Dear friends, Grab a cup of coffee or tea if you actually read this whole thing! A week has skidded past since I first sat down with every good and noble intention to write you a brief account of my life over the three previous weeks. Clearly, I did not accomplish much in my efforts. But it is suddenly Saturday again and Jim Brickman is setting the mood for me as I reflect on my experiences. Alas! Just as I wrote that, a classmate came in to announce that three young girls want to watch TV and a group of students returned from their excursion to a coffee shop. Silence and calm are rare treasures in this house…nevertheless, I’ll make an effort to share with you some of my experiences over the last few weeks. Four weeks ago, our group of 20 students piled ourselves into two kombis (small busses) and began a three week adventure around Namibia. The first week, we went to two of the main costal towns and then to a research center far in the desert. The second week, we spent in rural villages with Herero families. The third week was our fall/spring break and ten of us camped in various places in the north-western quadrant of Namibia. Each day of those three weeks was extraordinarily unique. My favorite experience from the home-stay goes something like this: One day, I was waiting for my host mother so we could go to the store. However, five of the six children at the house started yelling and pointing to some goats running toward the house. The kids urged me to join them as they ran out into the bush. As we rushed out of the safety of the house compound, the oldest one told me that a jackal was chasing the goats! Sure enough, we found a goat with a torn ear. We kept running for a while and at some point, I stopped…looked back to find we were out of sight of the compound... …and I realized I was chasing after a hungry jackal with five goat-sized children. *not my brightest moment* We never did see a jackal there. Other fascinating experiences from the home-stay included donkey-cart rides, learning about the holy-fire (a pre-christian practice of communication with the ancestors), and climbing a red mountain in the desert with a guy named Moses who led us to water coming forth from the rocks…what! We made fat-cakes, ate kudu (look that one up since it’s an absolutely gorgeous creature…I’m still a strong omnivore), and drank intensely sweet tea. I played with the six children of my host family and had a generally fantastic time. On White-flag day, essentially a veterans day for the German-Herero war, we heard a member of the Von Trotha family formally apologize to the Herero people for the genocide that was executed at the hands of his distant relative a few generations back. Around 1904, 80% of the Herero people were massacred during the genocide and the remaining 20% were driven from their land and essentially fled to other countries. It gives room to ponder the purpose of an apology from the family…especially when it doesn’t accomplish much of what some of the Hereros are looking for in reparations. ************************************************** The break was fantastic for the most part. I’m just going to quickly list the things we did but it gets long. There were ten of us students going on a trip with three guides and we did a trip around the northwest quadrant of Namibia. These are the places we went and what we did there (not in order):
• Spitzkoppe—towering rocks good for rock climbing and scrambling around. I’m definitely interested in going back to do some real climbing.
• Skeleton Coast—to see Cape Fur Seals (not seals…actually sea lions) they stank.
• Small Beautiful Place—a small waterfall and pond. We swam in the candle-lit pond at night under the stars…the water is naturally heated and so clear! (one of my favorite moments of the whole trip)
• Petrified Forest—lots of pieces of rock that used to be tree. Incredible. I was not happy that I had no camera to capture the moments I wanted to share with people back home.
• Organ Pipes—formed from a volcano neck rock. Jon Allegar would appreciate them.
• Waterburg—A white rhino reserve on top of a plateau to prevent poaching. We never actually saw any wildlife here because we didn’t go on a game drive. But we did climb up to the top of the plateau…and that was spectacular!
• Brainberg—tallest mountain in Namibia. Didn’t climb it but we did get to see the endangered desert elephants that could have smushed us in our sleep… we also saw the ancient San painting of the “White Lady” which is neither a white person nor a woman. It’s a medicine man from the San people.
• Epupo Falls—waterfalls on the boarder of Namibia and Angola. Photographs don’t quite capture how cool it is. We went searching for crocodiles but didn’t see any.
• Himba Village—awkward tour of a Himba Village. The Himba people are really neat but they’re essentially the show-case “traditional” tribe because they continue to live and dress more traditionally than anyone else. • Stealing gas—one night we stopped to fuel up at a game park but the owners didn’t want to give us any of their fuel…so some “brothers” helped us out because they thought we should be camping at a campsite instead of the bush. Essentially, it was a covert operation in which we ended up with fuel we weren’t supposed to get.
• Welwucia (not spelled correctly…pronounced Velucia?)—very old plant that can survive with nearly no water. I think it’s the largest plant in the world with the largest one being the size of a town (I don’t really know since I haven’t seen it).
Needless to say, There’s so much I want to go back to. We spent a day or less at each place and most of the areas deserve at *least* a weekend if not more. The two places I really want to return to are Spitzkoppe and Brainburg Mt. The distance between each place is so far and so desolate…it’s an interesting country. I will not write more than this for now. It is two pages long in Word and I doubt you will be reading all of it. I hope your cup of tea or coffee lasted. | 