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.
Jesus movies?
ReplyDeleteI saw some giraffes today at the Indy Zoo! Obviously not as cool as actually being there, but it's like we were doing the same thing!
ReplyDeleteI also saw an ostrich. Yay!
Haha, yeah Sean, practically the same thing. I will hopefully get to experience this communicating without understanding phenomena when I go visit Tony in China in the not too distant future.
ReplyDeleteWhen you encountered questions about what it's like to live in America did you get a feeling that they were more amazed or more resentful of our abundance of resources?
I'm sure the reactions are more complicated than this simple dichotomy...
ReplyDeleteEric, that's a really interesting question. When I talk to people here, I really try to emphasize the fact that we also have problems. That we also have poor poeple and corruption and bad distribution of wealth. Also, oddly enough, they don't seem to understand that we have black people in America, so I emphasize that too. I think they just think from the media and stuff that we're all rich white people who live in LA and NYC. I'm a little confused about why they think we're all white, since most of the famous Americans they ask about are black, like Obama, and Oprah and rappers. So, I'm not really sure what's going on with that. It's giving the black American students on the trip a hard time though. People are often confused when they're not from here or they only speak English or things like that. I'm still trying to figure this out, but it's really interesting
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