Photo Friday on Thursday

Photo Friday and a quick post. OK, my first photo Friday is occurring on a Thursday.  Friday is a holiday here and I only have internet at my office. I’ve decided to begin posting one or more photos on Friday along with some of my more random thoughts and experiences.  So, these Friday (Thursday) posts may be a bit sloppy. 

You know that moment in a dream when you start to realize it’s a dream?  That moment that the word “dream” hasn’t entered your mind yet, but you begin to question the reality of what you’ve just been experiencing?  That feeling has occurred to me a few times here while I was awake.  I had one of those moments last Saturday morning as I stood looking out the back door of my flat, eating my guacamoatmeal breakfast (not Namibian) out of my big Herero cup (blue, not yellow) and wondered how I might spend my weekend.    A man came to my back fence and asked if he could clean up my yard.  Across the street behind him a woman walked with a flaming stick, followed by one young boy naked from the waist down and two skinny dogs.  She was setting the brush on the side of the road on fire.  Then a precession of cars and pickup trucks packed with passengers passed by, kicking up dust and blocked the fire lady from my view.  I asked the man at my fence what the precession was for.  He said “a wedding”.  I asked him how long the wedding would go for and he told me it would take the entire weekend.  He then called me by my name.  I had no idea who the man was or how he came to know my name.  Perhaps one of my neighbors told him about their new American neighbor.  You’re left scratching your head here a lot.  I told him “thanks, but I don’t need my yard cleaned up.”  To which he gave my yard a disapproving look.  I then said “Ame mulizambeli.  Randa kwato.” Which means “I’m a volunteer, I have no money”.

Oftentimes, people look at me here like a potted plant might burst out of my ear at any moment.  Nobody wants to miss that.  Sometimes I walk the 3 miles home from my office to get more familiar with the neighborhoods of Rundu.  I’ll stop at a few shops and buy something small, sometimes food, sometimes a bottle of beer, sometimes some candy to hand out, and I try to speak a bit of Rukwangali with the shopkeeper.  This is met with varying levels of delight and confusion.  Cars pass by outside the shop door, kicking up dust, the always-present Namibian children staring at me with curiosity or awe or completely dumbfounded.  The shopkeeper, protected behind a steel cage, bars wide enough to hand me whatever I’ve pointed out and paid for, does their best work with my limited Rukwangali.   

During my commute home, I walk through both “formal” and “informal” locations.  The informal settlements tend to be the poorer areas, mostly consisting of corrugated metal (what they call “zinc”) shacks, and mud and stick huts on dusty sand drives.  I pass a Tumbo joint everyday on my way to lunch.  Tumbo is sort of homemade fermented beverage that packs a punch.  Everybody inside and outside of the tumbo shack is pretty haggard.  Tumbo costs N$1 (that’s 1 Namibian dollar which is less than 20 cents American) for a large mason jar full.    All the women sit in a row against the outer fence wrapped in dark dirty clothes.  The men sit in small groups on the ground, on old tires, or on the few benches available.  Mason jars filled with the brownish yellow used-turpentine-looking tumbo are passed.  There are always a few noticeably intoxicated people moving about and sometimes a few lying on the sandy ground of the open air establishment.   The scene doesn’t change much from noon until 5:00PM or from day to day. 

I eat lunch nearly everyday with a woman named Keto.  She’s one of three female owners of a restaurant/shebeen (a bar) in location near where I work (about a block from the Tumbo joint).  Her business is clean and appears to be well run.  Keto runs the restaurant, which consists of about 4 options served out of large catering pans and a few picnic style tables under an awning that is attached to the bar.  I typically get chicken, porridge, and mutete (sort of a stewed spicy spinach).  Keto patiently answers my questions regarding Namibian business practices and how she and her sisters (I doubt they are really her sisters) managed to save enough money to open the business.  I’m sure she has little idea what to make of me or my questions, but she seems curious and entertained and genuinely happy to see me. 

Sometimes Keto sips beer while we chat.  She always gives me way too much food and I slide my plate over to her when I’m done and she finishes it.  Twice a mentally challenged man came in, a fixture at the tumbo joint, with a gray beard and deeply wrinkled face, carrying his homemade toy rifle and speaking quickly and endlessly to me in Rukwangali.  “He’s saying you shouldn’t be scared of him” Keto tells me.  I say “I know, please tell him I’m not.”  (And I really am not.  Besides having a few things stolen here and dodging cars, my experiences with Namibians have been good).  Keto then gives my plate to the man to finish.  He walks off into sun and dust outside with his toy gun slung over his shoulder and then returns about a minute later with an empty plate.   

I love Namibian pedestrians.  The drivers I could do without.  My experience so far strongly suggests that Namibians, when driving a car, are wholly unconcerned with anything other than their destinations.  The gas, break, and steering wheel are tools used only to manipulate a car toward a destination.  Any human that might cross their path is, constructively speaking, invisible.  I might as well be a pigeon.  I have some experience with this from my days in Vietnam.  Running is an interactive experience here.  I ran at night once.  The sand looked like snow in the light of the approaching cars.  Looking up I had bouncing headlights intermittently blinding me.  When I didn’t have headlights in my face, my visibility was limited by all of the smoke and dust in the air (people set brush fires here a lot.  I believe to remove habitats for snakes).  Looking down I could only see the confused shadows of drifted sand made more confusing by the shifting light.  Long story short, I’ll run in the morning or not at all.  Namibian drivers seem to sleep in. 

My work is going well so far.  I’ve already started some work on multiple projects.  I’ll be facilitating a large business plan writing workshop next month.  I’ve also started working on a female empowerment through entrepreneurship workshop, though real work on that will have to wait until after the business plan writing workshop.  My pet project is an exercise and nutrition club here at the youth center.  I'm pursuing this project for purely selfish reasons.  I’m pretty much just trying to get a bunch of kids to work out with me in the afternoon a few days a week.  I’ll stick a talk at the end of each session on health or nutrition or malaria…I’ll make it work. 

Thanks for reading.  My goal for next week is to take a number of photos of the things I see daily so that you can see a bit more of what I see everyday.  

My favorite photo of the week is not mine and is not from this week.  I hope you like it.  (Thanks to Vilhelm G. Wilmason aka Pam) 

Photo hunting in Omaruru.  PGW