update

Hello Friends.  After 6 months of trying to get my health issues figured out here in Namibia, Peace Corps has decided to send me state side to see if the doctors there have better luck diagnosing me.  It turns out that the mono diagnosis was incorrect.  Having to go home half way through my service sucks, but it's the right decision.  My goal is to get better and to return to Namibia as quickly as possible.   I appreciate the notes of encouragement I’ve received from so many of you.  I also appreciate the support I’ve received from my friends here in Namibia.  I’ll post an update in a few weeks on my progress.

Hiatus

Hello Friends.  I know I haven't been posting very frequently in the past few months. The issue is that I’m still not well and the sickness is significantly limiting my mobility, which limits my experiences here, which limits what I have to write about.  I’ll likely be heading back to Windhoek this week to see a doctor there. I won’t be posting much until I feel better unless I have something significant or interesting to share.  Here are some photos from my walk to work this past Friday.

I pass these kids most days.  This abandoned car is their clubhouse.

I never thought I'd get used to constantly walking through sand, but I barely notice it anymore.  It's always in my shoes and pockets, often in my bed, and sometimes in my food.  I won't miss sand when I leave here.  This is a small part of the long sandy walk to my office.  It's rainy season now, so everything is very green.

 My entourage.

Part of my walk takes me through a big school yard.  There's usually about a dozen kids taking turns doing flips off this wall.

 

The Churn

Hello friends.  Not a good post for kids.

I see a lot of strange things out of my kitchen window.  A completely naked man walked past my house the other day.  All he had with him that he wasn’t born with was a t-shirt that he had slung over his shoulder.  He seemed unconcerned and quite at his leisure.  Possibly drunk, possibly mentally compromised.  Mental health services don’t exist here, or at least the lack of capacity makes them constructively non-existent. 

A few days after the naked man’s stroll, there was person sleeping inside of a discarded section of a large drainage pipe that sits across the street.  A day later, two friends had moved in with him.  They slept practically in a pile and reminded me of how my dog and his friend used to sleep on top of one another (the things that make you think of home).  The morning after that, my drain spout neighbors disappeared, and a woman in dirty purple dress replaced them.  She didn’t look good.  She was just standing there looking around and talking to herself.  When she’d turn I could see that the back of her dress was torn wide open.  She looked like she was maybe 20.  I was considering asking her if she needed help when two men in matching blue shirts arrived on foot.  Behind them followed an older woman and two children.  When the men spoke to the girl, she got irritated and started yelling in Rukwangali.  I couldn’t make out much of what she was saying besides “kembo” and “kapi tani diva” which means ‘home’ and ‘I don’t know’.  The men seemed flustered yet mildly entertained by her while the older woman showed no emotion at all.  The girl appeared quite drunk.  A cab pulled up and one of the men opened the door and the other took the girl by the shoulders and tried to guide her into the back seat, which made her erupt.  She fought and screamed and the men laughed and retreated.  They appeared to be friends or family and no threat to her.  The older woman just watched blank-faced, as did the children who now stood atop of the abandon drainage pipe.  The girl walked away crookedly, yelling while the men watched and smiled wearily and spoke to one another.  The cab pulled off and the group stood there, obviously uncertain of how to deal with their friend. 

The other night I was walking home from a friend’s house when a woman offered me a ride.  It was late, just after 11PM, but I was in a pretty safe part of town.  Though I’m recovering from mono, I still have moments of weakness and dizziness and about 3 blocks into my walk the whole world started spinning and I had to lean against a wall and wait for it to stop.  She said she’d thought I was drunk because of how I was walking, which is reasonable given the amount of drinking that occurs in Rundu during the holidays.  I explained to her I wasn’t drunk, but was just a bit weak from a sickness.  She was in town to spend time with her sister whose son had killed himself the previous day.  She said she’d passed me in her car and thought to herself that it wasn’t safe for me to be walking out here alone at night and so turned around to come collect me.  She spoke about Jesus and helping others while I sat there feeling like shit and trying to maintain the conversation through my headache.  Her name was Ester and she asked for my number and then texted me for the next few days to see if I was feeling better.  The fact that she was in town for such a reason as a family member suicide didn’t shock me. 

It’s not unusual to hear of the death of somebody’s friend or family member.  Pickup trucks full of the mourning friends and family of some recently deceased person are a weekly sight (and often multiple times a week).  Car accidents and suicides top the list of the causes of deaths that I’m actually told about, though far more often than not no explanation is offered (likely meaning HIV).  One day, I think in September, a gentleman came to my office seeking help in creating a funeral program for his young nephew.  The boy was only 7.  After completing the program and printing copies I told him I was sorry for his loss.  He said, “These things happen”.  I asked what happened.  He said, “He was sick”.  I left it at that.  Life expectancy in Namibia is 52 years, but in the Kavango, Namibia’s poorest region, it’s 42.  

Coffin making is a big business here.  There was a month-long coffin making training just outside of my office window.  They started it a few days after I’d hung a Halloween skeleton in my window I’d received in a care package.  The skeleton stood smiling and waving over the coffin making students for a month and I came to see it as their school mascot.  I probably should have taken it down, but I didn’t.  

For a kid, the death of a parent is often far more than just an emotional hardship.  Family members sometimes swoop in to claim ownership of the deceased's property, the traditional authority often supporting these claims (*a brief explanation of difference between traditional and government authority at bottom of this post).  Sometimes kids simply get kicked out to find their own way.  Recently, my friend Anneke had a young girl (16 years old) staying with her for a few nights.  The girl’s father had died and, since then, she’d been kicked out of three successive houses in a matter of weeks.  The girl then hiked to Grootfountain, a town about 150 miles from here, to stay with an Aunt.  Anneke hasn’t heard from her since. 

One of my closer friends here, Klemi, lost her father when she was 13.  He contracted a lung disease after working for many years in an uranium mine.  While she, her mother, and siblings were away for the funeral, her great uncle (and oldest male relative of the deceased) emptied their house of all of their belongings except for their clothing, which he left on the floor.  He found the father’s will and destroyed it.  He then took claim of the father’s business, a restaurant, and property.  He even tried to kick the family out of the house, but the community stepped in to stop him.  He left them with nearly nothing and there was little anybody could do about it as the traditional authority dictates that ownership goes to the oldest male relative.  Klemi, her mother, and her siblings would have been in a position of abject poverty if it weren’t for her late father’s boss, who helped to support the family and hired her oldest brother to work for him. 

Klemi is part of the Kwanyama tribe, which comes under the larger tribal group known as the Ovambos.  Many Namibian tribal traditions and ceremonies are beautiful, complex, and interesting to witness and take part in.  Then there are the customs that leave your jaw on the floor in utter disbelief, such as Okufukala.  Okufukala is the Kwanyama tradition of taking 16-year-old girls and parading them nude (except for a “tiny skirt”) in front of men who then choose a wife from among the selection.  When the time came for Klemi to participate in Okufukala, she snuck from her home and walked 30 miles to her grandmother’s village where she hid for a month.  I asked her what would have happened if she had simply refused to participate.  She said, “They would have come into the house and taken me.  You can’t refuse.  Even my mother wouldn’t have been able to stop them.  The men would have come and taken me.”

Klemi’s flight from Okufukala occurred 10 years ago.  In recent years, Okufukala has become the controversy it ought to be and its practice is diminishing.  However, it still occurs in some of the more remote communities. 

That’s all for now.  I realize this is a bit of a dark post.  Namibia is a beautiful place full of friendly, welcoming, and often very happy people.  I’ve been treated well and have never once feared for my safety.  There is, however, the poverty, disease, alcoholism, and the sometimes-troubling aspects of Namibian culture that result in a lot of despair for a lot of people.  The frequency of tragic and otherwise life altering events is greater here than in a more developed country.  There is a great sense of stability in the states where, here, there's a constant churn in the foundation upon which people establish their lives.  As I become closer to the people in my community and hear more stories of their lives, I start to get a better sense of the often treacherous and painful path of a typical life in the Kavango.  Thanks for reading. 

*Traditional Authority vs. Government

I am no expert on the complex relationship between tradition and government authorities in the Kavango, but the basics go something like this:

The three biggest tribes in the Kavango region of Namibia are the Thimbukushu, the Romanyo, and the Kwangali (that’s my tribe).  Within each of these tribes there is a power structure (“traditional authority”) that is headed by a Chief, or “Big Man” (except for the Thimbukushu Chief who calls himself the “Fumu”, which I’m told translates roughly into “God”.  Historically speaking, men who call themselves God tend to be dicks.  The Fumu is no exception.  I’ll delve into that one on some future post.)  When it comes to who makes the rules and who calls the shots, the Kavango is a bit schizophrenic.  There is the established government authority, which in the Kavango is the “Regional Council”, and then there are the unofficial tribal authorities noted above.  The Regional Council claims ultimate authority, but they go to great lengths to keep the peace with the traditional authorities and often work directly with them on development projects, protecting the environment and wildlife, and health initiatives.  However, in cases regarding issues such as petty crime, property ownership, land disputes, and disputes between families, often these things fall to the traditional authorities to deal with.