Avis Dam and Ovitoto

It's hard to write when everything going on around you just fills your brain and it's so interesting that you don't even know where to start. Weekend continued to be good after the party; finished writing a paper about how Africa is both represented in and impacted by Western Media.
On Sunday we took a break from studying and schoolwork and went out to one of the most gorgeous places I have been in my life, Avis Dam

This dam is a bit outside of the city and a river flows into it during the rainy season, but it doesn't rain much here so I doubt it gets that deep. We walked around the entire dam, one of my friends carrying the son of another of our classmates (he's almost 3 years old) around the whole thing. Took us 1.5 hours or so total.I think I may have just found paradise. Just to let you know, it's in Namibia.

Today was our 2nd-to-last actual day of class and we had a road trip, 1.5 hours drive west of Windhoek to Otjozondjupa region, to the Ovitoto Conservancy as we have been studying sustainable development. It's mostly hills, semi-arid climate, some bushes and grasslands.
We did a tour of the Ovitoto town, where in 1904 the colonizing Germans conducted a genocide upon the Herero people, a tribe that was wiped out and is now a minority within Namibia.

There was a school in this town, 400+ kids attend it.. many of the kids were walking to or from school, they almost all waved and many said hello. There are very few white people in that part of the country, most of them are German. The sense in the town is that they still very much remember the genocide, and one of the men we talked to said "don't worry don't worry, we know it wasn't you. it was your great grandparents..." A sense of blame upon all whites was felt at that particular moment, but it's certainly not held against any visitors.
The conservancy is ever-searching for new ways to bring in tourists from the outside, because this bring in money into the community.
Many of the people that live there breed cattle to sustain their livelihoods. Cows, bulls, goats, and sheep wander freely around this whole town. Pretty cool site to see.
It seems that some of the area had some kind of plumbing, but not much. They have a well and a pump where they get most of their water, you can see this in the picture below. Very few bathrooms as well in the town.



After meeting with the Counselman of the whole area who told us it was not a mistake that we came to meet with him, as any outsider needs to get permission of the counselman before visiting, we met with the head of the Conservancy.
It was a long day, but our driver did a great job in getting us home safely in the dark. A view of our gorgeous drive. More soon. MCS