Life on the farm

Rural Homestay:
As many in the CGE group already know, I have had some pretty strong opinions of the "urban" homestays that we had, both in Joburg and in Windhoek. This is why there has not been a blog about them, as the negative vibes from that would bring down the whole blog. The last homestay was completely different. This homestay was a completely different experience than any I have had before, and the impact of this homestay will stay with me for a long time to come, if not forever.
As we left Swakopmund, I was wide awake. I had not really begun preparing myself mentally for what I was about to get into, and I was in a good mood from being on the coast for two days and did not feel like worrying about it during the car ride. I think it helped a little not thinking about it, but as we pulled up to the farm I got nervous. The house/complex looked as if it was made completely made of mud. I soon learned that it was actually made of a mixture of cow dung and clay. Much more interesting than mud.
There were many people waiting to greet me as I arrived, and this also added to my nervousness. The first one to introduce herself was the head of the farm, Ouma Patrina Koopers. She is and elderly woman who speaks very little english. She greeted me in Nama, and in my nervous state, I completely forgot everything I had learned in our weekly Damera/Nama language classes. Thankfully, I do not think it offended her. Living with the family was this retired teacher from Windhoek named David. He spoke the most english out of the people who were there at the time and he took over the introductions from there. As the combi pulled off to drop off the others, I definately felt a little bit of "what did I get myself into?"
After the introductions, we sat together to drink tea and watch the rain fall (which I learned later caused the combis to get stuck on two different occasions). It was a litlle uncomfortable at first, as there were people coming and going and I was unable to keep track of who was or was not in the family. It was also the first time I was introduced to "newspaper" cigarettes that every man seemed to smoke around there. I respectfully declined at first, but I did eventually try one by the end of my stay. They are the harshest thing I have ever tried.
After a while the sun began to set and the goats began making their way back home. As I watched Cecil (the awesome three year old who lived with us) yell and chase the goats to the pen, Ouma come at me waving a whip and pointing me towards the herd. As I am walking behind the others cracking this whip in the general direction of the goats, I realized that I was living a totally different farming lifestyle than the one back home in the States.
The first evening was by far the most uncomfortable aspect of the homestay, and the next day when I was greeted warmly by the family cooking breakfast around the fire I knew it was going to be a great week.
During the week the CGE group would get picked up and we would go into the northern Namibia city of Khorixas and do development related things. We were supposed to meet with the mayor, but that was canceled at the last minuet. We did meet with an NGO that works with the citizens to develop farmers unions and also improve the lives of the people throught skills training. We also met with the student council from the high school, which was very interesting. I think all of us from the group had a hard time paying attention though, as we all wanted to tell each other stories from our homestays instead.
The evenings with the family back on the farm were the greatest. The sunsets were amazing, and after dinner everyone just sits around the fire and either listen to the radio or talk to each other. This provided me with plenty of quiet time, as a majority of the conversations were in Nama. That was fine with me because sitting and staring at a fire is one of my most favorite things. Plus, my malaria medicine was tripping me out a bit and the horizon would flash for minuets on end.
Some of the Highlights from the week:
Rode on a donkey cart to the garden and picked avos.
Lived near by Kari and Jana S. and we had a blast, especially during the "good-bye" party.
Walking around the old german farm that was just down the road (The old farm house was super creepy).
The "good-bye" party, where we slaughtered a goat and cooked it, and we ate the intestines and liver as appetizers, and then the rest of the goat later.
Playing with Cecil, and his favorite game was "whip Jesse with the goat whip."
Riding in the bed of a truck with 12 other people (15 total in the truck) on our way to Palm Sunday service at the Lutheren Church in Fransfontain, and then into Khorixas to buy minuets for the cell phone and ice cream cones!
The sunsets, a common theme from this trip.
Lots of time to think, which proved to be dangerous, but thats another story.
Experiencing life on a rural Namibian farm.
Please make sure you get a chance to look at my pics (there is a link below)

Good Food

Getting used to inexpensive classiness.
Here in Namibia, there are a couple really classy eatining establishments that, compared to the U.S., are very inexpensive. The first on the list is NICE, which stands for the Namibian Institute of Culinary Education. It is a school/restaurant, and we have gotten to know a couple of the people that work there. The downstairs is a very fancy eating area with the most extensive bar I have seen in this town. The establishment is quite new, as it just opened within the last couple years. So far I have ordered the fish and chips and the NICE chicken wings. While the chicken wings were ok, the fish and chips was the best I have had since I arrived in Africa (and I order it a lot). The sauce that came with it was delicious. It was a lemon and vinegar mayonase mix and it was awesome. Upstairs from the bar is a deck that reminds me quite a bit of Stellas back home, and that contains a wine and sushi bar. Although I am not a big sushi eater back home, the sushi here is good. We ordered tuna and cajuin smoked salmon California rolls, both of which were really good. I tried sake for the first time while I was there, and I think it is a taste that is to be aquired after some time. We will see. The best thing about all of this is that between all this food plus drinks (jack and coke for me, reminds me of home) our group of 8 spent about five hundred dollars Namibian, which is about sixty USD. Not expensive at all for the quality of everything at NICE.
The other place I need to mention is a place we kind of stumbled upon. We were trying to go to this seafood resturant for dinner, but it was closed when we got there. So we decided to walk around to see if we could find something else. We had only walked a few feet and we noticed this resturant called the Gourmet tucked away behind the mall. We looked over the menu and decided it looked good enough. The place was very quiet as noone does anything in this city on Saturday. Not even exagerating, as everything closes by 3 pm and the normally busy city resembles a ghost town. Back to the restaurant, the Gourmet has a very extensive menu, so deciding on what to order was somewhat difficult. For the past few days I had been telling people that I wanted a steak as big as my face, so I went with the T-bone and chips (fries). Best decision ever. The steak was really as big as my face and was almost two inches thick. It was covered in fried onions (which I took off) and butter. Of course I ordered it cooked medium, so it was dripping with delicious goodness. It came with grilled squash green beans (which I did eat, mom) and fries, all of which were delicious. Everything about the meal and the restaurant was great, but to top it off my steak dinner and my friends calamari dinner ended up costing about N$ 210, or just over $30 USD. Craziness.
I am already getting used to this inexpensive classiness, and I better get over it before I get home, because the classiness here is a fraction of the price that it is back home for similar things.

Link to my pics

Here is the link to my web albums for my trip. The internet is a bit faulty here so i have a hard time uploading, so please be patient.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mplsun

evil in the air

Evil in the air
We took a trip to a monument built by the Afrikaaners during Apartheid. It is called the Voltrekker monument and it embodies everything that was and is evil about apartheid and the government that enacted it. I did not take any pictures there because i felt i could not look at that place ever again. There truely is an evil spirit in that massive building, and I could not even finish the tour. There are carvings on the inside walls of the "glory" of their trek across the continent. I am actually having a hard time reliving it writing this post. They actually have carvingsa of whites stomping out tribes and they are celebrating it. Disgusting. After Apartheid ended, the students in South Africa rallied to have the monument demolished. Nelson Mandela decided that even though it was a negetive part of South African history, it is still a part of history and should be left in place. I do not agree with this. The whole time we were there i felt that this place should have never existed in the first place. I was talking with Molefi, who was one of our guides during our time in Joburg, and he also believes that it should be destroyed. It may be a better monument if it talked about the terrible things that it represented, but it celebrates it. I hear that the Afrikaaners have a yearly celebration at the monument. Yuck. I hope to see that building fall someday, and I hope it takes the evil spirit with it when it goes.

I made it!

Arrival 1/28/2008:
I made it!
I did not sleep.
My TV screen broke three hours into the flight.
It was hotter than hell.
Those are my complaints from the flight. It really was not as terrible as it may sound. I did have an isle seat and I sat with some pretty cool people. Really, a 16 hour flight wont be a pleasent experience, especially in coach. The first class seats did look like they would make the flight more relaxing. Someday. I did get to watch one episode of Planet Earth before my computer bit it, and I made sure it was Shallow Seas so I could watch those awesome great white shots from off the coast of South Africa. I cannot wait to go swimming. A great new feature that SAA added was a camera on the tail of the plane. Even though it was dark for a majority of the flight, the blinking light provided many hours of entertainment.
Overall the flight was alright, and I had the opportunity to get to know a couple of people from the group. Watching the plane land on the screen was pretty rewarding, and knowing that I was touching down on African soil felt oh so good.

One Month

It is about one month before I leave for my trip, and the anticipation is beginning to get to me. This will be the longest I will have ever been away from Minneapolis. Three and a half months is a pretty long time to be away from home, and there are going to be many things that I will miss for sure. I do not know if there will be such an awesome chain of lakes to roll around in Namibia, but I'm betting against it. At least I will not have to worry about snow emergencies while I'm there.
The program that I am traveling with is offering what seems to be some great opportunities to learn about the history of the region and also interaction with people who have or have been effected by the previous government structure. Apartheid history is very interesting to me and this trip will hopefully grow my understanding of this period in history and how things have changed since apartheid ended.
Keeping this in mind, my main goal of this trip is to connect with the people of the countries I visit. Not only the leaders and government officials, but also the average person. This may seem like a cliche thing to say, but the truth is that many people go on these types of trips thinking they are going to do the same thing, only to be shocked and traumatized to the point where the effects of what was seen are lost. My hope for myself is that this does not happen to me, and my previous trip to Cape Town may help in not getting messed up by what I see. Yes the conditions are poor for many of the citizens of southern Africa, and yes there are things that upset me about how and why these conditions persist. The greatest lesson that my first trip gave me is that there can be joy found in almost every situation. My intention for this blog is to capture this joy anywhere I see it and share it with you. Hopefully someone out there reads it. I am not about to burden the readers of this blog with sob stories and rants about how terrible things are. There are enough of those kinds of things on the Internet and TV. Hopefully my blog has a more positive effect because of its positive nature.

Its here!

Well here is my trial post for the new blog. There will be more to come as I prepare to leave for southern Africa.