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

Atypical Friday

While I am certainly not going in the correct order in writing these blogs, I'm going to talk a bit about my adventures yesterday (Friday).. and then eventually about my homestay experience.

I went to work at my internship at 8am and worked on calculating some data for the annual human rights report that will be coming out in a few months-- this report is sent to the UN and other organizations as a shadow report. I also went to water the garden, which I have been doing on a daily basis, in hopes that it start growing some more plants (seeds may be required however).

Aside from working a newsletter to be printed in a few weeks, I am also progressively working on a photo project so that the office can have some pictures from Namibia (both landscapes and people) on the walls.

The reason for this blog is that I decided to go take pictures, and a friend of mine has her friend visiting form the states, so they invited me to go outside of Windhoek to see the terrain... We drove in a big 4x4 for about half an hour, partly on paved roads, partly on gravel.

The land is hilly and mountainous, lots of rock and cacti, some other small trees. The wildlife that we saw included 1 donkey, about 8 coys, 1 deer-looking animal, and wasps as large as my pinky finger.

We went to a vacated house which was covered in graffiti and remnants of past visitors, but still gorgeous. We sat on the "porch", really a cement slab, ate our sandwiches, fruit, drank our Windhoek Lagers and peach ice tea, and soaked up the sun.

The house was likely a white farmer's house, judging by the size, location, and architecture. I have never seen a house so empty, broken, or beautiful.

All of the windows were gone, along with the doors, and all furniture.

Stable enough to walk around in, but not enough that you'd want to be there for a long time. After two hours of exchanging stories of learning to ski in the alps (my new Namibian friend) with his florescent colored spandex and foot-long dreads, or about the pornographic writings on the walls of this house, we all climbed back into the car and into reality.

The whole CGE spent our evening at Cafe Sol watching the Spain-Chile football match.

My time in Namibia is already going far too quickly, I have almost been here a MONTH.