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Published: September 10th 2006
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So I'm now officially settled. We wrapped up our South African adventures and headed to Namibia on Wednesday. Besides the fact that there was awful turbulence right when we were landing, so it appeared that we were crash landing in the middle of the Kalahari desert, everything was great.
I don't know why I didn't really believe that we'd be living in a desert, but I just assumed Windhoek, the capital where we are living wasn't. It was such a huge difference from Johannesburg. Coming from a city of almost 8 million to then driving through the desert for 45 minutes before we saw any real development is a huge change. It's gorgeous here...spring time and much warmer. I think I can safely put away the ski socks and sweat shirts. We even saw baboons on the side of the road while driving into the city. I'm thinking that's probably pretty common, but we were still pretty excited.
We joke a lot about being a reality TV show...but I do think that Real World Namibia would be pretty accurate. All 18 of us live in 1 house. It's pretty big considering though. We have 2 bedrooms upstairs and two
more line and the fence.
it was slightly windy and i was standing a little too close to a razor wire fence in a skirt...katie had to come and detatch me because I was stuck...but everyone waiting had a good five minutes of entertainment downstairs, a living room that doubles as our classroom, kitchen, dining room, computer room...and of course, the key element for every reality show, the pool. Yeah I know, we have a pool. oh and wireless internet too. So I'm fairing pretty well. I share a room with 3 other girls and a bathroom with anywhere from 9 to 12 girls, so it could get interesting. I do have a top bunk for the next 3 months...but right now that's about the extent I have to complain about. We have cooks for all of our meals and considering I have to walk about 15 feet to get to class, this could be extremely dangerous since for the most part the food has been pretty amazing.
The real classes don't get into full swing until Tuesday, but we've been doing lots of getting to know the area and "experiential learning" which they are pretty big on. We spent Friday in Katutura, the township area outside of the city, talking to people and pricing items at the market. Then we came home and converted the number of hours the average person here would have to work to afford those things. So even
one of these things doesn't belong.
in large groups we just look for seth.
funniest picture ever. though toilet paper costs the equivalent of about 25 cents in the US...you'd have to work over 4 hours just to make enough money to buy that one roll. And over 16 hours to buy 8 oranges. It was a pretty interesting way to really see what the living wage is. I'm hopeful not a lot will change once classes start...but we'll see about that.
Last night's experiential learning included all of us dressing in all white to go to a white party downtown. When we arrived we realized that there was mock red carpet set up and it was way fancy for us. We asked for the man we had met who said he could get us in, and much to our dismay they told us that he had been arrested in the 5 hours since we'd last seen him and was currently in jail. So instead of going to a white party, we brought the white party everywhere we went, looking only slightly ridiculous and first communion-ish. Lesson of the night was, don't ever trust someone named Manfred and that it is totally possible to fit 9 people in a compact car.
Yesterday was the World's
Biggest Braai. A braai is the Afrikaans word for barbeque, and if there is one thing that is important to Namibians, it is meat. They eat an unbelievable amount of meat- according to our professor everyone has awful gout as a result, and they find it strange that not everyone everywhere suffers from gout. But given the choice, the meat always wins out. So yesterday was the big day that Namibia was trying to make the Guiness Book of World Records for having the biggest braai. The previous record was 44,000 I believe set by Australia. It was a huge deal- all the biggest music stars of Namibia were there, and they ran free buses all over the city to try and get people to the stadium where it was being held. It cost only 1 Namibian dollar to get in, which is about 14 cents in the US. And they didn't even collect money from us. It was a huge crowd, but we got hearded in, given our meat...which was essentially a braut, and a coke and hearded back out. I haven't heard yet if they made the record or not...but how many people can say that they are
part of a Guiness World Record?
So that's all for me, now it's your turn to tell me all about what's going on at home...because now that I have wireless internet (when it decides to work...) I check my email, oh about 17 times a day. I've actually been trying not to use the computer very much, so perhaps more like 2 on most days, but still, it's exciting to get email.
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