First day on the job

Successfully completed my first full day of work at my internship, which is at a human rights organization. I was asked to help out with a training, which is a three month-long training to help teach Namibians about their country, their civil rights, and what they can do to help promote human rights.

They had to take an aptitude test (multiple choice) to determine how much they knew about politics and government, most of the questions asked who were the heads of different parts of the government, political parties, UN High Commissioner, and important dates in their history. I have been in the country for a week and I already felt I could answer a few, but would have failed miserably if they had graded my test.

I talked to one of the participants of the training who is studying bio-med and wants to go to the US on scholarship- it turned into a very interesting conversation.

I spent much of my day talking with members of the organization about various topics: from Michael Jackson to gay marriage, imperialism and the colonialist era to Namibian weddings (which I was invited to attend!! I hope the offer pulls through!)

My friend W walked me home at the end of the evening which was very nice since the sun is already setting at 5pm!!

I also received a copy of the Namibian Constitution today.

Windhoeked

This week has gone by so quickly it's been difficult to process all of my emotions towards this whole trip and all of the events I have already encountered. This weekend I spent much of my time with my fellow CGE-ers (Center for Global Education) exploring Windhoek and it's little nooks and crannies.

Today we went to the craft market, which is basically a large building with vendors (mostly women) selling handicrafts, jewelry, photography, and many more touristy things. I bought a few items, and found this wood-carved tortoise on our way out. I thought it was appropriate since I miss my tortoise Leo, but I don't think I'll be bringing this guy home with me.

Even though it is winter here, the temps are close to 75-80 every day during the daytime, so the pool in our backyard is nice to dip my feet into, even though it's too cold to swim in (maybe on a really hot day I'll be brave!!)
The sun rises here close to 7:00 (I've yet to get up that early so I can't give you a more exact time), and sets close to 5:45 pm. The temperature difference during the day and night impresses me, as some nights it's down to 40 degrees F.
We start our classes on Tuesday so I spent a few hours today soaking in the sun and reading by the pool; a good end to an amazing first week.
In Windhoek there are a couple parks for lounging, eating, studying- this one is called Zoo Park (there are no animals here, and I have not found any evidence of any animals ever having been there). The downtown area of the city is not too large but has many restaurants and bars (if you know where to find them). The main street is called Independence Avenue, which cuts north-south through downtown.
Though I enjoy walking down Independence Ave, my favourite streets so far are Robert Mugabe St, Fidel Castro St, Florence Nightingale St, and John Meinert St (which I live right off of). Most of the street names here of scientists, philosophers, Namibians, and other famous individuals (such as Gandhi and Beethoven).

Today we went to lunch at an Italian restaurant in downtown, which ended up being a restaurant where only white people eat. Though most of the people in the restaurant were not tourists, there was only one table that did not have whites sitting at it, which is a little strange where whites make up 200,000 of 1.8 million Namibians. I felt awkward sitting at a relatively nice restaurant being served by coloreds and blacks, while neither were represented as customers. I wonder if there will be similar encounters in the future.

"Before 500 years ago, Africa was a dark continent"

The days are starting to blur a little bit, but I'll try and piece them together.

This morning the whole group piled into our white micro bus and headed out to Penduka, a non-governmental development organisation working with women in Namibia. This organization (which resembled more of a little nature reserve) encourages and supports women throughout the country to take charge of their lives. We did our group bonding here. It is on the Goreangab dam,. There were over 400 species of birds there, and I saw a lot. A heron flew by as well.

I didn't take either of these photos, but just a look at what Penduka looks like.

After our wonderful group bonding and ice breaker sessions, we headed back into Windhoek and did a couple of museum tours. We did a tour of the Nat'l history museum , where we had a tour guide give us some interesting interpretations of history, including the titled quote of this blog entry. Overall a long but very stimulating day.

Day 2 Namibia

Just a short snippet of my day; went on a trip with a tour guide to the black township Katatura again. My group member and I, a university student from Ohio, went with our tour guide to SWAPO (the ruling political party in Namibia) headquarters to meet with a youth league representative. It was a really interesting talk about the role of the youth league's role in SWAPO, as well as in Namibia.

After our meeting we went to our tour guides' friends house and got to see how the lower-middle class lived. We also went to a market and I felt as though I didn't belong. Most of the people looked at us as though whites didn't belong there, and a few people made comments to our guide that she "isn't white, so why is she pretending to be".

We also went downtown to get some lunch, and back to the center.

Our group went out on the town tonight, only gave a taxi driver the wrong directions once, and found a great hostel and bar right across the street from our center, which seemed to have lots of interesting people at it. That's all for today.

Windhoek

Some photos of the poorer townships where black Africans were forced to relocate to during the years of apartheid.

The more affluent areas in Windhoek where mostly white Namibians live.

Arrival in Windhoek

After 24 hours of travel from Budapest, I finally made it to Windhoek. I'll try and keep my blogs short this summer since I know they can get a little boring or repetitive. I flew from Minneapolis last Wednesday to Budapest, through Chicago and Warsaw.

Spent the weekend hanging out with my parents, seeing teachers from AISB, and eating and sleeping a lot!
I will be heading back to Budapest, on my way home from Namibia.

I arrived today at 2:30 with the sun beaming down, probably 75 degrees out; there are palm trees at the airport which was a nice welcome. After 30 minutes waiting in line at customs, I got my tourist visa and found my bag, and the driver for the Center of Global Education (my program) holding a sign, awaiting my arrival.

Windhoek is encompassed by some high hills-not so much mountains- but pretty rugged hills. I'm excited to maybe climb some of them this summer. Orientation starts tomorrow, including a meeting at the US Embassy about safety.

More coming soon- off to enjoy being in Namibia!!

A little more of Boston

A photo montage of my trip to see Chris. Weather was beautiful, kinda like it is now in Minnesota!!