Our internet here hardly ever works anymore, so I have to walk 20 minutes and pay money to use the internet for a limited time. For now, however, we got some internet at our house.
Rural Homestay
This still goes back to mid-March, and is probably the hardest thing yet to put into words. We spent 6 days on a rural farm. My family consisted of Hiskia and Olga, 60 year olds who never went to school because schools didn’t exist for them during apartheid. Thus, they knew no English. Then I had 2 sisters in their 30s, who had Ok english. I also had two nieces who were 3 and 7—no English here. I had a brother that was 17 with minimal English. My main communication was with my two 30ish year old brothers, Daniel and Mulaka who had basically perfect English. I never actually figured out the family structure because everyone is has either a different mother or father. English was a funny thing because they learn it in school, starting around 3rd grade. Thus, young kids don’t know it and the old generation doesn’t speak it either. We did however learn some Otjiherero before going. Thus, every time I talked with my parents, it was basically the same conversation: Moro/Metaha/Hwenda. Ii Moro/Metaha/Hwenda. Kora? Nawa. Wa Penduka. Mba Penduka nawa. Okuhepa. Ena roye otjikwaye? Ena randje o Bret. Gare nawa.
I honestly do not know where to go from here. 7 others from CGE were in my community, but I rarely ran into them. Overall, our community had maybe a few hundred people and was all public grazing for the cattle and goats, however most of the ground was gravel.
We brought the cows to the water every morning. We’d simply sit. We traveled around on a donkey cart. We ate porridge with sour milk in every day. We went to bed around 9 when it got dark and awoke at 7 when it was light. We attended a Lutheran Church service which was under a tree and had no pastor. We traveled to neighboring communities to say what’s up and to check out all their water pumps. There we public and private ones. There were hand pumps, diesel pumps, and one solar panel powering a pump. We climbed the nearby mountain. We slept in the middle of the day because it was too hot to move. We’d fence the goats in at night. We drank Five Roses tea with cups of sugar. We’d bathe in a bucket (rather pleasant) and pee wherever. We collected grass by hand to feed the calves. We milked the cows. We played pool at the bar. We laid bricks on a new hostel for school children from surrounding areas. We turned the community water pump on and off. We tried to fix the pump’s leak.
Life consisted of the day at hand. It was refreshing to lay down any worries of the future and to only think about what I was doing in the next 5 minutes. That was all that mattered. As long as the goats and cows were taken care of, there was nothing else to it.
I mainly pulled away a general understanding of rural subsistence living. It wasn’t extreme poverty, but it was only a life of necessities. The only sources of entertainment were the radio and the one pool table in town. Yet, despite the simplicity of their lifestyle, I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily better off. There was an amazing sense of community. Everyone was treated with respect. Their basic needs were met. Why do we insist on this need to be so developed and have the latest of everything? Yes, they would have liked luxuries such as electricity for refridgeration and a TV, but they still would cook over a fire because it is tradition. Refrigeration is necessary to preserve foods and a TV would be useful to stay in touch with the world, but lighting and refrigeration means more of an alcoholic bar scene and TV displays negative lifestyles that we could see seriously affected our urban families. Ideas towards sex and relationships are resembling those of soap operas.
So what really does it mean to have development?
Etosha
After our homestay, we headed to Etosha, which is the largest game park in Namibia. We went on a game drive for a day and saw a rhino, an elephant, giraffes, springbok, oryx, wildebeests, impala, hartebeest, baboons, ostriches, kudu, damara dik diks, and probably a few other things. It was a full day of driving around. I simply could not imagine coming to Africa to just go on a safari for a week. Animals are sweet, but driving around get a bit tiring.
Vic Falls
After Etosha, we went to Zambia and Vic Falls, but I don’t feel like discussing it now.
Luderitz
Last weekend, we headed South for a 10 hour kombi ride. The region is dominated by NAMDEB, which is a partnership between the Namibian government and Debeers diamonds. The region consists of lots of diamonds, and debeers basically has a monopoly on the mining because they’re the only ones with enough capital to do any mining. The most fascinating thing we learned while talking to a Debeers representative was the impact of the movie Blood Diamond. The rep described that diamond prices have gone down lately. We asked why, and he said because of the movie. Demand for diamonds have gone way down since people now believe all diamonds have a bloody origin. Debeers has had to spend millions on publicity to combat this idea. Blood diamonds don’t exist in Namibia, and are fairly minimal in the world. The movie, as well, is not very accurate. The rep’s final words were, “Buy diamonds because it puts food on the table for people.” This is true, because diamonds are a big part of the Namibian economy and many jobs come from them. I still don’t have much desire to spend bucket loads of money on some small rock, however.
Oh, and I’m doing Youthworks again this summer (what I did the last two summers on the reservations) and my training is in Birmingham. This means I’ll be in some south-eastern city this summer.
I should’ve been writing papers instead of typing this right now. Whatever. And for some reason, my website where I type this blog is now in French. I don’t know what’s going on with anything anymore.
