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Published: September 28th 2006
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that's namibia!
so whenever you are in doubt of what the country i'm in looks like hold out your right hand... So I wish I was clever enough to have come up with this clever hand gesture of a country...but I'm still endlessly amused with it nonetheless. I'm around the middle finger's knuckle.
The rest of the homestay ended well. When I returned to my house Saturday morning, after a somewhat failed attempt at celebrating Mary Olive's 22nd birthday Friday night, to find my host sister standing at the gate screaming JAIMIE! (what she insists my name is. by the way mom and dad, thanks for the name that is impossible for everyone to say. I was told you should have named me Mary.) I was also told she'd be gone all week end...so Saturday morning started out a little rough. I took a shower in the middle of the day for the sole reason that I could lock the door and be left alone. I do also have permanently black feet, so I took a stab at working on that permadirt. Saturday afternoon after listening to Faith talk about going swimming for 8 hours, her parents decided to take us to the Municipal Pool. I was so happy I hadn't insisted on using our pool at the house- because the
Family picture!
they look much happier most of the time... city pool had a huge pool no more than 2 feet deep. Since she can't actually swim this was far superior than her drowning both of us in our 4 foot pool. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon sitting under palm trees at the pool. That night we went to a traditional Damara (one of the ethnic groups here) engagement party. Almost all of it was in Damara...but given what I spent the summer doing, it was a pretty cool experience. Basically this was the formal engagement, and they will get married in two weeks. Only family members are supposed to attend, (my host mom somehow got an invite from a friend) which made it blatently obvious that I didn't quite belong. But after lots of advice given to them, there was dancing, to music that was oddly waltzy and eating. From there unbeknownst to me, my family took me on a clubbing tour to several different clubs and shebeens. The fact that it was my host parents taking me out was pretty cool and it really set in that they are only 6 years older than me. We did the church thing Sunday then ate an
absurd amount of meat. I know I keep saying they love meat here, but really, they don't mess around. We had 4 kinds of meat for four people, and it was unbelievably good. They took me to the city museums and around the touristy sites of Windhoek before getting me ice cream and dropping me off at home.
Twice now we've met with Mbrumba Kerina- this man named Namibia. Imagine naming a country. He is an amazing man who had a huge part in forming this country. JFK was his American guardian, he was close friends with W.E.B. Dubois, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, the Indonesian Emperor...oh you know, small connections. I was slightly awe struck that this man was sitting in our living room talking to us about his life. And then, a speaker cancelled and he spoke to us again today, which was pretty sweet.
Oh, and much to my disapointment, the toilets in the southern hemisphere don't actually appear to flush the opposite direction, since I know you were all wondering.
We leave Monday for lots of super adventures for most of the month of October. So where I'm going to be for the next
The terror of a host sister.
okay she wasn't that bad, she's almost cute here. three or so weeks of my life...
Monday we leave for Swakopmund/Walvis Bay (aka where Angelina popped the baby out.) We spend a couple of days there, it's a coastal town, apparently very German and I think we'll get a chance to go to some of the big dunes in the Namib desert.
Thursday we are dropped off on our rural homestays for 6 days...this should be one of the more interesting parts of the semester, and the first time we will have really ventured out of the city and possibly be all alone. We're all going to be in a village in the north...they may or may not speak much English, but in each of our families there should be at least one English speaker. So we've been taking weekly Herero Classes, the language spoken there, and I can now tell them "I want Beer" "I don't want to do dishes" and various other phrases. I'm going to rely mainly on my handy little sheet with pictures of everything known to man, and like Curtis suggested bring my own toilet paper. But watch, for all I know I could once again end up at a super nice
house where everyone speaks English.
From there we spend a couple of days as a group at Etosha, a game park in northern Namibia that's supposed to be amazing, and hopefully we'll be able to see a lot while we're there, since it's dry season...so all the thirsty animals will have to come out of hiding.
Then it is Fall/Spring, whichever you like, break. The plan as it stands is to take a 19 hour bus ride (that's longer than it took us to get to South Africa) to Victoria Falls on the Zambia side. We have a place to stay for the first few days, and I think a lot of our group will be there then. After that we're going to play it by ear...I imagine spend some more time in Zambia away from Vic Falls...perhaps Zimbabwe- but I promise I'll avoid all government turmoil and stick solely to highly touristy areas. Right now planning the process of everyone trying to plan is driving me out of my mind...but I'm sure it will be fun once we get there.
The semester is flying by already...we've been here a little over a month, but by the
Porshia and Denzel
it's kinda weird to call them my "parents" time we get back from traveling, we only have 5 more weeks in Windhoek. Craziness! So have a fabulous first 3 weeks of October in whatever respective parts of the world you are all currently in and who knows when you'll hear from me next.
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