I love Cape Town

Hey,
I only have two minutes left on this internet session, so this is goign to be short.  I just wanted to let everyone know that Cape Town is an absolutely beautiful city, and I want to move here. So far the highlights have been going to Cape Point (the end of Africa), to Robben Island (the Prison where Mandela was and from wehre tehre's an amazing view of the city) and just exploring the city with friends.
  It wonderful
More later

Windhoek, it's been real

So, it's finally over. I ship out for Cape Town in the morning.  It's been quite the ride, Namibia, and I'm thankful for that.  I sometimes feel like I could have done more, been more proactive about my experience here, but overall it's been absolutely amazing.   I don't think I can even comprehend right now how much I've learned here.  I've tried to milk these last few days. Wednesday we finished our big projects (Laurie, Lauren and I looked at the effects of the alcohol industry on society, and for the creative part, made the Namibian flag our of bottle caps)  Wednesday I went to Katutura to see my homestay family a last time, and had dinner with them, and tonight I had dinner with some members of my rural homestay family who are in Windhoek (one who lives here and I'd only talked to on the phone, and the other being Malakia, my brother from the North, after which I went to temple for the last time and then briefly hit the town.  It was good. I also took a nice walk today around the city by myself. I thoguht that was a good way to finish things off.  This past week or so has been a lot of work, but also a bunch of fun, we've gone out and done fun things quite a bit, and everyone's been getting along suprisingly well.
I'm really really excited to go to Cape Town.  It's supposed to be an amazing city, plus I'll get to see my family there in a week, which is also really exciting.
I'm falling asleep right now, but I think I've said what I needed to say, more or less. Perhaps more in the morning, but definitely more from Cape Town.

It's been too long

It's been almost two weeks.  My bad.  I've been pretty busy, but also, just lazy, so sorry about that. I've still got a lot of work to be doing as the end of the semester approaches so I'll try to keep this relatively short for covering two+ weeks. Also, it's really rainy today, which is very odd, since we're in the middle of the desert.


When we left off it was Halloween.  That weekend was pretty tame, we had a guys' night on Saturday where we just hung out and watched Borat and some soccer (but sam and night are ALWAYS watching soccer) and Sunday night we had a very brief Halloween party, but pretty much everyone dressed up, which was fun.  The Zambia group plus Jess went as the 7 Deadly Sins, and I was gluttony, which was fun.  Monday our intern had to leave unexpectedly due to a family emergency Stateside, so that caused some shakeups here. When we got back from the south, the intern who was supposed to start in January was here to kind of get settled in and be someone to fill that role and stuff, btu she has to go back ot Cape Town this Friday.

So that made preparing for Wednesday a little more complicated.  In our religion class, a group of students "helps to" (and by that i mean "does," the professor is just kind of there, not doing much) organize and lead class. Our topic was "The Contribution of Minority Religions to Social Change" or something like that.  So I organized a trip to the synagogue to talk to Zvi, who serves as the rabbi for the shul, although there's no real rabbi, and the others ogranized a trip to an Islamic Cultural center (it looks weird to spell "center" the right way now) where we talked to a very interesting young Imam. He was a convert, so was very fundamental and had a lot of very critical views of Christianity. It's not anything that I hadn't heard before, but it was interesting seeing the difference between hearing those things in a group of secular religion students at Carleton, who all know a good deal abotu Islam, and a group of students who are less informed about Islam and more heavily Christian. 
When we got back to the class room we were talking about the role that the synagogue has in social action. Zvi had mentioned that due to their numbers they didn't have much organized social action programming, but a lot of them do things individually.  A number of students were extremely critical of this.  Interestingly it was the most Christian of our students.  They basically, in no uncertain terms, said that that was a bullshit excuse.  I felt that they were speaking without understanding a) the nature of the synagoge (yes, there are 60 members, but only a few come regularly and are mostly elderly, so there's not a real base to work with) and b) the nature of charity  in Judaism, which I think is often conceptualized more individually than in Christianity.  I realized that a little more clearly when I explained tzedakah in terms of tithing, and then had a hard time explaining that it doesn't have to go to the synagogue, and you can just give by yourself. Many of us in the non-Christian camp (both myself and some of the secular students) sort of felt as though they were overzealous in their criticism on Zvi and the shul (somebody used the term "Jew bashing" which I think is a little strong, but it certainly felt a little like that) and we wondered how their response would have differed if it was a small church we'd visited.

I was expecting to encounter ignorance about Judaism from Namibians, but was very suprised by how much there is within this group of Americans. It's just not something I've every really had to deal with before, as Evanston and Carleton both have a reasonably sized population of Jews.  I've been asked a lot of strange things like if we celebrate Palm Sunday (no idea how someone could think that...) and if we were allowed to eat beef (we'd be totally screwed if we weren't!) Despite there being another Jewish person on the trip, I also sometimes feel tokenized as a Jew, either just with jokes, which I don't mind much, and probably encourage, and with being asked to speak for Jews as a whole. It doesn't bother me all that much, it was just something that I wasn't expecting to deal with, and it makes me realize how important interreligious dialogue and education really is, which is good because that sort of validates what I'm studying.


Last Thursday-Sunday we were in the South looking at "sustainable development," and how development relates to the tourism industry,  but really just being on a camping trip, which was awesome.  We had a lot of time to jsut relax.  The guys forewent the idea of a tent and slept out under the stars all three nights, which was absolutely amazing.  We stayed at three different types of campsites to look at the differences between them.  Thursday was a gov't run, or more accurately parastatal campsite, governed by the park system.  You could tell it was in a little disrepair, and it was very obviously operating at a loss. We learned later that it was probably going to be shut down soon.  It was at a big dam, so there was a lake, which was cool to look at, it was werid to see water.  The landscape is very cool in the south, think Mars+South Dakota. The next day we stayed at a community run campsite at the foot of a mountain.  It wasn't much at all. Really just a toilet, and couple places to put tents and make fires. We climbed around the mountain though (couldn't go all the way up, because there was a sheer face near the top), which was fun and very beautiful. The next day, we visited a school in community that ran the campsite, and it was really nice to just be able to hang out with some kids.  One of their teachers helps run the campsite and he told us that they only make a few bucks a month beyond what it costs to pay the one employee, the guard at the gate, so it's very difficult for them to make any improvements. The last night we stayed at a beautiful lodge, taht had some campsites attached to it.  It was part of a group that basically runs private versions of national parks for profit.  They guy who spoke to us there had a lot of interesting things to say about conservation and the tourism industry, the jist of which that private companies are better at conservation than the government, because they can make it so that the profit drives the conservation and vice versa.  Overall the trip was a great time, and a good recharge.  We got to relax in nature a lot--the last night I took a walk by myself around the area underneath the stars, and it was absolutely amazing--and we learned a little bit too, which was a plus


We got back and got right back into the swing of things.  Last week I had one pretty tough day at my internship, and one amazing day.  Monday I had second grade and they were just totally wild, and I had a very tough time controlling them. I left pretty frustrated and pretty dejected about my abilities as an educator.  But on Wednesday, instead of working with a whole class I took out one third grader who's very bright but doesn't really do well in a large classroom setting.  Like all of the kids, he's got a lot of really tough things going on at home and in the community, so he's angry a lot and requires a lot of attention.  I imagine in school he sort of gets left behind, because teachers don't do well with that sort of thing. They probably just hit him with a ruler until he appears to be paying attention.  He didn't want to be separated from the class at first, but once we got into things we did great.  We were working on multiplication, until got a little bored of that, but then he asked me if I could teach him long division. And I did. It was great! On and off, throughout the first half of the day, which was math time, he would want to go back to the classroom, but after break he was really excited to come back and work with me some more.  I had him read O The Places You'll Go.  I'm not sure he really got it, I'd forgotten how abstract it was,  but there are some tough words in there, and he did well with those, and he seemed to enjoy it.  Working with him was really rewarding, and I think he got a lot out of it too. It made me realize that my strengths when it comes to teaching are in small groups or individually.

Friday in Development class we vistied a really nice private hospital and the Katutura State hospital, which is public and in the middle of the black neighborhood.  It was hard to believe we were in the same country. The private hospital seemed nicer than Evanston Hospital, while the Katutura hospital (which I'd been to before when my sister was sick on my urban homestay) was exactly what you'd think of when you think of a hospital in a developing nation.  Really crowded, paint peeling off the walls, I stepped on a cockroach.  In the wards there were only big rooms, 8 beds, with people suffereing from all kinds of things. The rooms are pretty open, too, big glass windows facing the corridors, no privacy, no real place for visitors to sit.  Comparing that to the nice, furnished rooms in the private hospitals, with no more than 3 people, and as few as just one, was remarkable.  As was comparing the maternity ward.  It was really hard to see this blatant imbalance, especially when it comes to something as important as healthcare. I've got some more thoughts on this, but I'll just leave it there for now. Ask me if you're interested.

I've spent the past few days procrastinating a paper that's due today. It's due at 5, but I have to go to my internship in the afternoon, so it's really due by about noon, when I have to leave.  The prompt was to talk about two issues in development and how they affect each other.  I was originally going to do education and unemployment, but for religion class this past week we talked about the Church's response to AIDS, and there was a lot of really interesting stuff there, so I decided to write on the Church's response to AIDS, and some of its shortcomings especially in terms of stigmatization, and then how AIDS is in turn forcing the church to change its rhetoric and becoming more of a healing society.  We needed primary research, so I talked to that itneresting woman who I talked about from Development class two weeks ago, the one who was very critical of the church, and also to the head of the health wing at the Council of Churches in Namibia, who spoke to our class on Wednesday.  I was fascinated by how much what they had to say was similar.  Their only major difference was that the CCN guy thought that it was not the Church's place to discuss premarital sex and condom use outside of marriage, and Rosa thought that that was an "excuse."  They came at the issue from very different angles, obviously, but both talked about the need for the Church to change its rhetoric, for them to improve education of pastors about AIDS, etc.  So that was pretty cool. The paper is turning out better than I thought it would, which is good.  As usual, I'm pulling my shit together at crunch time.
Speaking of which, it really is crunch time, so I need to go finish this paper.

So much to share, so much to share

Hey everyone

So, I'm trying out this pictures thing. Seeing if it works.  Anyways, it's been awhile, especailly since I've posted in a lot of detail, and about seven million awesome and interesting things have happened since then, so I'll try to give you a good rundown. I'm sure I'll leave some gaps, so please ask any questions. I was gonna break this into multiple post for ease of reading, but then I accidentally put all the pictures in here, and they took a while to upload, so sorry for the immense length of this. Feel free to skim if you so choose, or just look at the pretty pictures 

PART ONE--THE NORTH

My Rural Homestay family!

So I'll start with a little more detail than I left you with last time about the two weeks in the North. Here's a picture of my host family outside of our house. The littlest one (about 18 mo.), Gabes, is missing because he was being moody and didn't want to be in the picture.  But here you see my meme, Loinde, and the children Malakia (the big one, actually a cousin of some sort, but living with them) and then from left to right  Titus (11), Paulus(13), Cecelia (18) and Ignatus (7) (Ignatus and Gabes are also cousins, and there are some older children as well, but they live in Windhoek)

The homestay, as I mentioned in an earlier post was a really awesome learning experience. I loved being out there in the country and just hanging out with people who I would otherwise never interact with. I do wish I'd tried a little harder to have deep conversations with them--i think I was discouraged by the language barrier a little bit, but some other students did get a little bit more discussion going, although some families spoke better English. It was an awesome experience either way, and I think they got a lot out of it too--they were very excited about my being there, especially my meme, and we did have some good conversations going both ways.  

Me and the Governor of Omustasi Region

Also during the home stay we went and visited a lot of local interesting places, organizations, schools, etc.  Two of the most interesting things we did were visiting a border post with a free trade zone, and a school nearby, where we talked a lot about immigration issues, and a lot of what was said reminded me a lot of issues on teh Mexico US border. Angola is less privileged, and so a lot of them are coming over the border, and Namibians see them as taking jobs and resources from Namibians.  So it was cool to make that connection, and also to hang out with some kids at the school.  Another cool thing we did was going to the homestead of a traditional king.  Namibia, in rural areas, shares governance with traditional authoroties, so this king still had some power, and we got to see how he lives, and therefore how Ovambo royalty has lived for quite a while, which was fascinating. It took us a long time to actually see the king because there are a lot of traiditonal hoops one has to jump through to gain audience with him.  Briefly, other things we did: visit a NGO that raises fish and gives some to local farmers to promote aquaculture, a farm that employs a lot of local workers (although some of their practices are questionable), a lecutre from a local reverend, and talking to the governor of the region. It was my job to thank him and when I went to give him a handshake he gave me a big hug, which was pretty funny.

Jimmy somewhere he wasn't supposed to be

We left Outapi for Opuwo where we were to stay for a few days with the Himba people.  On the way we stopped at a dry waterfall along the Angolan border. We may or may not have gone across the border through a gap in the fence. And I may or may not have brought back some Angolan rocks as souvenirs.  Living with the Himba, when we actually got there was really really interesting. I promised some thoughts on the cultural tourism and the clash of modernity and  tradition a couple posts ago, so here are some brief thoughts. This might be boring if it's not your thang, so feel free to skip ahead to more exciting things:

Himbas trying to sell stuff to us

The Himba live very traditionally.  They live in clusters of clan-based homesteads, dress very traditonally--the women, for example, do not wear tops, and they cover their hair and bodies with a red clay and butter mixture.  The men are not usually traditionally employed, and spend their time following grazing land for the cattle.  The women are also not traditionally employed. Usually they run the homesteads, especially in the men's absence, but they also (very aggressively) sell crafts and goods to tourists, especially in town.  We also took a tour of their homestead which felt very intrusive and almost like we were in a zoo. We learned later we had made very detailed arrangments about this tour beforehand with the chief of the village, but during the tour itself, and even afterward still, i felt as though we were being very intrusive and disrespectful to the people.  This really made me question why we were there, and if it was doing more harm than good to the people. Sure they invited us, and sure they were making money off of selling us their goods and renting their campground to us, and sure their kids came and played with us after dinner (which was super fun) but it still seems to perpetuate their marginalization.  It's similar to when Native Americans sell their goods to white tourists who are just interested in them as museum pieces and for the purposes of cultural appropriation. So that's something to think about.  Also, we talked to a Himba man who was telling us about his culture, and how it was disappearing, but how that was fraught, since they were also modernizing and developing in positive ways.  He said education is necessary for advancement but also taht education was contributing to their loss of cultural identity.  So their caught in a very tough position trying to balance tradition and modernity, and neither they nor I have any answers for this, but it's an interesting problem 

While we were in the village, we visited a formerly-mobile school, which used to travel with the Himba when they were more nomadic--I also felt very intrusive there, and  a couple gov't orgs, including the Ministry of Health for the region and the protection of women and children wing of the local Namibia Police.  While we didn't learn all that much directly from the gov't orgs, we did learn a lot about how disorganized the bureaucracy  here is, because trying to actually get them to talk to us (or know what day it was) was a challenge.

We went to Etosha from there and it was amazing, but I described that already. So, on to:

PART TWO--FALL BREAK

After amusing ourselves somehow for 11 hours in Otjiwarongo, and for 20 hours on a bus, we arrived in Livingstone, Zambia.  Livingstone immediately felt a lot more African than Windhoek does, which was pretty awesome, and then we arrived at our beautiful backpackers: Jollyboys, which is the number one rated backpackers' in the country, and pretty much deserves it, and it's only $8US a night.  It really was awesome. (http://www.backpackzambia.com/backpackers.php, I'm just putting the link up because their pics are nicer than mine, and then I don't have to upload any more pics, so you can check that if you want) They helped us plan all of our adventures, and had a lot of really cool people there for us to meet--some students and volunteers, and also a good deal of people just traveling Africa or the world trying to "find themselves." They were all really cool to talk to. Apparenlty not everyone there was awesome though, because some of our thigns did disappear from the room that we shared with 10 other people including my cell phone, Lizz's iPod and some of Christiana's cash. And while that was kinda shitty, it didn't manage to put a damper on our awesome trip.  That does mean however, that you can't call me here anymore, because my phone is now being sold on the Black Market in Zambia, which is kinda cool, actually.

Now, I hear you all crying "What did you actually do, though?"  Well, friends, thanks for asking.  We did a lot of just lounging by the pool which was super relaxing, and also found a couple of fun restaurants to go out and visit, including a Mexican place (who would have guessed?!) which was actually pretty decent.  Monday night (we arrived on Saturday afternoon, and just relaxed til then) we went on a sunset/booze cruise on the Zambezi River which was absollutely beautiful, and we saw a plethora of hippos as well as an elephant just chillin on the bank.  So that was really fun.  

The next day we decided to go visit the Zambia side of Victoria falls (the falls span the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, they're almost a mile long!) Which was really pretty.  Now we'd heard of this pool at the top of the falls called Devil's Pool, and after we'd had our fill of looking at the falls' beauty were ready for some adventure so we sought out a guide.  It turns out that going to Devil's pool is really expensive so we found a guide who we'd met at Jollyboys, who's name was Jimmy, by the way, and he took us along the top of the falls to some places kinda like Devil's pool but a little less intense.  We had to climb thorugh the river and over a bunch of rocks to get there, but it was worth it.  Along the way, we sat on the edge, and took some pictures

Here's the group, on the brink!

Me on top of the falls

 

Me in the falls, don't worry I'm being held up

 

I thought that this would be scary, but I was actually a lot more calm than I expected. And we were to go a lot more crazy shit before we would leave Zambia.  After that, and after swimming in  a pool that was near, but not quite on, the edge like Devil's Pool is, we stopped at a small cataract on the way back.  On the hike over their I'd put my flip-flops in the water bottle holder of my backpack.  I heard a plop and saw a flip flop floating towards the edge. I snatched it up, thining the other one was safe in my bag, only to see the one I thought was in my bag still floating over the edge of the falls. So that was pretty itneresting.  I guess I had to sacrifice a shoe for our safety--a sacrifice I was more than willing to make.  Anyway, we weren't completely clear on where we were going, but then our guides stopped at a small cataract, much like many of the others, and told us to hop in. Now this was right on the edge of the falls, and they was a very tiny pool where water collected before going over the falls at a very fast pace.  Then they told us we were getting in.  That was a pretty scary idea.  It didn't help all that much that there was a deeper part where you could "safely" stand, and that one of the tour guides held you in by your feet.  It was still terrifying.  But once you get in it's absolutely amazing.  You can't tell from the picture very much, but the view from there is stunning.  Looking down is terrifying, but also really, really cool.  On the way back to our hostel, the cab that 5 of us were crammed into got a flat.  The perfect end to a very African day of adventure

Wednesday, we just had a chill day, although the power went out a few times at the hostel, which was kinda cool.  We needed the relaxation, though, because Thursday was to be what we called out "Jumpy, Scary Shit Day. "  Before you freak out, no, we did not go bungee jumping.  But we did do some things that were remarkably close.  The day started off relatively mundanely, for a day of jumpy scary shit, as we repelled down to the bottom of the gorge (not quite at the Falls, but in a gorge created by them.  It was really beautiful despite not being able to see the Falls themselves).  It was still pretty scary having to put yourself over the edge though, but it was pretty fun, and certainly relieving when you got to the bottom.  Unbeknownst to us, though, going to the bottom involved a pretty intense hike back up, but it was really really beautiful in the gorge, so it didn't matter much at all.  We then did what is called the Flying Fox, which is where they harness you in to something a lot like a zip-line, and then you just run and jump off the edge and fly like Super-Man and/or Peter Pan across the gorge until your momentum stops and they reel you back in (see below left).  This was one of my favorites because it allowed you to really stop and look at the scenery, once you got over the fact that you were dangling a few feet over a gorge. We did that a couple of times, and then we went back to the repelling area, and did that again, but there was a catch.  This time instead of doing it the normal way, you faced down and bounced perpendicualr to the wall. Kind of like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, climbing down that wall. That was pretty terrifying.  It's one thing to repel down a cliff when you can face that cliff, and a completely different thing when you face your impending doom the whole time.   After another long hike, they told us that it was time for the Gorge Swing.  Now a gorge swing is different from bungee jumping in that it ends up with you swinging Tarzan-esque, as opposed to flying upwards at a high velocity and with lots of snap, but it is similar to bungee jumping in that it involves, well, stepping or falling backwards over the edge of a cliff to fall for 53 meters before the swing actually kicked in. Both times I did it were equally the scariest things I've ever done.  Standing on the edge of a cliff and someone counting to three until you have to step off is an experience unlike any other.  I only knew that the fall lasted the 3.5 seconds they said it was was by how many expletives I got out on the way down. Apparently I was flailing like  something that flails an inordinate amount (what flails a lot?) on the way down as well.  Despite, and probably due to the terror of the fall, the actual swinging, especially as you slow down and have time to just (literally) hang out and enjoy the view was some of the most serene I've ever felt. After you finish swinging and sit there for a minute, they lower you down the rest of the way to the bottom of the gorge.  So after the first fall we hiked our shell-shocked butts back up the gorge and had ourselves a delicious lunch which they provided for us, before preparing to hurl ourselves over the edge again.  This time, despite the fact that I thought it would be a lot scarier than going forwards, I decided to do what they call the "death drop" and basically just lean backwards over the edge (see bottom right)  While initially this was scarier, especially when I was still at the top, I think the fall was if not more manageable, at least more fun. Probably because I'd done it before.  But it was just as big a thrill ride for certain, and still probably the craziest shit I've ever done.  So after one last hike up the gorge we decided to end our day with another round of the Flying Fox, and head home exhausted, sore, and still reeling from our preposterous adventure. 

2nd star on the right and straight on 'til morning

Bombs away!

Lots of water

So on Friday we went to the Zimbabwe side of the falls, which was absolutely stunning.  You can see much more of the actual falls from that side and it was just beautiful.  To the left is a picture of what could be an astonishing waterfall in and of itself, but that's really just a small section of Victoria Falls, albeit the most watery part at this stage of the dry season.  Also, what you can see is probably only about 2/3 of its height. So, we could definitely see why it's one of the Natural Wonders of the World. Also, there were monkeys there, and that made me happy because I like monkeys
Saturday we went on an absolutely amazing safari in Chobe National Park in Botswana. It included both a river safari and a driving safari and we saw tons of animals on both.  So many hippos and elephants which were right there in front of our faces--if you're so inclined, remind me to tell you sometime about the elephant with the "extra" trunk...  Also crocodiles, warthogs and a bunch of antelope.  We also saw two dead elephants (probably the worst smell ever smelt on Earth) One of whom was being eaten by  vultures, and we were so close to it that you could hear the vultures biting it.  So that was pretty amazing and was a wonderful capstone to our trip.

We got back on the bus Sunday afternoon with a bunch less money and a few fewer items (for some of us)  than what we started with, but we returned to Windhoek after three whirlwind weeks having gained an enormous amount of amazing experience and having three new stamps in our passports (and rocks from a fourth country, to act as substitutes for stamps we didn't bother to get...)  So I"ve now been to six Southern African countries which is pretty awesome. The busride was fine, and didn't seem like the 21 hours it lasted, which was a plus.

This week in Windhoek has been pretty mundane. Pretty much the usual stuff, a bunch of little assignements, really shoddy internet, hanging out by the pool.  It's not a very difficult life--which still kind of disturbs me every time a stop and think about it, but I think I'm just not going to think about it that much, at least right now (is that okay?)  We did have a really itneresting speaker today who had views we hadn't really heard before, both from the radical feminist perspective taht she was speaking from, and from her very very critical views on religion and the Church, which is definitely not something you ever hear in Namibia.  It was refreshing to hear a new viewpoint on things, even if I didn't agree with everything she said.  It was also refreshing to have a speaker who I really enjoyed and respected who was a black Namibian woman.  So far I'd felt bad because the two speakers I'd been drawn to most were both white Western-educated men (although they were both from the region) and that had unsettled me a little bit that those had stood out to me most. So I enjoyed that presentation on a number of levels
Had a good night tonight.  Went to temple, then out to a bar, and then home for a quick dip in the pool and some skypeing with Ethan and Adrienne.  Now I think it's time for some much needed rest.

An Awesome week

Don't have much time on the internet here. I just wanted to let everyone know that I had an absolutely amazing week in Zambia, did some aweosme things, and had the time of my life. Although I do enjoy the program, I'm really sad to be leaving here and going back. I'll tell you all all about my adventures here as well as in the north when I get back to Windhoek and am no longer paying for internet. Also, I've taken a lot of pictures since Etosha, and so have the other memebers of my trip, whcih we're all sharing (other people have most of the pics of our crazy adventure activities....i'll leave you guessing as to what those are for now) so hopefully I'll figure out a way to get some of them up here once in windhoek.
hope all is well at home
Jimmy

A Quick update from Otjiwarongo

Hey, I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm alive, and having a good time.  I'm currently in the middle of a ten hour layover between when our CGE group dropped us off in Otjiwarongo on their way back to Windhoek, and when the bus to Livingstone comes to pick us up.
The homestay was AWESOME. It was so cool to live out in the country, and to interact with people from a compeltely different background than myself. It was also cool to communicate without really understanding eachother. Only my brother, Malakia (who was actaully a cousin of some sort, the relationships were really confusing) spoke enough english to hold a converstaion, and my meme, Loinde, spoke almost none. We had a really cool night where we just stood out in their field under the stars until like midnight and she would ask me questions about America in Oshindonga and I'd answer in English, with Malakia serving as the translator. It was really interesting, and really indicative of how much in their own little world the people in the older generations are--she asked me if we had the sun in America. But they don't need to be in touch with anything. Their world is almost compeltely self-contained, and thats really cool
We spent the next couple of days in a village with Himba poeple, who live very traditionally, but are somewhat involved with the whole cultural tourism industry, which is really problematic, and on which I have a lot of thouhgs which I'll recount later. But it was really amazing when their children woudl come to our campfires at night and just hang out (and also eat some of the extra food we'd made for dinmer). Those moments reallty made me realize that Iwas in Africa
Speaking of which, we just got back form Etosha, which was amazing. We pretty much saw every cool safari animals, Lions, Rhinos, Elepahnts, all sorts of antelopes, a million giraffes, a bunch of Zebras, etc. Our campsite was right near a watering hole, where you could go and watch the animals. Wednesday night I saw a herd of 6 rhinos, and 2 herds of elephants totalling about 20 drinking right there in front of me. I also at various times saw hyenas, kudu, springboks and impalas. It was absolutely phenomonal. On our way out of the park, we saw our first papa lion, just chilling under a tree a ways away. So amazing. I have pictures of lots of animals, although not of the night-time watering hole, because it was obviosuly too dark
Looking forward very much to my next leg of the journey. Hope to update sometime in Zambia, but I don't know if that will be possible. Not as much looking forward to the 15 hour bus-ride with Jesus movies that it will take to get there.Now off to find things to do for the next 7 hours in Otjiwarongo.
Hope all is well with everyone at home.

1.5 Fortnights of Silence

So, barring miraculous Zambian internet, you won't hear from me for three weeks. While I'm gone you can marvel at this brief summary of what I'm going to do
 We're headed up to the North early tomorrow morning where we spend 6 days with host families. In the mornings we'll do programming--speakers, lectures, etc, and then spend the afternoons and nights with our families, doing whatever they do--farming, building things, taking the cattle to watering holes. Good old African stuff. From there we're spending a few days camping in a nomadic tribal area and learning about their culture, and then over to Etosha, the game park.  It's then fall break, when myself and 5 other people will be heading directly from the North to Livingstone, Zambia to hang out at Victoria Falls and be generally touristy for a few days. I'll be back on the morning of October 25.
Here's a little bit more detailed information for those of you who are interested:
The homestays will be near the town of Outapi, just south of the Angolan border, roughly center on the east-west axis, there we'll be until Saturday afternoon. I know a little bit about my family. There's a mom (maybe a dad too?) and 5 children. 4 boys 7-22 and a 13 year old girl. They have a lot of livestock including cattle, goats, chickens, and pigs.
On Saturday we head out for Opuwo, which is where the tribal people will be (they're from the Himba tribe, if you wanna look that up). That will take us through Tuesday the 12th.  The next two days we're in Etosha.
I'm taking the 10pm bus out of Otjiwarango to Livingstone on Friday the 15th, and the bus back from Livingstone to Windhoek overnight on the 24-25 October.
For all of this, but especially the home stay, I'm very excited but also really nervous. It's going to be just unlike anything I've ever experienced before, and that's nerve-wracking. I'm especially concerned about the language barrier. But it will also be an excellent thing to have experienced, and I'm sure will be a very very educational experience.
I'll try not to get Malaria, mauled by a lion, or fall off the edge of the waterfall. Otherwise this blog would get very boring very quickly, and we can't have that.
So yeah, if I can get on the Web in Livingstone, I might post. But I don't know how likely that will be.
I hope you all have a good three weeks!

IT'S FREAKING RAINING

So, I've now seen rain on the continent of Africa.  That's pretty cool, especially since Namibia is so dry, but it rained a little today. It started out as a little drizzle, that got us all very excited, and then really started to come down for a few minutes. It was really refreshing.
Anyway, you might be wondering why I haven't posted in about three forevers.  It's mostly because I'm lazy, but I've actually been super busy the past couple of weeks.  Before leaving for Swakopmund I had a big paper due, and then I was sans internet for 5 days, and I've now had a lot more work to do since I've been back, both with school and with planning my fall break trip to Victoria Falls, which is going to be SUPER AWESOME.
Swakopmund (known to the locals as Swakop, for short) is a touristy costal town where you can feel the German influence much more than you can in Windhoek.  Most of the architecture is very German, there are more signs and things written in German, and there are a lot more German tourists, so you here the language everywhere.  The ocean is really beautiful there, but it's much colder on the coast than it is in Windhoek, so it was too cold to spend all our time on the beach.   A good portion of our time there we were free to just explore the city and do fun things, although we did have some educational things to do during the day, like visiting some NGOs and talking to government officials, mostly about free trade--there's a big important harbor near Swakop called Walvis Bay which is an Export Processing Zone, which basically means foreign businesses can come there and set up factories and the like with no tax and little government intervention. It was decently interesting, although all the educational stuff was not quite as organized as it could hve been.
We had Saturday completely off, and a lot of people had already planned things like ATVing on the dunes and going on marine-life boat tours.  A few of us just decided to wing it when we got there.  'd heard of something called sandboarding, which is basically snowboarding down dunes, but didn't really know too much about it. However, I randomly met a guy who was staying at the same backpackers' lodge that we were who worked for a sandboarding company and gave us really good rates. It was a blast! We graduated to bigger and bigger dunes over the course of the morning, and also got to slide down a really steep one on these waxed pieces of masonite. It was awesome.  Once Laurie gets the pictures onto her computer, I'll try to share some. The desert is really amazing there.  First of all, it comes right up to the ocean. So driving along the coast, if you look out one window, you could be in the middle of Saudi Arabia, and if you look out the other window you could be on the Oregon coast. It's really quite remarkable.  And then once you're over the first row of dunes, it's just sand as far as you can see in any direction, which is simultaneously mind-boggling and breath-taking. We had a lot of fun exploring the city, too, we found some fun little restaurants and clubs, and spent a good deal of time being really cold on the beach.
There's not all that much else to report, really. We leave for the North, which includes our rural homestays and going to the Etosha game reserve on Sunday or Monday, and the six of us in our fall break group (Me, Lizz, Christiana, Kayla, Maggie and Caitlin) are going to catch a bus straight from there to Livingstone, Zambia to hang out at Victoria Falls.  There's a lot of cool stuff to do there, and we'll probably venture into Botswana a little bit as well--we're really just winging it, while staying at a really cheap (US$8/night) backpackers' hostel. There are some really cool things to do there that I will be to scared to do, like bungee jumping into the gorge of the falls, and going swimming at a still pool right at the edge of the 400 ft falls, with 500 million liters of water around you rushing over the edge every minute. Those would be cool stories to have, I just don't think I'm up for that adventure.
Right now I should be working on this resreach paper. The prompt is to talk about one aspect of globalization and how it's either helping or hurting society, so I'm looking into philanthropy/social welfare projects and philsophies of multinational corporations and the theories behind them. It's pretty interesting, althoguh I'm kind of sick of the paper.  Like everything in the world of development, there's a lot of both good and bad involved in it.
My internship is going pretty well too.  I don't absolutely love it, and I still sometimes feel like I'm floundering in the classroom, but I'm defintiely starting to have a better time there, and occasionally feel like I'm really doing something useful.  Monday I only had six kids, so I did a math tournament with basic math facts the whole time, which was pretty fun, and today we sort of rambled and talked about a lot of things, and then I tried to teach them about past tense verbs, esp. irregular ones (I got the idea to do that because I noticed that nobody knew how to make "fight" past tense when I had them write about Sam Nujoma, who was the first president of Namibia).  I think that went over decently.  I did struggle a bit philosophically, because I was told to tell them that they weren't allowed to speak Damara in the classroom (apparently a lot of them had been swearing or something).  I'd already been thinking a lot about mother-tongue education and how it's probably so much better, so that really hit home for me.  Especially because the catalyst of the Soweto uprisings in '76 was Afrikans being used as the medium of education in Black schools.  I don't really see all that much difference with Black children in Namibia and South Africa (and at Hispanic people in the States) having to learn everything in English. So that's something that I'm struggling with, and not really expecting to get any answers on. Although maybe some insights will grow as I continue my work and study
I think the only other interesting thing that I have to report is that this morning we went and saw a really interesting speaker who is a pastor at the Dutch Reformed Church, which if you happen to know anything about the history of Southern Africa, you'll know was pretty much the church of Apartheid, which makes sense being an Afrikaner institution and all.  This guy was far from a bigot, though. He grew up in the Church but always had serious problems with Apartheid (all his playmates growing up were Black South Africans, to the point that for a while when he was little he thought in Zulu). He became a pastor in the mid-80s right around the time that the church was changing its positions, and was a voice in favor of doing so.  He's still pushing for more liberalization of the church, and to the chagrin of a lot of his parishioners, welcomes homeless people into the church on a regular basis. He also had some cool political views.  For one thing, he was very much for mother-tongue education, which was refreshing, although, that brought up the question of whether or not that would de-facto re-segregate the schools, and whether or not that cost was worth the benefits. He was also very much wary of any sort of foreign, or even internal, aid, because he thinks--and I agree, mostly--that the people receiving the aid must determine what form the help takes.  You have to ask people what they need and provide it instead of just decided what they need and giving that to them. That, he said, is a form of modern Apartheid. It was interesting that he talked so much about that, since it's a lot of what we've been discussing in Development class.  He also shared, which I thought was cool, that in the Dutch Reformed Church, the highest paid employee is allowed to earn no more than seven times the lowest paid employee.  Which not only keeps things more level but makes it so that if the head honcho wants to give himself a raise he has to bring everyone else up with him. He said a lot of other cool thing that I'm not remembering right now, but if you're interested feel free to ask, and I'm sure I can pull some stuff out.
Anyways, I think that's all for now. Don't hesitate to ask anything!
I now need to either get some work one or go to bed
Best,
Jimmy

Fasting in the Desert

Hey all,
A meaningful fast to any of you Jews. I'm on a break between services right now and listening to the Knights' (Carleton a capella) version of Apologize by One Republic, cuz we thought that would be appropriate, and we couldn't find Sorry to play or Atonement to watch.
So it's been awhile. Sorry about that, I've been pretty busy, both with class and related activities, as well as just trying to enjoy Africa as much as possible. My homestay finished up pretty well. Last Saturday I got to see both the Katutura hospital, which was kinda depressing, but interesting, cuz we were visiting my sister--she was feeling a lot better though, so that was good--and then to Oscar's workplace at a small airport, because he got called in on Saturday. It was cool to see what he does, which is basically manage a warehouse of cargo, and we met one of his co-workers who was pretty awesome.  On the way home we stopped at the graveyard to visit their son who died three years ago when he was 6 months old.   It was really sad, both for obvious reasons, and also because a lot of the graves didn't really have headstones and most were not well-kempt. I told Oscar about the tradition of putting a stone on headstones, and he really like that idea. Sunday was pretty ueventful, until I left. I did go to church, which I was upset at the time about having been 3 and a half hours of no English (it was mostly Oshivambo, and some Afrikaans) but then I realized that that's what this morning at Shul was. Granted it's different, but this morning put that in perspective a little bit.
Also, from a funny but also sociologically interesting perspective sometime Saturday or Sunday my little 5 year old cousin decided I was from a tribe called Damara, and started saying really mean (for a 5-year old) things to me because of it like "go away, you are Damara" and "i'll beat you, you are Damara." She seemed like she was just joking around, but it's still interesting that that would even be somethign she would think about, and it really highlights the strife that exists between different black ethnic groups within Namibia.  We learned a little more about this on Thursday in history class.  We heard from a speaker who had been detained along with 1-3 thousand others by SWAPO during the liberation struggle on the false suspicion that they were spies for the South African Army.  Terrible things were done to thsese people, and SWAPO still refuses to talk about it.  When I asked her how they went about "deciding" who to expect, she basically said that anyone who wasn't Ovambo was more likely to be detained than to not be.  It's interesting that people fighting against racial discrimination will commit the same things within their own group. I guess power corrupts, or something like that.  The experience of hearing this woman speak was especially interesting because earlier on Thursday we'd gone to see Heroes' Acre, which is the monument to all of the freedom fighters, and basically glorifies the SWAPO struggle. Now, of course they did something very good for Namibia and Namibians, but it was really fascinating and important to see both sides of the story.
Back to the home stay real quick. Leaving was, I think, an overall good thing, but not completely. While I'm glad to be back here at the house, I do feel like I'm experiencing Namibia a little less fully, y'know, a little more like I'm just in Europe or something. It was a really good experience to have had though, overall, despite its hardships, and I definitely want to go back there for dinner or something a few times.
My itnernship is going pretty well, although it's kinda unorganized--I'm never really sure what grade I'm going to have until I get there, although it seems as though they've settled me at 3rd grade as my go-to. I've found it a little hard to keep their attentions, and to figure out exactly where they're at. But all of that will come with time.  I'm also not totally sure whether or not what I'm doing is all that helpful.  Neither me, nor any of the other volunteers, really,  have much experience in education, and its inconsistent who's there on a given day and what exactly they'll be doing. I mean obviously it's something, and it's always going to be an uphill battle, but I feel kind of inutile there a lot of time.
Classes are pretty good. I feel liek I'm learning a lot, although it's kinda weird to be back now consistently  in a  more regular schoolish setting. granted it's not the same structure, we have long (4 hour) classes, once a week per class, and often a lot of that class time is taken up by field trips and/or speakers, but it's still weird having assignments and papers and stuff while being in such a different setting. Also, a lot of the assignments are personal reflections, which I see the use of, but I feel like there have been too many, and I really don't like them all that much. But at least they're not too hard. I do have a couple of real papers coming up though, so that should be cool.
Aside from that, I've also still managed to find some time to hang out by the pool and go to the 'Box. We went for dinner on Thursday. They have a braii (Afrikaans for bbq) on Thursdays and Sundays, so we went to check it out. It was pretty good, and a springbok sausage (tasted pretty much like regular sausage) and some oryx which was pretty good, but took longer to cook than a regular steak would for some reason.
That's about it from here for now. Yom Kippur is alright, it's like 4:30 so I'm getting into the hungry stage (home stretch though!) Temple is a little weird. I have the same issues with it that I did on Rosh Hashannah, only Hebrew, kinda impersonal, too much self-guided/not enough communal etc. Although the Canadian guy has been leading so some of his tunes are familiar, esp. for like the Aleinu and stuff. Anyways it's still nice to be in temple ,adn comforting to know that my family and Jew-friends are doing the same things today (at least the ones who don't suck at being Jewish, I'm looking at you Ethan and Zoe). Anyways, we're going to head back to temple now for Ne'ila and so that I can atone for that last statement.
I'll post again before Wednesday when we leave for the coast for 5 days.
Good shabbes and good yontiff, and peace out!
-jimmy

More on the Homestays

So this morning I had class, and there was this really really interesting speaker. He was talking about how Namibia has the largest inequality between rich and poor in the world, and then talked about some of the reasons for that and solutions to the problem. Aside from the obvious legacy of apartheid, was the fact that Namibia gained independence in 1990, as the Soviet Union was falling and Reganomics was the name of the game. So, private property became sacred in the constitution, so any redistribution became impossible, which only hindered redevelopment.  Further, the prevailing idea of Black economic empowerment didn't do all that much structurally, as this speaker said it only changed the CEO from Mr Schultz to Mr Okavonga. This man was working on a project called the Basic Income Grant, which would provide every Namibian under the age of 60 regardless of any other factors with N$100 a month unconditionally. The rich people would give the money back via taxes, and any conditional program necessarily leave people out, so it seems like a pretty decent idea. He also had this theory that was interesting in which African countries would refuse to export raw materials, to force production to stay in the country creating jobs and bringing in business. Also seems like a pretty cool idea. Anwyas, that was just an interesting experience that I wanted to share.
And one more before I start talking about the homestay in earnest. Last night I went to services for the second night of Rosh Hashannah (Caitlin and I went the first night too, which was really nice, but didn't go in the morning b/c we had class) The service itself was unremarkable, but these two black-hats from Joburg who had come up for the Holidays invited us back to the place that they were staying. Pretty awesome to be having Rosh Hashannah dinner with 8 Jews in Windhoek. But on the walk over Caitlin noticed that one of the other girls was wearing a Boston University shirt, and she asked where she was from, and turns out she's from Missouri, which is crazy since Caitlin is from St Louis. But that's still not the crazy part. So we asked why she's in the area, and she was studying dance for the semester at the U of Cape Town and taking her "spring" break backpacking and hitchhicking by herself through southern Africa. She'd been in Zambia the previous day and gotten a ride to the border with a diamond smuggler and then taken a bus to Windhoek.  Also crazy, still not the craziest part. So we kept talking and it turns out that she goes to U of I, and is best friends with a friend of Ethan and Adrienne. I know this guy too, and she knows Ethan and Adrienne!! Small world, huh? (especially among us Jews)
So. On to the homestay..
I'm living with Oscar Shikeva, his wife Hllma, his three kids Mathheus (17) Anna-Marie (15) and Saraphina (12) and Hilma's niece Lilly (5) who's really cute but a bundle of energy. It's just been a really really interesting experience. As I've described, they are quite poor, so the inequalities we've been talking about in class are really self-evident--or just when you think about how our house has 4 people and 3 stories, and they're 6 people crammed into this little house. But the community is pretty tight. I was over at Kevin's host fmaily's house (he lives just across the street) and they were serving dinner, and I said that I didn't need any, I was just visiting, but the mother said "There's always enough, even for the guests." Which really struck me, because it's totally not a sentiment that you'd usually hear in the U.S, where we have so much more--so that's something to think about.
I'm glad I've been living close to a couple of other kids, because that means we see eachother some times and get to talk about the experience, which I think is really important. I think that that's where the learning and growing really happens. Kevin, Alissa, and I talked the other day about what to do with this experience when we get home. Is it enough to just be more aware of how different people live, and the systems that cause those problems? We decided that it probably wasn't really enough, but we didn't really get at what would be. But that discussion still helped me feel better about the experience as a whole. As did seeing some cultural things, like a wedding last saturday, and that party afterwards. Both of my parents sang in the choir which was pretty cool. They also had a Boyz-2-Men style R&B band, which was fun. There was also a party later that afternoon, and I've never seen that much food. It just kept coming! We hung out in a room with my parents' choir friends which was cool, since there was a lot of singing. The next day was hard, though, despite cultural experience. We went to regular chucrh, which was like two and a half hours, none of which was in English, so I ended up making silly faces with the toddler sitting in front of me, since neither of us knew what was going on, that was pretty okay. But later we went to what was supposed to be a baptism party out in the informal settlements. It was supposed to start at 3, but ended up not really starting til 5, and even when it did start nothing really happened .So it was a lot of me sitting around an extremely impoverished neighborhood with the music too loud for me to talk to anyone outside of a one-room tin shack. So that was pretty tough on me.
They also don't do all that much, so being at their house is a little bit boring. While I've had some good conversations, especially with my father, and occasionally play cards with the kids (I taught the son Casino!) or help them with math, which I'll get to in a sec. But really, they spend most of their time in front of the TV. Not that this is any product of poverty or Namibian-ness, it's just an observation. They also don't seem to have many books in the house, so I bought them each a book as a gift, including Bartholomew Cubbins and the 500 Hats! 
So the education system seems to be really floundering here despite the fact that apparently the Namibian gov't  spends more per student on education than any other African country. Apparently throwing money at problems is not the only solution. But yeah, my 17 year old host brother is struggling really hard with even very very simple mental math. I learned at my internship the other day that the school day consists only of 4 45-minute classes, which just doesn't seem like enough to educate anyone properly. And of course the quality of education still reflects old Apartheid ways. You have great education in the fancy, formerly all-white, now mostly white, expensive private schools in Windhoek. Then the schools in nice neighborhoods in town, again, mostly white, and now white and neavuau-riche black, and then the township schools, like the ones in Katutura, and then out in the bush. When unemployment is through the roof, and people are starving, a good education is one of the only ways out, and if people aren't getting that, things won't get better. They also don't seem to get any education about non-Christian religions (although I don't know if its all that relevant that they do) since my brother seemed very confused about being Jewish meant.
People do seem to have ways of making ends meet. Aside from both parents working, they also sell cell phone minutes out of their house ( a relatively common practice, nobody has plans here, they just buy prepaid minute cards) and Oscar has a meat saw in the (tin) garage, and HIlma makes extra food most days that both of them sell at work. It's encouraging that people have the initiative to do what needs to be done, but disappointing that that needs to happen.
They do seem to live pretty happily though, although one of the daughters has epilepsy, and between yesterday and this morning she had a number of small seizures and was taken to the hospital this morning, but she's doing okay. I can't even imagine being in that financial situation and having to deal with a chronic condition like that.
Anyways, those are my major impressions so far. If you have any questions about my experience at all, don't hesitate to ask, and I'm sure I'll think of something to add later.
Not sure what the homestay plans are for this weekend, although I've got some homework i should do while I'm there. And we come home Sunday afternoon. Which is mostly exciting, but I am having a good, although definitely tough, experience in Katutura.

5 days in "The Place We Don't Want to Live"

First of all. If you asked me a question in the comments earlier I answered them.
So, I've been living with a nice family in Katatura for the last 5 days. They're pretty poor, which is hard and thought-provoking, but they make ends meet, and are a good family.  Their house was an old apartheid house which meant it originally was four small rooms (2 bedrooms, a kitchen and a sitting room) with no water or electricity. They've added another bedroom and a garage made out of tin (a lot of families there have made more legitimate additions) and they have electricity including a TV and a nice computer--but no internet, and a sink with running water in the kitchen, although the bathroom is outside.  I don't have all that much time right now, I jsut wanted to let you know that I was alive and was learning a lot on this homestay. There are lots of interesting issues and stuff to wrestle with, as you can probably imagine. More later, probably tomorrow--I'll post much more detailed summaries and such then. Miss you all!

And time marches on

 So, as per usual it's been quite the few days since my last correspondence. Sunday was very relaxed, we had a picnic lunch/house meeting in a beautiful park, and then some of the guys went to go try to find somewehre to watch the Liverpool soccer game--Sam is a huge fan. It was a bit of an adventure, but along the way we met an awesome cab driver who came into a place to check out if it was safe to watch in there, and then took us to somewehre else for free when it seemed a little shady. So now we've got a guy to call when we need rides. Made another friend later at the bar, Maggie and I talked to a guy who runs some Safari programs--he was really cool. 
Monday was the first day of my internship, and I was really nervous. But it turned out I just had to go in the afternoon, instead of all day, like i usually will on Mondays. So I got there and got shown around by the boss, Mary, an American perpetual volunteer.  She's spent the last 13 years running programs in different parts of the world, which is pretty cool. Most of the time, though, I just spent hanging out with the kids, mostly playing four-square, which was fun. They usually have class time in the afternoons, to try to get the kids a little extra help, but they're on school break right now, so they just played all afternoon. Next week, when school starts again, I am going to be teaching 4th graders English and math, which should be interesting--an experience to say the least. The kids are mostly poor and not doing very well in school, but they're at least a little motivated, because they have to choose to go to the program. It's tough, though, some of the kids have been through a lot. So yeah, that's my internship, more or less.  I went back Wednesday morning (I'll usually be going on wednesday afternoons, but the schedule was a little different yesterday) and did a little grunt work stapling and stuff, and then tutored a tenth grade girl in math and science. She was really nice, and clearly bright but hadn't been given much opportunity to learn.
Most of Tuesday we were at a team building retreat at a farm in the desert on the outskirts of town. It was really pretty out there. The program was a lot better than I had been expecting. It was cool to hear people's stories, and it was interesting because the program is (at least partially) about recognizing our privilege as a group, but that reminded me of my privilege within the group, which was an interesting realization. But yeah it was a fun time. We came back and just chilled, and then watched a movie for the third time in four nights. This time it was Matilda, which was fun, if not a little dorky.
So yesterday morning I went to my internship, as I described above, and learned that I'd be teaching, which is a little nerve-racking, but exciting. Then we came back and learned about our home-stay families and more about our expectations for them, and such. Then I did some reading for History class, which was this morning, and Development, which is tomorrow, and then a few of us went to the bar to celebrate out last night together for a little while. And that was really fun.
This morning was class. Which was long, even though we went to a museum for an hour in the middle. It was a museum about native peoples, and was kinda bad, clearly underfunded. It reminded me a little of the Mitchell Indian Museum in Evanston. Then we went back and talked more about different groups and general history of Namibia. It was interesting, but I was a little tired.
So, my homestay parents are coming in like 20 minutes to pick me up, which is kinda terrifying but also exciting. They live in Katatura and are a family of five, a 17 year old son, and two younger daughters (12 and 15, I believe). So that should be cool. It's ten days. It's a little weird that this is starting right as the normal schedule is also starting up.  But s'all good. It will be good to see another part of life--how different people live. I don't think we're going to have much time to get settled at any time. Every couple weeks we're doing something different. That's pretty cool, although I wouldn't mind a little more structure. Well, that's all ofr now, I need to finish getting all packed up for this homestay. I'll try to post at some point in the next few days, but don't know what my internet situation will be.
Thanks to everyone for reading!
--Jimmy

Windhoek: An Introduction.

We've only been here for 4 days but it feels like a lot longer than that.  We've done a lot, but also just chilled a lot as well, and explored a bit of the night life of Windhoek.  I'll just run through real quick what we've been up to the last few days, and share some thoughts along the way:

Thursday

  We spent the morning driving around Windhoek, getting a feel for the lay of the land, but mostly seeing that Apartheid sucks, and continues to cause suckage, here too. Apparently the Germans and then the South Africans kept moving the black people to new parts of town when they decided they wanted to live in the places where Black people lived. The main black area today is called Katutura, which is Oshivambo for "the place where we don't want to settle."  That pretty much says it all. We also drove through the informal settlements here, which are a lot like Kliptown in Soweto (see above). Parts of it seemed a little better--among the thousands of tin huts, there were some tin schools, kindergartens and restaurants, and even a few schools made out of legitimate building materials. But in some ways it also seemed worse. It was bigger and more sprawling, and it spread out into the desert, which made it seem like it would be much harder to get resources out there.  It also felt a little offensive to just kinda drive through--like we were tourists to their poverty. But I think it's important to see, and to think about. It also felt a little weird coming back from there to our nice big house and sitting on the deck by our pool.  I think it's good though, to be so starkly made aware of one's privilege.

In the afternoon we met and talked about our internships. I'm working in an afterschool program at a place called Catholic AIDS Action, although it sounds like I won't be doing anything that has to do with either AIDS or Catholicism, at least not directly.  I am a little nervous though. It sounds like it will be kind of hectic, there are a lot of children, and I'm not sure how much staff there is. And from notes that previous interns there left ,it sounds like they like people to kinda just jump in and start their own projects there, which is not really my strong suit. I work better with a little bit of guidance. But, who knows? It could be great. I think I mostly just don't know what to expect. But I start tomorrow afternoon, so I'll let you know. 

After that we just hung out for a while. We went back to the Cardboard Box, the bar up the street, briefly, and then came back and watched Finding Forester on VHS, which was nicely nostalgic. There was a woman staying here until Friday who had a 3 year old son, who'd but the remote in the VCR, so we had a little trouble getting it started, but yeah, that was fun. And that was pretty much Thursday

Friday

  We started off the morning by going to the US Embassy for a "Safety and Security" briefing. It was basically just scaring us. They more or less said that we will certainly get robbed, probably raped, and we'd definitely die if we got in a car. They also said never to go out after dark, or ever go into any black neighborhoods (not quite in so many words, but pretty much).

So, obviously, then we spent most of the rest of the day in Katutura. We split up into different groups and each went to a different important place in Katutura to talk to the people there, with a "tour guide" from Katutura--mostly people our age from a "Young Achievers" organization. Allison, Sarah, and I were with Michael, who was a young achiever indeed, he was part of a delegation of 120 (3 from 40 countries) young Africans with potential who were invited by Obama to a conference in Washington. So he spent the week there two weeks ago, and got to meet the President and hang out in the white house and do generally cool and important things around Washington. Anyways, our place of interest was a "small business incubator" which was basically a lot with a bunch of garages in it out of which people run small restaurants or tailor shops or craft stores or suchlike things. We spent an hour or two there talking to the people and learning about how they do their business and stuff. Then we walked around Katutura for a while. Michael showed us the Young Achievers center, which is funded by the Dutch government, which is pretty cool. From them he got in contact with a guy who is going to invest in the poultry farm he wants to open (apparently Namibia imports like 90% of its chicken, and he wants to change that) We then stopped by a place where they were grilling some beef and tried some of that which was very tasty, and then by a market to grab lunch, which we ate at Micheal's house. It was a really great experience overall, and I'd now feel much more comfortable in that area of town. 

We came back and debriefed about that experience and talked about prices a little bit. Things are pretty cheap here, but you can't just look at exchange rate. For Namibians, things are actually more expensive than they are for us in the States since they make so much less. So, although it seems great that I got a cell phone, a SIM and some coverage for N$350 (US$ 50), or can go out to a bar and, including cab fare spend less than N$100 (about US$14) on the whole night, that actually would be a lot for a Namibian to pay. Just more things to keep in mind.

After dinner Caitlin, the other Jew on the program, and Maggie, a friend who was just interested, sought out the local synagogue for services. Everyone was very nice, there was a small group of mostly older people (one Black man, which was interesting) and they were very welcoming to us. The service itself was a bit orthodox-y for me.  The girls had to sit upstairs, the rabbi faced the arc the whole time, and most things were done silently, but it was still nice to be at a service and meet people. I'll definitely go back for the Holidays, and maybe a few other Fridays, but I probably won't make a habit out of it, the orthodoxy made me a little uncomfortable.

After that some of us went out to a different bar, which was fun. We hung out with three Namibians we met there for a while. It was cool talking to real people and making some friends. So yeah, Friday was crazy, but really educational and really fun

Saturday

Yesterday was really relaxed.  In the morning some of us went to the mall to get cell phones and some other things. Then spent most of the afternoon chilling by the pool, doing a little reading for class (yup, already have some homework) then some of us went to this little cafe in a park. It was beautiful, and kinda felt like it was in Europe. Lizz tried to order some cheese with the wine that she got there, and 3 sliced of cheddar came on a little plate with a knife and fork.   Last night was pretty chill. Almost everyone stayed in, and a lot of us watched District 9, which was especially powerful after having been in South Africa. The elements of Apartheid very, very strongly paralleled real life.

Today I've pretty much just been writing this outside by the pool. We've got a picnic lunch today, which should be fun. Tomorrow internships start, which is scary. Tuesday we have this retreat where we're all "learning about eachother" and stuff, which I'm all for, but they want us to do this "road map"of our identities talking about how various aspects of our personalities have shaped us. It's sort of a good idea, but I think it's going about it in kinda a lame way. Especially that we have to make a visual aid. Oh well. It's pretty much the least big deal.

So that's about it. Yeah, Things are pretty good here.

We've got some catching up to do

(Sorry this is so long. I've got a lot to get through, my posts will usually be much shorter and less summary-oriented)

Sawubona! (That's Zulu for "Hello")
Got into Windhoek this afternoon after a whirlwind ten days in South Africa, which I'll try to summarize in a second. The house in Windhoek is quite nice, and I've got a good sized room with two other guys, who are both pretty awesome: Donald, a Poli-Sci and Philosophy major from UNC and Nick, a International Business major from the U of Puget Sound. Everyone here is pretty excellent, and though it doesn't quite feel like home yet, I'm looking forward to an excellent semester! But now let's back up a little bit and talk about how we got to this fine town in the middle of the desert.


Joburg:
The flight over was fine--uneventful, but it seemed shorter than it actually was, and I got to know some people in the group since there were about 12 of us sitting right together on the plane. Did some chatting, some reading, and watched some movies.  It was dark when we got to where we were staying, which was a old convent at a church called St Peter's that is now used for retreats. It was sparse but nice.  I stayed with Donald there as well.


Basically, the focus of our time in Johannesburg was that, even after the fall of Apartheid and the establishment of democracy in 1994, there are still a lot of problems and inequities in the country, and that the government is not necessarily doing a lot to fix it. Basically, asking the question of how to rebuild a nation after something like South Africa went through for most of the 20th century. A man I talked to on my homestay in Soweto summed it up pretty well, by saying that currently South Africa is only a true democracy in name, but on the ground the people still don't have a real voice.
Our first real introduction to this problem (we started off Monday with a few brief history lessons, both at St Peters, and on the road in Soweto) was seeing a part of Soweto known as Kliptown.  We'd just seen a monument to the Freedom Charter which was the guiding document of the ANC (Nelson Mandela's party, and the party that's been in power in SA since '94) that was written in the '50s. It stated things like "everyone has the right to human dignity" and all that good stuff.  We then crossed the train tracks and were in Kliptown. From the bridge over the tracks we could see a sea of tin-roofed shacks, port-o-potties and trash. The first thing that hit me was the smell. Trash, smoke, urine--it was really overwhelming. I kept thinking we wouldn't continue on. First that we'd just look from the bridge and go back, then, as they led us down the other side, that we'd just be there for a second, but we walked through the place for more than an hour.  It was really terrible, visceral, abject poverty. No running water, they had to steal electricity, tiny crumbling shacks. Everything. We had a couple of "tour guides" who were really residents, and part of Kliptown's activist organization, and theytook us around their community, and showed us how things weren't working and how the gov't wasn't doing anything about it. It was very powerful, but really really emotionally overwhelming. There were so many different emotions going on: guilt, wanting to help, thankfulness for my own privilege, wanting to just put it out of mind and move on. It's really hard to reconcile all of that. But definitely, overall, a positive experience. There's a temptation at a time like that to say 'oh man, why didn't i just go to Prague or something' but then you sit back and realize that this is so much more meaningful and useful in life.  I'm still struggling, however, to try to work through all the inequality and contradiction. 
For example, they resent Mandela a bit there, since

 Next day, we learned a lot about the student uprisings in Soweto in '76 (basically, this was the beginning of a mass struggle against apartheid. A bunch of high school students protested use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools, since they thought it was a language of oppression, the police started shooting and things went south from there)  and went to a museum dedicated to one of the students who was killed, where we talked to his sister. Later, we got a talk from a white South African who is trying to de-privatize a lot of the institutions that were privatized under the ANC in the late 90s--he was kicked out of the Communist party for, as he puts it "actually being a communist. " He was an excellent speaker and had a lot of interesting things to say.
Quick highlights of the rest of our time in Joburg before the homestays:

 -We spent a morning at the Apartheid museum. Fascinating, all though not the best-laid out. Very nice space though. Done by the same people as the holocaust museum in DC. Learned a lot, though.
- We spoke with a support group for victims of apartheid (prisoners, poeple who had been shot or t ortured, etc/.) that was also an advocacy group, trying to get reparation money for them, esp. by suing major international companies that gave money and supplies to the Apartheid. Disappointingly, it was not a terribly fascinating experience, but something interesting happened while we were there.  Just before we got there they'd gotten word that they'd recieved a $1.2 million grant from the Gates foundation, and while we were there they got a call from someone else in the org. who'd figured out it was a hoax. So that was pretty terrible, but interesting to see.
  -Went to a play in Joburg, that was pretty cool. It was just two women waiting in line for rice, one a prostitute, and one an old lady, and how they interacted with eachother, and occasionally the audience.
Today, we started off the morning by visiting the office of the biggest opposition party the Democratic Alliance which is, although they denied it, more or less the white party (oddly enough, over time the progressive and far right white parties both consolidated into this big party, although some fringe groups still remain). After that
--we spoke with the VP of Gender Links, a really great advocacy group for women's rights and equality, with a major part of their focus being how women are portrayed in the media across southern Africa. The speaker was quite amazing. Very knowledgeable and engaging. 
--we went to lunch at a big open air market, where I haggled for some world cup jerseys (and probably paid too much in the end anyways.
--we went to the Treatment Action Center which works with HIV/AIDS in a number of differnet capacaties throughout the country. Where we heard from a very funny, dynamic and honest man who has HIV and told us his own story, and about the organization
The last thing we did before heading out to our home stays (besides a sort of decompression chat session in a park) was hearing a dry and too-long talk from an ANC member about their history and hwat they're up to now. It was interesting, however, since a lot of what he said directly contradicted other things that we'd seen and heard.  Most interesting to me is that he said that the ANC had not undergone any major shifts in ideology since 1994. We'd heard differently from both the communist party guy and the man at the DA, and we'd seen differently in places like Kliptown.





Homestay:
Kevin, who came a day late since he was on a different flight, and is a slightly overbearing math major from St Olaf, and I were dropped off friday afternoon at the small, but nice, home of Thandi Dube, a single mother and teacher from a lower middle class neighborhood of Soweto called Pimville. She has two kids. A 22 year old son, Karabo, who's studying logistics and the U of Joburg but living at home, and a very bright and funny 12 year old daughter named Kiyese. There's also some kind of man in her life named Anthony, but it's unclear what their relationship actually is. Anyways, we spent most of the weekend going to various family members' houses around Soweto, which was very interesting. Especially going to her aunt's house (whom the kids refer to as their grandma).  There was some large gathering of neighbors and extended family which was  cool to see. Everyone was very nice, although there was a drunk uncle who kept trying to talk to us...
The next morning we went to church, which was awesome! It was in English, Zulu, and Sutu, but mustly Zulu and Sutu, so Kevin and I didn't understand too much of it. But it was fascinating anyway. It was a Roman Catholic church, but clearly had a lot of African influence. Most of the mass was singing, which was remarkably beautiful.

We watched a lot of sports with our host brother, too. Two South African league soccer games, and a rugby match between the Springboks (the SA nat'l team) and the All Blacks (NZ's team). It was a close game, and South Africa led most of it, but lost it at the end, unfortunately.
We learned a lot about what average South African's think, Our conversation with Thandi's friend David covered most aspects of society, and was one of the most comprehensive views of the current problems in the country that we got. It also seems that racial stereotypes are still very, very present (and mixed-race people are called "coloreds" here, which was disconcerting at first.)  Xenophobia is also a big problem. The people seem to realize this, but are xenophobic themselves nonetheless. Our host mom would say things like "Xenophobia is a big problem" and then later "The reason crime is so high here is that we have so many foreigners coming in. South Africans don't commit much crime, but Nigerians and Zimbabweans are all criminals." So that was interesting. 
We ate very well, both in terms of quality and quantity, and on Monday morning we left full, happy, and having had an amazing experience.

Pretoria:
After a quick lunch and debrief back at St Peters, we set of for Pretoria which is about 45 minutes from Joburg and absolutely beautiful. We got there in the evening and relaxed for a bit, before having a braai (Afrikaans for barbecue) which was delicious. The most interesting thing we did in Pretoria was visiting the Voortrekker Monument. The voortrekkers were basically Afrikaaner pioneers who crossed the country, kinda similar to our Oregon Trail, and killed a lot of natives along the way. This controversial monument commemorates that trek. It was interesting to see the other side of things--to see some white pride in South Africa. It was pretty uncomfortable and disconcerting after all we'd seen so far.  We also visited the US Embassy and hung out in the gardens of the Union Building, which is basically their White House but 100 times more beautiful.

Windhoek so far:
We had to get up at about 5 to get to the airport, which was fun. The flight was short and easy, and the flight attenant randomly greeted me in Hebrew as I got on the plane, I said "hi" to him and he responded with "shalom, todah." So, that was kinda interesting...
As we came in for a landing, all we saw for miles around were desert and bush. It was quite striking. The drive to Windhoek from the airport is about 30 miles through beautiful desert with big rocky red mountains in the distance the whole time.
Really, so far we've just been settling in. We toured the house and learned the rules and all that stuff, and then had some time to ourselves and had a couple of pretty good meals. A few of us, after dinner, went to check out the bar that's just down the street. It's small, but nice, and everything is pretty cheap there. 
And that's about it. The internet is pertty slow here, so communication might be a little interesting at times, but yeah. That's my story.
 More will come as more happens!