Monday, March 26, 2007
Plenty
I gotta keep this short or else I need to pay another 3000 Kwatcha. I became a millionare 2 days ago. Right now I am in Zambia at Victoria falls. They are unbelievable. The past few weeks have been beyond description. I went skydiving above the Namib Desert, swam in the ocean, lived on a rural farm with no electricity and water for 6 days, went on a game drive, and yesterday I got soaked from Vic Falls. Welp, I'm gonna run now...I'll be back in a week to fully update. Just wanted to say I'm doing well, mom.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Boycotting Wal-Mart? questionable
Here’s another post…
This is a basic overview, so it’s not too detailed and maybe a bit confusing.
On Thursday, for Development class, we visited Ramatex. Ramatex is a Malaysian textile company that has a factory location in Namibia. Their location in Namibia is in order to take advantage of AGOA, a trade agreement between African countries and the US. Thus, the Namibia location exports solely to the US and makes brands for about 10 stores including K-Mart and I believe Wal-Mart. We never got a list of the retailers.
Namibia beat out South Africa and Madagascar five years ago for the location of an African factory. The Namibian government paid for the building of the facilities, subsidizes water and electricity, and does not make Ramatex pay taxes. In return, the original agreement stated that Ramatex would provide 8,000 jobs and then indirect jobs would hopefully come out of their presence.
Ramatex never ended up employing that many Namibians. They brought in a couple thousand Chinese migrant workers supposedly to help train in the Namibians. After a strike a couple years ago, hundreds got fired. Since then, Ramatex has downsized and only employs 3,000 Namibian jobs now. Workers were originally paid N$3 per hour (about 50 cents), but now they receive N$4.10. With that wage, workers have to work overtime to afford housing and basic food. Workers complain of harassment from supervision, they have to walk long distances to work and they don’t feel safe on the walk home, they receive one break for lunch, and they are strategically divided by race as a divide-and-rule theory. It creates tensions and racism within the factory.
Ramatex dumps its chemical waste in a small “pool” out back, which is has cracked cement casing. When it rains hard, chemicals run over. After one year of its presence, all of the fish in a dam nearby were dead.
Government refuses to challenge Ramatex and even tries to prevent striking because Ramatex threatens to leave and go abroad to a country where they can run for cheaper. Namibia needs jobs, so Ramatex can get away with all of its crap.
Our actual visit to the factory was interesting. I suppose you might say it is a sweatshop, but not quite as extreme. The director showed us around. He was rather subversive when answering our questions. They specifically said “Ramatex is a business, not a charity,” but where is the line going to be drawn. 60% of their expenses are materials. Only 15% is labor wages. This seems rather small when you are employing thousands, when you make clothes (materials are not the cost of diamonds or anything), and when zero taxes and facility fees are being paid for. Lunches were locked in cages that were divided by ethnicity.
After our visit, we met with a member of a labor rights group that has investigated Ramatex. He explained much of what I already mentioned. When asked what the average consumer can do, he said boycotting on an individual basis isn’t going to accomplish anything. The only way Ramatex can be pressured so that it won’t skip countries is through pressure from buyers such as K-Mart. The only effective way to pressure the buyers is through cooperation and lobbying among consumers and the workers. There must be communication and coordination to effectively make the buyers listen.
I’m not satisfied with my explanation here; it’s a bit inadequate and not well-articulated, but I hope you get the point. I’m off to type several papers that are due in the next week. One week from today, we head to Swakopmund on the coast, then to rural homestays, to etosha game park, and I’m planning on heading to Victoria Falls. I’ll give you the low down on the rest of my urban homestay which I just finished at another time.
This is a basic overview, so it’s not too detailed and maybe a bit confusing.
On Thursday, for Development class, we visited Ramatex. Ramatex is a Malaysian textile company that has a factory location in Namibia. Their location in Namibia is in order to take advantage of AGOA, a trade agreement between African countries and the US. Thus, the Namibia location exports solely to the US and makes brands for about 10 stores including K-Mart and I believe Wal-Mart. We never got a list of the retailers.
Namibia beat out South Africa and Madagascar five years ago for the location of an African factory. The Namibian government paid for the building of the facilities, subsidizes water and electricity, and does not make Ramatex pay taxes. In return, the original agreement stated that Ramatex would provide 8,000 jobs and then indirect jobs would hopefully come out of their presence.
Ramatex never ended up employing that many Namibians. They brought in a couple thousand Chinese migrant workers supposedly to help train in the Namibians. After a strike a couple years ago, hundreds got fired. Since then, Ramatex has downsized and only employs 3,000 Namibian jobs now. Workers were originally paid N$3 per hour (about 50 cents), but now they receive N$4.10. With that wage, workers have to work overtime to afford housing and basic food. Workers complain of harassment from supervision, they have to walk long distances to work and they don’t feel safe on the walk home, they receive one break for lunch, and they are strategically divided by race as a divide-and-rule theory. It creates tensions and racism within the factory.
Ramatex dumps its chemical waste in a small “pool” out back, which is has cracked cement casing. When it rains hard, chemicals run over. After one year of its presence, all of the fish in a dam nearby were dead.
Government refuses to challenge Ramatex and even tries to prevent striking because Ramatex threatens to leave and go abroad to a country where they can run for cheaper. Namibia needs jobs, so Ramatex can get away with all of its crap.
Our actual visit to the factory was interesting. I suppose you might say it is a sweatshop, but not quite as extreme. The director showed us around. He was rather subversive when answering our questions. They specifically said “Ramatex is a business, not a charity,” but where is the line going to be drawn. 60% of their expenses are materials. Only 15% is labor wages. This seems rather small when you are employing thousands, when you make clothes (materials are not the cost of diamonds or anything), and when zero taxes and facility fees are being paid for. Lunches were locked in cages that were divided by ethnicity.
After our visit, we met with a member of a labor rights group that has investigated Ramatex. He explained much of what I already mentioned. When asked what the average consumer can do, he said boycotting on an individual basis isn’t going to accomplish anything. The only way Ramatex can be pressured so that it won’t skip countries is through pressure from buyers such as K-Mart. The only effective way to pressure the buyers is through cooperation and lobbying among consumers and the workers. There must be communication and coordination to effectively make the buyers listen.
I’m not satisfied with my explanation here; it’s a bit inadequate and not well-articulated, but I hope you get the point. I’m off to type several papers that are due in the next week. One week from today, we head to Swakopmund on the coast, then to rural homestays, to etosha game park, and I’m planning on heading to Victoria Falls. I’ll give you the low down on the rest of my urban homestay which I just finished at another time.
Perspectives
This is a reflection I just wrote about a night during our first week in South Africa. I thought I'd share...
While killing time before dinner in Pretoria, about half of us from the CGE group were wandering the University of Pretoria campus. We were on campus looking for rumored floats that were being built. Only seeing a couple floats, Micah and I approached two white ladies to ask if any more were being built. The four of us got into a conversation, and Micah and I ended up following them to help build a float with their hostel. This prompted a night spent hanging out with a group of Afrikaners. It provided an entirely different perspective to the aftermath of apartheid, since we previously only heard in person the black perspective to it all.
The mere turn of events was a lesson within itself. As we met new people, we would not have been accepted in the same way if Micah and I were not white Americans. Our identity as Americans made us popular because everyone wanted to know about the US. Being from the US comes with a great amount of privilege because these people wanted to know about the country where much of their media comes from and about us since we basically run the world. We were ambassadors of the US to them.
Some of the people we met would not have wanted to talk to us if we were black. Despite a few of the Afrikaners thinking racism and apartheid was rubbish, some of them were blatantly racist and some claimed not to be racist, although they still did not have uplifting opinions about blacks. Urbanus later told us that it was not safe for Passat, Moeketsi, and him (as blacks) to be where we were because the Afrikaners have some of their old nationalism come out in them in big groups.
Our most interesting experience came from talking with Werner and Werner, who were blatant racists. Despite their negative opinions of blacks, I could not help but sympathize with some of their worries. We had only heard the black perspective so far, which does not resound with the white perspective, positive or negative. One of the Werners comes from a farm, which funds his college education. Potential land redistribution would leave him with nothing and no money for his education. One week before we talked to him, one of his cows was slaughtered overnight by a black intruder and only a small fraction of the cow was taken, leaving the rest of the meat to rot. His situation did not sound very positive, and he claimed he was ready to take up arms against blacks because he believes a civil war is coming. While I could not agree with much of what he said, I challenged him that it was only an individual that killed his cow. He responded that there are good black people, but they are very rare. He used crime, poverty, and the AIDS situation to justify his belief. This discussion led me to realize just how hard it will be to decolonize the mind of people like him. He is not able to take an objective stance on racial issues. With his own welfare on the line, his defensiveness will make it nearly impossible for him to change his racist beliefs.
While killing time before dinner in Pretoria, about half of us from the CGE group were wandering the University of Pretoria campus. We were on campus looking for rumored floats that were being built. Only seeing a couple floats, Micah and I approached two white ladies to ask if any more were being built. The four of us got into a conversation, and Micah and I ended up following them to help build a float with their hostel. This prompted a night spent hanging out with a group of Afrikaners. It provided an entirely different perspective to the aftermath of apartheid, since we previously only heard in person the black perspective to it all.
The mere turn of events was a lesson within itself. As we met new people, we would not have been accepted in the same way if Micah and I were not white Americans. Our identity as Americans made us popular because everyone wanted to know about the US. Being from the US comes with a great amount of privilege because these people wanted to know about the country where much of their media comes from and about us since we basically run the world. We were ambassadors of the US to them.
Some of the people we met would not have wanted to talk to us if we were black. Despite a few of the Afrikaners thinking racism and apartheid was rubbish, some of them were blatantly racist and some claimed not to be racist, although they still did not have uplifting opinions about blacks. Urbanus later told us that it was not safe for Passat, Moeketsi, and him (as blacks) to be where we were because the Afrikaners have some of their old nationalism come out in them in big groups.
Our most interesting experience came from talking with Werner and Werner, who were blatant racists. Despite their negative opinions of blacks, I could not help but sympathize with some of their worries. We had only heard the black perspective so far, which does not resound with the white perspective, positive or negative. One of the Werners comes from a farm, which funds his college education. Potential land redistribution would leave him with nothing and no money for his education. One week before we talked to him, one of his cows was slaughtered overnight by a black intruder and only a small fraction of the cow was taken, leaving the rest of the meat to rot. His situation did not sound very positive, and he claimed he was ready to take up arms against blacks because he believes a civil war is coming. While I could not agree with much of what he said, I challenged him that it was only an individual that killed his cow. He responded that there are good black people, but they are very rare. He used crime, poverty, and the AIDS situation to justify his belief. This discussion led me to realize just how hard it will be to decolonize the mind of people like him. He is not able to take an objective stance on racial issues. With his own welfare on the line, his defensiveness will make it nearly impossible for him to change his racist beliefs.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Staying Home
I’m currently half-way through my urban homestay. I am staying with a fantastic and loving family. My host dad owns a butchery. My host mom works for Alexander Forbes. Llewelyn, my 23 year old host brother, is in his last year of university at College of the Arts primarily studying graphic design. Finally, I have an 11 year old sister, Marilize, who is in school. They are a coloured family, which means they are in between black and white. If I brought them to the US, people would probably think they are Hispanic. This bothers me because I know people would make totally irrational assumptions about them just from how they look.
The homestay started last Thursday and extends through this coming Sunday. During the week, we go to the CGE house and have class like usual and we spend the afternoons there too. The rest of my time is spent with my family. Most of the time around the house is spent sitting around watching TV, playing pool, or just killing time. Much of the culture here is spent around the television. It seems like everyone’s homestay mostly consists of watching TV with the family. People make sure to catch their favorite ‘soaps’ every night. Some of the TV my family watches is in Afrikaans or is South African. Otherwise, most of the programs and movies are American.
The biggest foreign influence in average life here is without a doubt American pop culture. Music, TV, and movies dominate people’s existence. I find it backwards that there is more of an effect from this here than what I’ve found in the US. Sarah, our Namibian cook at the house, believes much of the attitude about relationships and treatment of men/women/cheating comes from TV shows. This is a whole different dynamic that I’ll discuss later. In South Africa, some Afrikaners asked me if I’ve ever had Dr. Pepper (it doesn’t exist here…it’s all coke and fanta). They wanted to know because they have seen it in the movies, but they’ve never had it. Trying to explain what Dr. Pepper tastes like is not an easy task either.
On the other side of pop culture, I spent much of this past weekend feeling like I was in high school. Llewelyn, Marilize, and the 10th grade cousin, ‘Naldo,’ and I cruised around in Lew’s VW golf running some errands. We definitely bumped loud American hip hop for hours as we drove around. It was interesting/disturbing hearing 11 year old Marilize sing along to “I wanna Fuck you” again and again. Yet all 3 of my compradres are pretty straight-shooting. As I played hide-and-seek with some local youngsters Friday night, three drunk 16 year olds interrupted our game, to which Naldo claimed that alcohol is the worst thing for Namibian teens today. He stays away from it himself. I might contend that teen pregnancy or AIDS is quite the issue here, but I suppose alcohol contributes to those issues.
After talking to my host dad about some political issues and health care on Friday evening, he proceeded to ask me if I had been to the public hospital (my family pays for a private clinic). Upon saying no, we were driving our way towards Katatura Hospital at 9:30pm on a Friday night. He made sure to drive by the shebeens (informal bars) along the way to point out all the people starting to get drunk on the streets already. When we arrived at the hospital, one gentleman was at reception with a nasty bloodied skull. He stumbled around, clearly wasted. I’m guessing he received a bottle to the head. My host father had me take a seat to be a spectator. He told me, “Just watch.” We watched for five minutes and saw a young teen come in with a large puncture wound in the back. Stabbing? I don’t know. After my host father seemed to get bored with the inactivity, we wandered to the ER and saw an informal mess of people in a big room on beds partially behind curtains. The whole experience made me uneasy to go and observe all the new incoming injuries, but I saw my host father’s point. He said that by 11pm, the place would be loaded with people that have drunken injuries from fights, knives, or what have you. The hospital itself was not an inviting or comfortable place.
Alcohol definitely is an issue here in Namibia/South Africa. Maybe I’ll touch on this and AIDS in a later post since this one is getting fairly long.
My host dad owns a butchery, so I’ve had plenty of meat. There’s a good supply of biltong (basically jerky, made from beef). After Friday’s meal of KFC (basically the only American fast food here), we had a braai (barbeque) for Saturday’s dinner. It consisted of goat rump, goat steaks, boerewors (a delicious sausage), puffadder (a beef sausage with meat and liver), and kabobs. Sunday allowed for an exciting meal. By noon, I was eating a sheep’s foot, some sheep stomach, ox tail (the tail of a cow), and for dinner we topped it off with the sheep’s head. I got a nice slice of skin and fat off the top of the skull and waited my turn while Marilize scooped brain out of a small hole where the spinal cord was and ate the brain like cereal. I got several bites of the brain as well. Surprisingly, none of it was that bad. He had some good spices in the pot. The stomach was a bit chewy, the feet were delicious but all skin and fat and tendon, the tail was extremely tender but pretty fatty, the skull skin had a gross texture, and the brain was a bit mushy. It all pretty much tasted like eating some beef fat. These are all very cultural foods of Africa. Please note that I’m eating them in a very nice middle-class home in the city.
A quick note about the house, my dad bought it 5 years ago for about N$170,000 and now it is worth N$650,000 (divide by 7 for US$). And we thought real estate was going up in the US.
My host dad also woke me up at 5:45am to take me to the place where he buys his meat. About 20 black workers were in an assembly line. The first guy chopped off the head of a live sheep. Then they hung it up to skin it, gut it, and rinse it. It was an efficient process run by a white guy.
The homestay started last Thursday and extends through this coming Sunday. During the week, we go to the CGE house and have class like usual and we spend the afternoons there too. The rest of my time is spent with my family. Most of the time around the house is spent sitting around watching TV, playing pool, or just killing time. Much of the culture here is spent around the television. It seems like everyone’s homestay mostly consists of watching TV with the family. People make sure to catch their favorite ‘soaps’ every night. Some of the TV my family watches is in Afrikaans or is South African. Otherwise, most of the programs and movies are American.
The biggest foreign influence in average life here is without a doubt American pop culture. Music, TV, and movies dominate people’s existence. I find it backwards that there is more of an effect from this here than what I’ve found in the US. Sarah, our Namibian cook at the house, believes much of the attitude about relationships and treatment of men/women/cheating comes from TV shows. This is a whole different dynamic that I’ll discuss later. In South Africa, some Afrikaners asked me if I’ve ever had Dr. Pepper (it doesn’t exist here…it’s all coke and fanta). They wanted to know because they have seen it in the movies, but they’ve never had it. Trying to explain what Dr. Pepper tastes like is not an easy task either.
On the other side of pop culture, I spent much of this past weekend feeling like I was in high school. Llewelyn, Marilize, and the 10th grade cousin, ‘Naldo,’ and I cruised around in Lew’s VW golf running some errands. We definitely bumped loud American hip hop for hours as we drove around. It was interesting/disturbing hearing 11 year old Marilize sing along to “I wanna Fuck you” again and again. Yet all 3 of my compradres are pretty straight-shooting. As I played hide-and-seek with some local youngsters Friday night, three drunk 16 year olds interrupted our game, to which Naldo claimed that alcohol is the worst thing for Namibian teens today. He stays away from it himself. I might contend that teen pregnancy or AIDS is quite the issue here, but I suppose alcohol contributes to those issues.
After talking to my host dad about some political issues and health care on Friday evening, he proceeded to ask me if I had been to the public hospital (my family pays for a private clinic). Upon saying no, we were driving our way towards Katatura Hospital at 9:30pm on a Friday night. He made sure to drive by the shebeens (informal bars) along the way to point out all the people starting to get drunk on the streets already. When we arrived at the hospital, one gentleman was at reception with a nasty bloodied skull. He stumbled around, clearly wasted. I’m guessing he received a bottle to the head. My host father had me take a seat to be a spectator. He told me, “Just watch.” We watched for five minutes and saw a young teen come in with a large puncture wound in the back. Stabbing? I don’t know. After my host father seemed to get bored with the inactivity, we wandered to the ER and saw an informal mess of people in a big room on beds partially behind curtains. The whole experience made me uneasy to go and observe all the new incoming injuries, but I saw my host father’s point. He said that by 11pm, the place would be loaded with people that have drunken injuries from fights, knives, or what have you. The hospital itself was not an inviting or comfortable place.
Alcohol definitely is an issue here in Namibia/South Africa. Maybe I’ll touch on this and AIDS in a later post since this one is getting fairly long.
My host dad owns a butchery, so I’ve had plenty of meat. There’s a good supply of biltong (basically jerky, made from beef). After Friday’s meal of KFC (basically the only American fast food here), we had a braai (barbeque) for Saturday’s dinner. It consisted of goat rump, goat steaks, boerewors (a delicious sausage), puffadder (a beef sausage with meat and liver), and kabobs. Sunday allowed for an exciting meal. By noon, I was eating a sheep’s foot, some sheep stomach, ox tail (the tail of a cow), and for dinner we topped it off with the sheep’s head. I got a nice slice of skin and fat off the top of the skull and waited my turn while Marilize scooped brain out of a small hole where the spinal cord was and ate the brain like cereal. I got several bites of the brain as well. Surprisingly, none of it was that bad. He had some good spices in the pot. The stomach was a bit chewy, the feet were delicious but all skin and fat and tendon, the tail was extremely tender but pretty fatty, the skull skin had a gross texture, and the brain was a bit mushy. It all pretty much tasted like eating some beef fat. These are all very cultural foods of Africa. Please note that I’m eating them in a very nice middle-class home in the city.
A quick note about the house, my dad bought it 5 years ago for about N$170,000 and now it is worth N$650,000 (divide by 7 for US$). And we thought real estate was going up in the US.
My host dad also woke me up at 5:45am to take me to the place where he buys his meat. About 20 black workers were in an assembly line. The first guy chopped off the head of a live sheep. Then they hung it up to skin it, gut it, and rinse it. It was an efficient process run by a white guy.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Not too much
On Tuesday in our History class, we had Prof Kerina visit us. He was a Namibian lucky enough to study at a University in the US. He came up with the name "Namibia," cofounded the ruling political party, and was friends with the like of MLK, Malcom X, Maya Angelou, JFK, and such. It was pretty incredible to hear his story and to have the opportunity to hear from him in our class.
I talked to a guy from the Scripture Union today, which sounds like a Namibian "young life." I've been waiting a couple weeks for a volunteer opportunity, and this thing sounds sweet. They go into schools and teach life skills after the schoolday. I visit the office tomorrow, so I'll let you know what becomes of it. We also start our 10 day urban homestay tomorrow. I will be staying with a family in which the parents work for a financial company and a butchery, and I will have a 23 year old brother and an 11 year old sister. Their home is in Khomasdal, which is kind of like the colored neighborhood from apartheid. Colored refers to those whom are partially black and white. Thus, this neighborhood is slightly better off than Katatura, the black township from apartheid. By the way, Namibia used to be South West Africa until 1990. Before then, it was governed by South Africa and so it also underwent apartheid.
Mainly, I thought I'd post a few pics in this post since I didn't get around to it in the bottom of the last one...
the first pick is my homestay family from Soweto in South Africa. There's me, Malume (Uncle, as he called himself), Yoliswa, and Nontjatjambo.
The second pic is from last weekend on the farm.
Despite what these pictures and some of my writing might represent, we are in a very urban setting in Windhoek. We are a 10 minute walk from downtown, live in an posh neighbourhood, and it would take us at least a 10 minute drive to get out of the city. I'm sorry that there are no lions that I will get eaten by here.
I talked to a guy from the Scripture Union today, which sounds like a Namibian "young life." I've been waiting a couple weeks for a volunteer opportunity, and this thing sounds sweet. They go into schools and teach life skills after the schoolday. I visit the office tomorrow, so I'll let you know what becomes of it. We also start our 10 day urban homestay tomorrow. I will be staying with a family in which the parents work for a financial company and a butchery, and I will have a 23 year old brother and an 11 year old sister. Their home is in Khomasdal, which is kind of like the colored neighborhood from apartheid. Colored refers to those whom are partially black and white. Thus, this neighborhood is slightly better off than Katatura, the black township from apartheid. By the way, Namibia used to be South West Africa until 1990. Before then, it was governed by South Africa and so it also underwent apartheid.
Mainly, I thought I'd post a few pics in this post since I didn't get around to it in the bottom of the last one...
the first pick is my homestay family from Soweto in South Africa. There's me, Malume (Uncle, as he called himself), Yoliswa, and Nontjatjambo.
The second pic is from last weekend on the farm.
Despite what these pictures and some of my writing might represent, we are in a very urban setting in Windhoek. We are a 10 minute walk from downtown, live in an posh neighbourhood, and it would take us at least a 10 minute drive to get out of the city. I'm sorry that there are no lions that I will get eaten by here.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Castration
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
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
Monday, February 12, 2007
This and That
The last few days in Namibia have been pretty solid. On Friday, we had the "Katatura quest." Katatura is the neighboring township that only blacks live in. The people there figured we are either tourists or people coming to take their land because that is the only circumstances when they see white people there.
On Saturday, we had about 15 local students from UNam and the Polytech University nearby come over. We had a good chance to interact with people our age. Later that night, they took us out as a whole group. We ended up at house with pretty much 95% guys, of which I believe only 2 were not looking to take advantage of our 16 girls. We later went to a club which was pretty rocking, even though that's not much of my scene. Two of the Namibian dudes would somehow dance in unison to every song. We decided to leave the place after a photographer that does a gossip column started taking our pictures.
Yesterday, the four of us from Valpo and Micah, one of the other guys that's from PLU, went to the Macedonia Lutheran Church in Katatura. Supposedly this church is the largest non-white Lutheran church in the world. It was a great experience despite the 3 hour service not being in English. The only english was when the pastor looked our direction in the middle of the service and said, "I see we have some visitors...why don't they come up and introduce themselves." So we went up into the front and introduced ourselves into the microphone. This pastor wasn't preaching, so he actually came out and sat next to us during the sermon and basically summarized it for us as the sermon went on. What a cool guy.
After the service, we met a lady that took us to her house and then walked us to the local market where we had a home-cooked lunch with delicious juice. The juice down here is amazing. And to everyone who thought I would starve, food here is more delicious and plentiful than home.
Some of us had today off because we aren't doing internships and our volunteering isn't set up yet or people's internships have fallen threw. So this morning I asked Passat of a nearby place to hike and we ended up at Daan Viljoen Park a few hours later. 10 of us took a 9km hike. We managed to see a variety of animals such as zebras, baboons, and a few other kinds of animals that I don't know their name. The wireless network at the house hasn't worked yet, so I haven't been able to use my computer to upload pictures so you can see them.
Our first class starts tomorrow. It feels nice knowing I only have 8 weeks of actual class. I'm
On Saturday, we had about 15 local students from UNam and the Polytech University nearby come over. We had a good chance to interact with people our age. Later that night, they took us out as a whole group. We ended up at house with pretty much 95% guys, of which I believe only 2 were not looking to take advantage of our 16 girls. We later went to a club which was pretty rocking, even though that's not much of my scene. Two of the Namibian dudes would somehow dance in unison to every song. We decided to leave the place after a photographer that does a gossip column started taking our pictures.
Yesterday, the four of us from Valpo and Micah, one of the other guys that's from PLU, went to the Macedonia Lutheran Church in Katatura. Supposedly this church is the largest non-white Lutheran church in the world. It was a great experience despite the 3 hour service not being in English. The only english was when the pastor looked our direction in the middle of the service and said, "I see we have some visitors...why don't they come up and introduce themselves." So we went up into the front and introduced ourselves into the microphone. This pastor wasn't preaching, so he actually came out and sat next to us during the sermon and basically summarized it for us as the sermon went on. What a cool guy.
After the service, we met a lady that took us to her house and then walked us to the local market where we had a home-cooked lunch with delicious juice. The juice down here is amazing. And to everyone who thought I would starve, food here is more delicious and plentiful than home.
Some of us had today off because we aren't doing internships and our volunteering isn't set up yet or people's internships have fallen threw. So this morning I asked Passat of a nearby place to hike and we ended up at Daan Viljoen Park a few hours later. 10 of us took a 9km hike. We managed to see a variety of animals such as zebras, baboons, and a few other kinds of animals that I don't know their name. The wireless network at the house hasn't worked yet, so I haven't been able to use my computer to upload pictures so you can see them.
Our first class starts tomorrow. It feels nice knowing I only have 8 weeks of actual class. I'm
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