I’m headed to a concert tonight at the Warehouse Theatre and very excited about it. The group is the Latitudz, a French hip-hop fusion group whose lead singer is from Malawi (http://www.thelatitudz.com/). I saw the show advertised in a brochure at the FNCC last week (again, yay French Embassy!) – they are co-sponsoring the show I think. Adam and Javier e-mailed today and mentioned they were going, so I’m tagging along and bringing my neighbor Brooke.
A happy coincidence in timing, too – I don’t need to leave for work until 9:45 tomorrow morning (instead of the usual 7:30)! Willem and I have a 10am meeting with the other two men working on the legal, policy, and institutional portions of the environmental assessment and Willem is picking me up. This means I get to sleep in… though I hope to get up, ready, and online well before 9:45.
At any rate, though I quite enjoy my old-lady evenings (tea and reading / writing for two or three hours after dinner, in bed by eleven) I’m pumped about going out on a weeknight.
I love Wednesdays. Wednesdays are laundry and clean rooms days! I don’t think they do my floor every week, but the housekeeping staff washes all my linens and towels each Wednesday and all four blankets are neatly folded on top of the covers when I come home. It’s wonderful.
Also, knowing I’m here for the long haul, several of the guests have given me extra food before leaving. Marguerite and Rikki gave me three different kinds of pasta, several canned food items, a box of milk, and a bunch of dried fruit (I ate all the fruit already). Guido left me with some rice and curry chicken sauce mix. Someone else left a box of bran cereal and molasses crisps in the communal cupboard this weekend. The Dutch family with all the boys left me a jar of peanut butter and jelly, as well as half a bottle of ketchup. Yay! Puccini House definitely has its perks.
I’ve been enjoying a lot of new foods since I’ve been here, but out of curiosity (and a need to be a little calorie-conscious since I’m not running), I try to check out the labels on foods, when they are available (they’re not always). The vitamin and minerals are especially confusing, they don’t use the USDA daily values here, so I’ll often seen an amount of calcium or Vitamin B but have no idea what the amount means – 6%? 100% No idea.
Anyhow, I was surprised that many of the food items I was enjoying had many fewer calories than I expected. I assumed it was because there was less sugar and sweeteners than we typically have for food in the states. I was wrong. Maybe that’s true for some foods, but I realized I was equating kilojoules with kilocalories, but there the number didn’t make sense, for some reason, I was dividing by ten. Why, I’m not sure. I realized my mistake when I was adding milk to my tea – there was no way a full cup of 2% milk had 40 calories. To figure out calories from kilojoules, you divide by four, not ten. Whoops.
I took an early lunch today to walk in to town and make Visa-payment-attempt-#3. Long story that deserves a separate blog entry.
I walked back to the LAC looking forward to my lemon-pepper chicken and veggie leftovers, waiting for me in the fridge. Sadly, my Tupperware lunch was nowhere to be found in the LAC kitchen. Huh? It’s a small fridge and a small office – I just put it in there yesterday and no one mentioned anything about a fridge cleaning, normally there isn’t much in there to begin with. Hungrily, I looked through the fridge three times, moving ice cube trays, lifting up the communal coffee cream for no reason. My lunch was not there. I found Amalia (the “housekeeper” for the office) and asked if by chance she’d cleaned out the fridge or seen it? She remembered my dish because it stood out – the Tupperware with the bright blue cover. She hadn’t seen it.
Sad and hungry, I walked with my head down back to the Dungeon. Okay, I know I’m being over dramatic, but I was frustrated. I’d just walked in to town and could have easily picked up something to eat. The office is so small I was surprised and sad that someone would just take my food! This happened a couple times at CEB, but usually boxed food, like Freezer lean cuisines would go missing, or others would use my creamer and I never minded (as long as there was some next to me and it wasn’t used in obnoxious amounts). I plan to bring my lunch regularly – do I need to label Tupperware so people don’t assume it’s communal? Should I wrap plastic bags around it and make it difficult to get to? Did someone just mistake it as leftovers up-for-grabs? I thought about leaving a note on the fridge with a sad face, just to let people know in case it was a mistake, otherwise to instill a bit of guilt in whoever left me as a lunchless intern in the basement. I wonder what is the protocol here - would a note be weird? Again, it’s a really small office, I didn’t want to ruffle feathers or start rumors about a kitchen bandit. So I pouted at my desk for the remaining twenty minutes till 2pm, and eating the entire bag of Endearmints I had stashed in my desk drawer.
Not that big of a deal, admittedly, I’m just adjusting to life with very limited private space, and it’s a change for me. Everything at Puccini House is open, shared, and communal, from bathrooms to dishes, and this type of public environment is a big difference from my studio apartment at Stanford. You need to be respectful of the common spaces (i.e. clean up after yourself!) and trust others here. Outside Puccini House, I’ve been warned and worried about personal safety in the city. All these stories about muggings make me feel suspicious toward many people I see in the street and I hate that, I don’t want to bring that suspicion and discomfort in to the office. Okay, enough about the lunch already. Hopefully whoever ate it was hungry and enjoyed it. I’ll just label it next time, so there is clarity and no confusion.
I’m sitting by the fireplace in the group lounge digesting tonight’s dinner (pineapple stir fry) and sipping some Southern African cabernet sauvignon (thanks Brooke!). My new neighbor picked up a bottle at the Pick N Pay in hopes of keeping a bit warmer tonight… it gets close to freezing here at night and our rooms don’t have heat, nor are they very well insulated. I’ve been sleeping in three or four shirts with four blankets and have been really comfortable, but once I’m in bed I am not getting out until my alarm goes off.
Schlauf stopped in a few minutes ago, he seems pleased that people are enjoying the fireplace and is glad to see Brooke and I getting along. I think he was worried about me getting lonely. To be honest, I’m enjoying the quiet and peaceful evenings here, but it is nice to have a friendly neighbor. No plans for this weekend yet, but with Brooke, Kaylan, and I, I’m hoping we can come up with some options for fun weekend day-trips.
Yay!I now have a permanent desk and office space, unfortunately nicknamed the Dungeon.It’s one large, rectangular room with desk space on three of the walls, file cabinets and windows on the other. The Dungeon is technically the basement of the LAC building, but since we’re on a hill, we have beautiful windows that let in a lot of natural light and we have plenty of workspace.We even have our own sink and bathroom!Coffee and tea are upstairs, though, but that makes for a good excuse to get outside.
Sharing the basement with me are Viktor and Lucia. Viktor is a paralegal who travels a lot, I’m not sure what exactly he is doing, but I’m pretty sure it involves an HIV education campaign in the Northern part of Namibia. Lucia is a student at University of Namibia also working with the AIDS Law Unit; she is absolutely gorgeous and very sweet. Her English is good, though I feel like a lot of things are lost in translation between us. I love some of her expressions, and she gets a kick out of me too. She thinks it is funny that I’m always “footing” (walking) everywhere, and she uses the expression “is it?” for almost everything, I think where I’d normally say “really?” or “wow!” or “that’s funny” or “you did?” Lucia says “is it.”
Remember Marybeth – the American I met at Joe’s Beerhouse my first weekend here? She invited me to join her in Katatura Sunday afternoon to see the Center she runs, meet some of the kids who go there, and maybe play some basketball. The chance to get outside the city, learn about more the work she does, and hang out with some little people sounded like the perfect way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Marybeth picked me up around 2pm and we were joined by two students working at GTZ (basically a German version of USAID), Adam and Javier. Adam is German, about 6’4” and used to be a kids basketball coach. Javier is Mexican but studying in Germany, and fluent in five languages. They both have summer internships in Windhoek and wanted to meet with Marybeth to discuss the possibility of a kids basketball camp for the few weeks they are here. Though I wore my sneakers, I sat and chatted with some of the kids while Marybeth and the boys played basketball. Soo much adorable! I couldn’t believe these kids were 8 and 10 years old… they seemed so little. They had fun playing with my camera, and it was funny to hear the questions they asked… They asked who my favorite pro wrestling character was, if my eyes were fake, how much my clothes cost, and did I know that in Norway it’s sunny all the time? I was a little worried when they kept asking about all the spots on my face until I realized they were talking about my freckles, and I happily clarified my earlier explanation of pimples and described how they are different from freckles. I haven’t been gazing in mirrors very often since I’ve been here, but I was pretty sure I had more of the latter than the former. They had fun playing with my camera and hair – until Marybeth ran over and scolded them, apparently you need to ask permission to play with someone’s hair. I didn’t mind, though I did notice one girl in the group who seemed to enjoy testing authority a bit. They had a lot of questions for Javier – wasn’t he Indian? Why not, he looked it. How much did his shoes cost? Did he know that “Javier” means big gun?
After a few hours in the sun and a snack of watermelon and strawberry lollipops, we packed up the car and headed back to the city. I’m glad I spent some time in Katatura. I felt very awkward driving through the neighborhoods on the city tour last weekend – it just didn’t feel right. The living conditions in most parts are terrible, and it’s nothing like I’ve seen in the states, and much more condensed than some of the poor neighborhoods outside Shanghai and Beijing. But staring outside the windows of the white Gourmet tour minivan snapping photos of people didn’t feel right, even though some children waved at the van and happily smiled and cheered for photos. There was a really interesting talk on NPR a while back about poverty tourism a while back, and worth listening to:
Also worth reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/travel/12iht-14heads.10986274.html
For my two cents, I definitely think it depends on the tour group you’re traveling with (do your research for this one!), your conduct during the tour, as well as your motivation for going. What do you think?
After two full weeks in Namibia I had yet to get outside the city.It’s been surprisingly hard to find tours that work with my schedule – there aren’t that many on the weekend and most excursions required a minimum or 3-4 people to book or required a 50% ‘singles surcharge’ that I was not willing to pay.Of course, advance planning might have helped with some of this… Happily, on Friday afternoon, Adolph, my Austrian tour guide from last weekend, called to let me know he had a day trip to Oropoko on Saturday and invited me to join.
Oropoko is a game farm about 80km away from here. Adolph’s brochure describes it as follows:
Oropoko Lodge was built in 1993 on a 11,000ha farm, and is one of the most beautiful lodges in Namibia. Only 130kms from Windhoek, it is an ideal staring point to several destinations. As it has been sited on a hilltop, the panoramic views are amongst the most spectacular of any establishment in Namibia, all set amongst the natural beauty of the Khomas Hochland. 'Oropoko' is the Herero word for 'beautiful place between mountains'.
Adolph wasn’t giving the tour (sadly, I enjoyed him) so one of his associates (I can’t remember his name, so I’ll call him Fritz) was our guide for the day.Fritz picked me up at Puccini House at 9:30amSaturday morning.My companions on the tour were two middle-aged German men (whose names I also don’t remember) – so once again I was the odd-ball out with the language.Unfortunately, neither of them spoke English at all, so our efforts at any sort of small talk were unsuccessful.Franz, like Adolph, did an amazing job speaking in both English and German.In our gourmet tours minivan, we drove about an hour, passing some “naughty baboons,” as Fritz called them, playing at the side of the road.We took a break at a small rest stop off of the highway to go to the bathroom and check out a local craft market.They had all sorts of amazing wood carvings, jewelry, wall ornaments, baskets, etc.Everyone wants to sell you something… I need to refresh my bartering skills.I got pretty good in China – if you’re in the right mood it can be a lot of fun.
After about ½ hour we got back on the road to Oropoko.The lodge was situated on top of a huge, rocky hill and surrounded by gorgeous wooden observation decks.Fritz brought binoculars so we watched animals from the observation deck for about an hour before lunch.It took me a while to spot the animals – the giraffes blend in extremely well, their colors were much more muted than I imagined (I suppose bright yellow with dark brown spots wouldn’t last very long in nature…).After a while my eyes adjusted and I could spot a lot of animals without the binoculars (and without Fritz having to spend five minutes explaining exactly where I needed to look to see them.We ended up seeing a bunch of giraffes and a whole family of rhinos, including a baby rhino and mom!It was so cool – I took about 100 photos from the observation deck.There were also some ostrich, warthogs, and donkeys, but I found the rhinos and giraffes most entertaining. We had lunch at the lodge – I had kudu steak, mashed potatoes, and veggies.All the meat here is grass-fed, hormone free, and absolutely delicious.We had coffee, watched wildlife from the platform for a while longer, and waited for the “other tour bus” to arrive so we could go on the game drive (driving tour in a safari vehicle around the farm).Thinking it’d be another group of 3-5 people, I was a bit shocked when 50 German tourists piled off of a massive tour bus.The lodge was prepared and loaded us on two massive safari cars, and off we went.Fritz sat next to me and translated.
After watching the animals from the observation deck it felt CRAZY to get so close.We saw the family of rhinos right away… it was awesome!They were so close they were in the shadow of the safari bus – it was insane.The drive was about 2 ½ hours and I wished it could have been even longer, we had perfect weather and the feeling of fresh air, sunshine, and the vast landscape was wonderful.After we finished the game drive, we had a “sundowner” (a drink at sunset).Enjoying a Tafel and watching the sun set over the mountains (with a nearly full moon coming up in the east) was definitely the best experience I’ve had here so far.Of course, I went nuts with the rhinos and used up all my camera batteries, so I don’t have photos of the sunset.You really can’t capture a moment like that with a camera anyway.
Though we were all pretty beat after a long week, after several glasses of wine at the FNCC it seemed like a good idea to continue the evening adventure. We ended up at a bar in the city centre called El Cubano – I saw more Europeans and foreigners at the bar than I think I have for the two weeks I’ve been in Windhoek. The soundtrack was quite a bit of Ne-Yo, some American hip-hop, a bit of salsa music, and some house music. Random, but fun. I do need a lesson in ordering drinks here, apparently. They serve liquor and soda separate, so when I ordered three Jack & Diets, I got three cans of Coca-Cola light and three glasses of whiskey, and this was after quite a long discussion with the bar tender about exactly what I wanted.
El Cubano reminded me of our of our Geneva study group’s favorite stomping grounds in Perpignan – El Habana club. What is it about Cuban bars that make them tourist / American magnets? Is it like a Cuban cigar – Americans are particularly fond of it just cause we can’t get it here? At any rate, El Cubano Windhoek gave me a nice flash back to my summer in the Perp with the Geneva group. Was that really six years ago?
The French definitely do some things right. After my conference was over on Friday afternoon, I met up with two of my co-workers (Ruth and Kaylan) to go to a film screening at the Franco-Namibian Cultural Center (FNCC). The FNCC is this wonderful café and museum sponsored by the French Embassy and open to the public. It’s within walking distance from work – they have art exhibits, speakers, films, etc. and most of the events are free. Friday was global earth day, so they had two documentaries (in English) – the first about Namibia and the second about the planet. They had an intermission with wine, cookies, chips, juice… again free. I’m going to have to check their events calendar regularly… you can’t beat free wine and a movie!
There café is also spectacular. For small dishes, they have a toasted sandwich “crammed” with Camembert cheese and a little cranberry. I’m pretty sure I had a dream about it last night. Somehow, our check ended up being around $15 a person (including tax and tip) – this includes everyone’s entrée, two bottles of wine (and good wine, at that), as well as a round of after dinner cocktails. Thanks for a fun Friday, FNCC!
One of the most charming things about Puccini House is that most of the buildings are “Bungalow-style” – everything is detached and separated by cute stone pathways and plants, which are illuminated by small torches at night. I love to walk outside at night, the fountain is trickling and looking up the sky is just magnificent, the stars seem brighter, clearer, and closer here.
Enjoying a bit of star-gazing on my way to the kitchen, I turned on the electric tea kettle (I must buy one of these for my apartment… so convenient!) and bent down to get some Roobios tea from my cupboard. I almost died when I saw a thick spider about the size of my palm on kitchen wall. AGHH! Forget the tea, I sprinted back to my room, slammed the door, and checked for crevices where the spider might be able to get inside. I hope that guy doesn’t have a family, and I really hope he doesn’t find his way in to our bathroom.
People keep asking me: "So, what do you think of Namibia so far?" I want to give them a better answer than I have. I've been here for a week and a half and haven't been outside the city yet. So I usually say something along the lines of 1) It's beautiful and reminds me of California and 2) I keep meeting people who have had a wonderful time here and it makes me very excited to travel. Both are quite true.
Weirdly, Windhoek does remind me of the Bay Area. The area around the city is very hilly, the land is dry, and there are many palm and eucalyptus trees, which seem very "California" to me. The weather is also similar, 70 degrees and perfectly clear blue skies every day (though it's much colder at night here!).
I'm also very excited to travel and itching to make plans. I have had a hard time booking tours as a single, and Willem (my boss) mentioned two interns are starting the week after next, and it might make sense to travel with them. There's definitely a ton I want to see and do... more to come on this soon, I hope.
Other impressions: beverages. Like Europe, we don't drink diet coke here, but Coca-Cola light. Yum. Though, it's usually foreigners that I see drinking it. Also, they have a lot of Fanta here, and a wonderful selection of beer, which costs the same as a soda. That's always fun. Also, no shorts and tank tops. Even though it is winter here, I'm still a New Yorker at heart and when a day is 70 and sunny I feel like I should wear a tank top and shorts. I don't want to stand out more than I already do, so I'll keep all those "summer clothes" tucked in my suitcase. I really should have put more thought in to packing!
After a week at work, I still didn’t have a user ID or password for an office computer.Things seem to move a rather slowly here.On Friday, the internet quit working at 2pm (which isn’t so bar for a Friday, it just meant we left work early!) but it’s a little less convenient on a Monday at 8am.Office hours are usually 7:30 or 8am until 4:30 or 5pm, our poor IT woman was so busy battling the Conficker virus that she wasn’t able to set-up my computer until 1pm.Luckily there is a lot of published literature around the office, so I drank tea and read old publications for five and a half hours.With the conference coming up in two days, I was disappointed to lose a morning of working.When the internet is working, most web sites that use a lot of graphics time out before the page loads.I haven’t been able to watch video clip or log-on to Facebook since I’ve been here… that’s probably a good thing… less distractions I s’pose.
One thing that’s really stood out to me here is the cost and availability of technology compared to what we have in the states.The internet is more of a luxury here – the cheapest I’ve been able to find it at internet cafés is $3 USD / hour, which isn’t bad, but considering how painfully slow the internet is, the time goes by pretty quickly.It takes me twenty minutes just to log-in to my credit card account and make a payment or an hour to download a single song from iTunes.Luckily, gmail has a basic HTML format available so the pages load more quickly, but my Stanford e-mail account, Bank of America account, and CNN.com take too long to load here, so I haven’t been able to access them yet.
Now, cell phones.Everyone has a cell phone.I heard you could buy them pretty cheap here, around $30 or so for a basic phone, I actually got mine for N$199 ($25 USD) which included N$50 of airtime.Awesome!Also, most phones here use pre-paid airtime.None of this 2-year Verizon contract stuff.There are three major carriers, MTC (most people have this), CellOne (I have this), and **.You can buy “time up” cards anywhere, usually in denominations of N$5, N$10, or N$30 (like $.75, $1.50, and $4 respectively).Most stores sell them and there are always people selling them on the street.It’s amazing how long airtime will last you… I’ve been texting people a ton since I’ve arrived, and made basic phone calls for taxis, safari and rental car availability, etc. and have used less than $5 of airtime.It’s wonderful.
After struggling with French for a summer and semester, I really appreciate the effort people take to speak English. I’ve enjoyed breakfast with an Italian couple, Marguerite and Rikki, for the past few days. Both are very charismatic and have a good sense of humor. Sometimes we run in to language difficulties, but they are really eager to practice their English and enjoy learning new words and expressions, so the confusion is usually more fun than frustrating.
Marguerite and Rikki were cleaning up in the kitchen tonight, and walking in I was quite surprised to see Marguerite with a head full of teeny braids. From the smiles on their faces, I knew they had a story to tell about the hair-styling adventure and we talked in the kitchen for a good hour before I started cooking dinner. Though I’d mastered the burner lighting by now, Marguerite lit the stovetop for me before I had the chance too. I’m going to miss these guys.
As they were walking down Independence Avenue yesterday, Marguerite saw a sign for a beauty parlor that sparked her interest – I’ve walked by it myself on my way to work. African Queen, the name of the salon, has a large chalkboard sign with the slogan “Black is Beautiful.” Marguerite agreed, and walked inside and asked if they could braid her hair like one of the pictures in the window. They quoted her a price of N$220 (about $25) and about three hours to do her whole head. Turns out it took nearly six – they braided hair wasn’t as long as she hoped so she added extensions to her hair as well. Poor Rikki apparently sat inside the salon with her the entire time. It was funny for me to hear him describe the experience of sitting in a beauty salon for six hours, surrounded by Namibian women speaking in languages he didn’t understand while watching his girlfriend get braids and extensions for six hours. He joked they were going back to do his head tomorrow (he has a shave head). I love these two. Sometimes we have to go back and forth a bit to understand one another – but their happiness and humor is contagious.
As we were chatting, Guido, the Lufthansa flight attendant who is staying in the room next to me, came to chat for a bit. We talked for a good twenty minutes about scorpions, cockroaches, and contagious diseases (Marguerite kept pronouncing HIV as “H-I-vooo” – it sounds better in Italian). I am totally impressed at the effort the Italians put in to improving their English. Language doesn’t come easy to me – I know it doesn’t come easy to everyone and how hard they must have to work to speak at the level they do. I mentioned how happy I was they spoke English so we could chat, they actually thanked me for letting them practice their English. I feel fortunate that I speak English and thankful it gives me the opportunity to speak with so many interesting people.
With all the excitement of settling in to a new place, I’ve realized I’m way overdue to write about the real reason I’m here: my work.
I have a 10-week internship with the Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), a public interest law firm in Windhoek, Namibia. The LAC has four departments: the Human Rights and Constitutional Unit, the Gender Research & Advocacy Project, the AIDS Law Unit, and the Land, Environment and Development Project (LEAD). You can read more about the LAC and the wonderful work they do on their web site.
I’m working in LEAD and our main project for the next few months is the legal portion of a strategic environmental assessment. The assessment is focused on uranium mining industry in the Erongo region of Namibia, where a uranium “rush” is taking place. Multinational companies were literally rushing to Namibia to obtain mining exploration licenses, due in part to the renewed global interest in nuclear power, and also due to the government’s hope to promote foreign investment in Namibia, increase domestic employment, and stimulate economic growth. (Admittedly, the unemployment situation is pretty terrible here – I’ve heard figures from 40% to as high as 70% unemployment rates.) The government granted numerous exploration licenses and realized its infrastructure in the region, especially the water resources (the Erongo region is a desert), could not support a massive mining boom, nor would it be an environmentally sound situation for the country. This is a very important issue for Namibia – the issues of economic growth and environmental protection are really in tension here as the government tries to promote sustainable development. Even more problematic, the bulk of Namibia’s uranium reserves are located in the Namib Desert – a coastal desert running the full length of Namibia’s coastline, much of it protected as proclaimed national park area.
In light of all this, the government put moratorium on new licenses and initiated this environmental assessment. The assessment, when completed, will review existing policies and regulations relevant to uranium mining in the Erongo region and make recommendations for reform, where we can.
