I got a phone!

I got a Namibian cell phone! I am now reachable by phone 24 hours a day (but please keep the 6 hour time difference in mind). To get in touch with me, you can call my cell at 011 264 855 906 345. You can also try the house phone, which may be cheaper since it’s a land line, but if I’m not in the house you’ll have to leave a message. That number is 011 264 61 250 737.

I’m starting to get to know the city a little bit better. Last night I went out to Funky Lab, a club in Klein Windhoek. Today I met with NUDO, the primary opposition party. That was very informative and I’m looking forward to hearing from the leading party, SWAPO, so that I can form an opinion on Namibian politics. It’s an election year and I’m taking an African politics course, so I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot more about the current political situation. I went to NUDO with Otto, who is from Katatura (Windhoek’s township) and afterwards we went downtown to see some cool things. It was cool to make a Namibian friend and the other CGE students met with different Namibians, so it will be nice to meet them too when we hang out in the future. Tonight is our first Friday night, so I’m going to a place called El Cubano. Tomorrow, I’ll help paint an orphanage in the morning and go to an outdoor music festival (celebrating spring!) in the afternoon. My internship starts Monday and classes start Wednesday, so there are some great things coming up next week.

One last thing – happy birthday (a few days belated) to Phoebe!!!! There was no time for me to get a card in the mail, so you get your birthday wish via blog!

Helloooo Windhoek!

I am now in the CGE house in Windhoek, Namibia after another full week in South Africa. I did a ton of things and I don’t really know where to start this update.

Friday to Monday I did a homestay in Soweto. My host family (the mom Thandie, 20-year old son Karabo, and 11 year old daughter Carise) were welcoming and open and friendly. Thandie was really concerned about my safety, so she wouldn’t let me do much exploring of the neighborhood. Luckily, Karabo and had a lot in common and stayed up late talking every night. I didn’t get as good a perspective on the township as others did, but I definitely got a good view into this particular family’s life. Another interesting part of the homestay was being a minority. We were in pairs for this first homestay, but my homestay partner, Shakita, is African-American, so she did not stand out as much. For the entire weekend I did not see another white person (except other people from CGE at church) and I got waves, comments, stares constantly. It was an interesting experience being so visibly different and out of place, but it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable.

On Monday, after getting picked up from Soweto, we visited a place called 17 Shaft. This is an organization that does a lot of social and community work but I enjoyed the visit because of the CEO, Steve. Steve can best be described by one word: LEGEND. When we first met him, he introduced himself as “one of the few New Zealanders who is an officer in the Russian army living in South Africa.” He said this while pointing a gun at the group (he was showing off his weapons collection). He’s served with four armies on four continents and was an active part of the military arm of the ANC during the liberatin struggle. He’s currently working on turning over the management of his organization so that he can fight Somalian pirates. He does not believe there is any situation in which violence is unacceptable, and he can’t go back to jail.

From 17 Shaft we went straight to Pretoria. Some of the highlights of the two days I spent there: talking to a foreign service officer at the US Embassy and going to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that also served bottomless drinks (an interesting and, for some, nausea inducing combination).

This morning we flew to Windhoek, where we are based for the remainder of the semester. Our house is HUGE and so nice, which it needs to be since there are 25 of us living here. I am sharing a bedroom with 5 other girls which is a little cramped, but the common spaces of the house are incredible. We’ve got a pool and a firepit. The city itself is pretty dangerous – there was a mugging outside of our house at 5:45 this evening – but as long as the standard precautions are taken, the risk should be minimal. And unlike Joburg, the crime here is not particularly violent. Tomorrow we are doing a driving tour to orient ourselves, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know the city better. We also start prepping for our internships --- my first day is Monday, and I am SOOO excited!

African Socialism

The past few days I’ve been pretty busy. I went to the Apartheid Museum on Wednesday morning. It was really informative and used a lot of different types of media, but there was so much information that I felt a little bit overwhelmed. It was designed by the person who designed the Holocaust Museum in D.C. and I noticed a lot of similarities between the two. At the beginning of the Apartheid Museum you are given a card that determined your identity (white or non white) and your path in the museum, much like the booklets handed out at the Holocaust Museum. I took my time and tried to thoroughly absorb the information in each room, which meant I only got about halfway through the museum before it was time to leave. Now though, as I’m thinking about the designer, I wonder what it’s like having a job documenting and archiving atrocities for the public. Not a job most people grow up wanting to have.

A lot of the rest of the time has been taken up in lectures. We heard from a political economist who works for a South African environmental group. While the lecture duplicated a lot of the stuff I hear every day as an ID major at Clark (neoliberalism, the World Bank, sustainability, resource management), the speaker was really well-spoken and funny (in a cynical, depressing way). A representative of the South African Council of Churches spoke to us today. I enjoyed learning about all of the advocacy and social work that the organization does. They were instrumental in the struggle against apartheid and continue to be active in society and government.

My favorite lecture so far was at the Anti-Privatization Forum (ADF)’s offices in downtown Jo’burg. The ADF is an umbrella organization that provides supports for local NGOs and does community organizing. They, like many of the people I have talked to this week, are socialists. The South African constitution is among the most liberal in the world and it promises, amongst other things, that the government will provide housing, welfare, electricity, social security, etc. That means two things: that the scope of the government’s responsibilities and socialist programs encourage socialist thought and that service provision is a primary concern among all South Africans. The ADF does incredible work in all kinds of areas, from electricity and water, to women’s rights and education. They are a really inspiring organization and I wish we could have had more time there.

In addition to all of the informative stuff, we went to a market today. It is a pretty famous (and therefore overpriced) market, but it was fun to do some bargaining (turns out I’m not as bad as I thought). I had some awesome Indian food there too. I feel like all we do here is eat. I’m never hungry, but they’re constantly providing us with meals. Tomorrow we leave for our homestays in Soweto, and from there to a new hostel in Pretoria, so I’m not sure when I’ll have internet again. My homestay family has teenagers, so I’m excited to meet them and talk to them. Hopefully I’ll have fun, step out of my comfort zone, and experience some cultural immersion.

"After the change..."

Every time Malefi talks about events in South Africa of the past 75 years, he uses the phrase “after the change” or “before the change.” Instead of using numbers, or saying since the end of apartheid, he talks about the change. Maybe I’m just rambling about semantics here, but that’s really interesting to me. The new elections in 1994 and the end of apartheid was not only a major milestone, but both the biggest event (THE change) and a complete transformation (the CHANGE). I’m sorry if I’m not making sense here, but they way he, among others, emphasize both words, make me realize that the events culminating in the 1994 election were both huge and transformational. It’s so interesting for me to see that there was such a singular issue that dominated (and continues to dominate) both politics and everyday life.

On to my day’s activities, which are probably of more interest. First we went to a semi-private (Catholic) secondary school. I was amazed by both the amount of knowledge and the amount of preconceptions that the students had about the United States. That mixture of truth and false perception probably mirrors my notions about the region. I was also really surprised to see how concrete and lofty the career goals of the students were. Many of the girls told me they wanted to be chemical engineers or doctors, and Banana, my personal tour guide and a student in 11th grade, told me that he wanted to be a gynecologist. They also had interesting insights into the South African educational system; most often cited as an issue was the lack of resources. It was really fun to learn from the kids and also to talk to them and I took some great pictures and laughed a lot.

Afterwards, we went to the Hector Pieterson museum. Hector Pieterson was a 13 year old boy killed during the student protests of June 16th, 1976. As such, he has become a symbol of the liberation struggle. We heard his sister, Antoinette Sithole, speak and then toured the museum, which was really well presented and informative. I am looking forward to my trip to the Apartheid Museum tomorrow and the Voortrekker Museum next week to compare.

Now I’ve got to go, time for a group session on “Group Dynamics.” I’m anticipating trust falls….hopefully I won’t break my nose this time!

Arrival in Joburg

After an exhausting 16 hour flight, complete with a refueling stop in Dakar, Senegal, our group arrived in Johannesburg at 5:40 pm on Sunday, August 15th. We were met by several of our program coordinators and 3 other students who flew separately. After driving to our guesthouse, eating dinner (which I wouldn’t have thought possible, since they gave us 3 meals on the plane), and having introductions, we went to sleep. I have never slept better, and never been more upset to wake up at 7:30 am. Our busy day today was worth the lack of sleep over the past few days.

After another introduction to the program, we had a lecture by a South African coordinator, Malefi. He was a student leader during the liberation struggle and so had a very good perspective and told us a lot about South Africa’s history since colonization. What I found most interesting, however, were his thoughts on South Africa since the 1990s. Many people say that the peace that South Africa is experiencing is a miracle; he disagrees. He says that he and the other student leaders never saw their struggle as a fight against the white Afrikaners, but instead as a fight against apartheid. The problems that arise today are because the government of the past framed the fight as a fight against white people, so that some white South Africans are even today afraid to go into historically black areas or townships like Soweto, in which we spent the remainder of the day.

We did a driving tour of Soweto to begin, with stops at the hostels (temporary housing for single males during apartheid, which today houses entire families without electricity, plumbing, or other basics that I have grown up considering necessities) and Regina Mundi church (a meeting place for student leaders during the struggle, and an important reminder of all the South Africans faced during apartheid). We went to the Soweto mall for lunch, which provided an incredible and disturbing contrast to the areas we had just visited. Afterwards, we went to Cliptown, a very impoverished area in Soweto. Since we met some local politicians there, we were allowed to walk through the alleys and actually go into some people’s living spaces (which are more easily categorized as shacks than houses). We saw the single water tap and row of port-a-potties that have to service hundreds of shacks at a time. We talked to the men who led us through the town, both lifelong residents, and met large groups of children who were very excited to see us. We also went into a 4-star hotel right next to the shanties (once again, a disturbing contrast, which may have explained the lack of guests) and went to Freedom Square, where the components of the Freedom Charter developed by the ANC in the 1950s is written and memorialized. All in all, an incredibly informing day. Our week in Joburg is a travel seminar, so I expect more of the same (guest speakers and tours) until Friday, when I’ll have a homestay in Soweto. After that, I travel to Pretoria for two days, and then on to Windhoek. Finally there I will start my classes and internship and, hopefully, become more of a resident than a tourist.

10 Days.....

Ten days from now, on August 15th, I will be making my way to Washington D.C. for a glorious 16 hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa. After spending a week there, including a short homestay in Soweto, it's another flight (much shorter this time, thankfully) to Windhoek, Namibia, my home base for the majority of my four months in Africa. While in Namibia, I'll be doing some travelling. I'll have some homestays, both urban and rural. I'll have an internship with a women's health and HIV/AIDS advocacy group, working on a literacy program for HIV-positive women. I'll be living with and taking classes with 20-something other college students in a house with wireless internet and a pool (so much for roughing it......) I'll leave Namibia to spend a final week in Cape Town and then, finally, on December 6th I'll come home.

Even though I know the details and dates, the whens and wheres of my four months abroad, there is so much I don't know. Who will I meet? What will I do? Will I feel like I have accomplished something, learned something, at the end of my experience. Will I have regrets that I did too much or didn't do enough?

All of those questions I have will remain unanswered until I arrive in Joburg, until I am living in Namibia, or perhaps even until I have been back home and had time to process my experiences. I don't think there's really a way to prepare yourself for a transition to a new place because so many quantities are unknown. I dunno, maybe there is something I should be doing to get ready. Maybe I'm just justifying my procrastination..........