We started class on Tuesday. Tuesday morning's class is history of Namibia/SA, Wednesday's is Religion and Social Change, Thursday's is Politics of Namibia/SA, and Friday is development. Each class lasts from 9am-1pm, so the mornings are pretty long. For a study abroad experience, this program is very academic compared to what other people I know have done elsewhere. I don't mind.
Anyways, this weekend was the exciting part of this week. Yesterday, two friends and I were picked up at 6am and taken to a farm 2 hours to the north. Micah met a guy named Papyeni, who is a friend of a friend, so he offered us to come up with him and his mother to help out for the weekend. The farm had no electricity, but it was not an issue. The house was very informal looking, was basically all concrete, and the neighboring stuctures were shacks that a few people live in. Yet in no way do I feel like their situation is rougher than mine. Instead it makes me realize that we have way too much crap in our homes. I simply can't justify spending hundreds or thousands of dollars simply to make our homes "look" better when it serves no functional purpose. This isn't a new thought for me, but being here puts more reason behind this idea. This farmhome had the essentials and it was not weighed down with unnecessary junk.
Enough of that short rant...We spent yesterday and today doing farmwork in the morning until 2pm. Yesterday, we had to chase goats and grab them by the horns to vaccinate 100 of them. Then we herded cattle to vaccinate about 100 cows. This morning we lifted the poopy tails of the cows and painted oil around their tick-infested anuses in order to kill the ticks. I also had the opportunity to castrate a few young males...Interesting.
After working, we'd enjoy some food cooked in a pot over an outdoor fire. It was food like home except for dinner we had traditional pap with a local spinach type of food. Today we tried sour milk. It's milk that never gets refridgerated, thus it ferments and becomes quite chunky and sour. It's a different milk and is a different sour than letting your gallon sit in the fridge for an extra week. This stuff wasn't too bad, but I'm not going to ask for it again.
Yesterday, a few of us sat around a circle in some lawn chairs. Conversation was slow-paced and there was probably a 15 minute period of silence in which we all just looked around, but it was comfortable in my opinion (Erin might disagree). Only 1 of the 5 people around the farm knew english fluently, so that made for a slower pace of convo. Later in the evening, we played dominos for over 2 hours by candlelight (the actual game, not the lining them up and tipping them over). It was great to be able to join in a game and laugh together even though we couldn't communicate verbally. The three of us sucked at first...we weren't even playing right. It wasn't until Papyeni came over and explained the rules correctly to us in english that we caught on.
As I'm righting this, I'm realizing that there is no effective way to communicate what I'm experiencing. So I've decided the best I can do is to describe the events as they happen and maybe explain some of the things I'm learning along the way. I also don't really care that half of these sentences in this blog are overly wordy and maybe unclear. meh
oh, and we saw a cheetah crossing the road when we left the farm today. coolness.
some pics
