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!