoods have themes like this. UNAM village was in Hochland Park, and the street names were bird names – Goshawk, Kingfisher, etc. Dorado Park’s streets are named after Greek Gods, Windhoek West ‘s streets are named after German composers. Downtown, it is a mix of historical figures, African democratic leaders, famous dictators, and some notorious figures. Thus, you have the intersection of Bismarck and Castro, and two of the main thoroughfares are Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela.

Our new house in Academia is still listed on some websites as the New Zealand consulate and we have already had one tourist come by our house looking for some officials. However, I don’t think the kiwis were putting much into their presence in Namibia! It is a fairly shabby house that is nothing like an embassy, but does have a swimming pool, a bar, and two outdoor braais (built in bbqs). What we like best about it is we now have room to be outside on the patio. It seemed a shame to be in this warm, dry country, but not have a place to actually sit outside. So we are happy here in Academia.