Happy Halloween

I hate Halloween. Having to justify my distaste, and lack of costume, every year to a group of loud, camera happy, plastic mask smelling, hair sprayed friends, I have gotten pretty good at explaining my feelings. Like most deep-rooted hatreds, I had a bad experience. I was seven years old, Halloween night. We had just bought our current house, which looks over a nice park. My Father, in cahoots with my mother, walked us through the park looking towards our new home. Inside running through the large arching windows was my mother in an enormous white dress. I can’t remember if she was screaming but I always associate the memory with high pitched moans running through my head. Her hair was long and sprouting in every direction as her candlelit silhouette ran through our new house. My sister and I immediately began to cry and my dad quickly realized it was not humorous and he would potentially need to get the down payment back on the house. Little did we know the house was and still remains one of the scariest houses in the greater metro Denver. The second reason I detest Halloween is because I am allergic to peanuts. Unfortunately this has never hindered my consumption of candy, but on Halloween it does. At least 80% of the grub on the streets Halloween night contains peanuts or peanut butter. At the end of the night, I would be forced to shovel away nearly two thirds of my merchandise in return for flavorless Dots or something of the sort. This is most certainly not to be confused with me being deprived of any candy or food for that matter throughout my whole life, but one night every October, I was left to starve. I enjoyed some moments, it was just the idea of going out and dressing up like somebody I wasn’t and then asking for candy of all things, only to end up with 31 packs of Dots, a rogue Snickers and some Nerds at the end of the night wasn’t my idea of fun. Finally, I have an immense fear and disgust towards hair die. The smell makes me want to vomit and the appearance of a crusted vibrant color in someone’s hair has always deeply haunted me. I do not mean to put a damper on anyone’s Halloween, just wanted to say I didn’t like it. I find Namibia one of the more enjoyable places to not celebrate Halloween. First of all, there aren’t many people here, and I don’t think they know what Halloween is. Unfortunately, I live in a house with 22 Americans…

The Big O

Fall break came just at the right time and with an abundance of relaxation. It all began with the roomy and surprisingly comfortable accommodations of the Intercape Bus Service. Our Sleep-Liner bus had two levels and we each (6 friends) slept comfortably in our own row on the top deck. After a half an Ambien and some Cadbury Milk Chocolate I was at the South Africa border. We were picked up by our young yet weathered 25-year-old guide, Dylan, in a rickety Land Rover and taken to the Umkulu base camp. The base camp was beautifully situated between other outfitters, farms, and vineyards along the bank of the Orange River. The remainder of our week went by as perfectly as one could imagine. We paddled about 45km total over three and half days which resulted in lots of laying on the back of our inflatable boats and swimming when we felt warm. The river itself runs through the incredibly rugged, uninhabitable, and striking Richtersveld Mountains. We passed by hundreds of wonderful birds, including Fish Eagles, Goliath Herons and Giant Kingfishers. We also were lucky enough to see several wild horses, baboons, and plenty of sheep and goats. Our guides prepared superb vegetarian meals for us all week and we never had problems finishing our first and second servings. We spent our afternoons napping, reading and hiking and our evenings sleeping under the stars. Now back to my last few weeks of class…

The Watering Hole

Etosha National Park

• Throwing up 5 times on the way there, twice in a grocery store (bad)
o Getting to sit in the front seat of the air conditioned van to “heal”
o Front seat means great pictures on the game drive
o Getting sick all part of a photography plan

• Giraffes
• Rhinos
• Oryx
• Springboks
• Wildebeests
• Elephants
• Hyenas
• Jackals
• Leopard
• Lions
• Lots of Birds

•Our beloved soccer ball being stolen and ruined by Honey Badgers despite Passat running and yelling after them. RIP Soccer Ball, it was a good run…

• Last van ride home from an incredible, exhausting, challenging, and unforgettable two weeks

Fila

From our home-stays and Outapi, we drove a few hours towards the ocean and into the land of the Himba. The Himba people are one of the oldest groups of humans and remain almost how they were over 900 years ago. Many of you may have seen pictures of these beautiful people covered in a red paste with braids of thick red clay. CGE had worked out a complex deal with a chief, for only the second time, that we could camp next to his village if we brought some food and supplies for his people. This resulted in us staying within throwing distance of an ancient community for 3 days. First and foremost the Himba are the most beautiful race of people I have ever seen. The women, bare-breasted, wear ornate belts and anklets according to how many children they have and the girls wear brighter colored beads around the chest and hair. The boys wear loin clothes and minimal coverings but the modern dress is beginning to creep in as many boys wear torn shirts and shorts. Each night we would light a fire and eat dinner beside it as the Himba children and women would appear out of the darkness only to sit down peacefully next to our fire. When we gave them food, the peace was quickly put on hault and it turned into a scene of aggression and fury. The boys were responsible for all of this chaos, while the girls sat quietly and politely and would even wait for the boys to arrive to eat their food. We communicated with each other through body language and our hands and taught each other words in our respective languages. I spent both nights sitting and talking with a beautiful and bright 12-year-old girl named Fila. We exchanged words for star and the moon and told each other of our families. Fila will remain one of the main figures in my memory of this semester and I apologize for not being able to elaborate on that further. The experience of sitting with this community by firelight was nothing short of surreal and in that sense very hard to describe. I took walks at night and early in the morning guided by the fires of the different families and realized that this thousand year old community will be gone, certainly in this form, before I turn 50 and most likely sooner. We discussed as a group if this modernization is an avoidable, negative, and necessary thing? We didn’t come to any conclusions, but how could we, and most importantly how could they?

Eyalo

Eyalo - "thank you" in Oshivambo

The task of summarizing or capturing my last two weeks strikes me as very daunting and even silly. That said, I am off for a week long canoe trip down the Orange River in South Africa so I feel I must write something. I spent my first week in the wonderful and loving home/village of my Meme (mother) Albertina. The village was just a few minutes drive from Outapi, which is in very Northern Namibia, close to the Angolan border. The home consisted of this beautifully enclosed maze of traditional huts and fireplaces all surrounded by head high sticks and posts. Also living within my home was my 22-year-old host sister Loide and cousin Valentine, my 17 year old brother Simeon, a 9 year old Oteale, and a 2 year old Eyalo. Eyalo was far and away the cutest and most beautiful child I have ever seen. Each and every one of them could not have been more quizzical, welcoming, and loving during my stay. None of them spoke English but my Meme and Loide knew enough to get me through the day and a few simple questions. Somewhere along the line, before i got there, they decided my name was Nicky and the removal of the “y” just seemed like too daunting of a conversation, so I went with it. Before I go any further, it was 110 degrees during the day and probably 85 degrees at night. The hottest I have ever been. No water or electricity, but I was given my own little jug of water to drink and wash with, which worked out just fine. The food was incredible and the best I have had since arriving in Namibia. The older women would spend most of the day cooking on the open fire and always prepared large amounts of everything. My favorite meal was freshly killed (in front of me) goat and chicken cooked with tomatoes and onions along with delicious pasta with home-ground nut oil from a local tree. To drink was the home-brewed beer, a thick and tangy concoction that sat bubbling in a clay pot with a plethora of bugs swimming on the surface, each trying to escape the taste of my nightly challenge. Not as bad as it sounds but it was no Stella Artois. The culture is very focused on males and their superiority, which manifested itself in the women not being allowed to touch my food and the rest of the family only being allowed to eat what I didn’t finish. Being the oldest male in the home was a very odd and uncomfortable situation for me. I felt immediately empowered while all I wanted to do was fit in. That said, when I was eager to share the meat and food with everyone in the family they were surprised and very appreciative.

The initial sight of these villages and collection of huts screams poverty, yet it is only once within the community and lifestyle that it shifts from lack of wealth to an abundance of tradition. What I mean by that is I viewed my home-stay family as traditional as opposed to impoverished. In fact, I found the lifestyle quite uplifting and humbling. Cooking everything over the open fire, eating by candlelight or no light at all, and no dependence on electricity. From a mere week of observation, my family and surrounding community was one of the happiest and uplifting ones I have ever experienced. The question, which I don’t have an answer for, is what does one busy electricity dependant American take from all this. No, you or I can’t just turn all the lights off and squat by the fire, but we can all spend a few nights under the stars talking with family and friends, escaping from our own heat of the day. I understand that cultures are different, it is what makes them so intriguing and important, but when you spend time in one that seems to have its priorities so in perspective, it causes you to question your own.

One experience that sticks out from my home-stay was driving a rickety pick-up truck full of young boys and water jugs to the closest tap. We drove in and out of the trees weaving past makeshift soccer pitches, nowhere close to a road or town, to a small cement structure with a faucet. We filled seven or eight 25 liter water jugs and then an entire trash can while all the boys stared at me wondering what I was doing there. I asked Simeon how much they paid and he said 20 bucks for all of it, roughly 3 US dollars. Another great “male” experience was walking with Simeon and usually a few other boys to go gather our cattle and goats, which were usually uncomfortably far away considering the heat. We herded them, Simeon and gang always barefoot, back towards their corrals and they always complied, filing into their respective pens quite smoothly. Simeon would often laugh at me if a cow got slightly out of the pack on my side but he also knew that he was eating whatever I didn’t, so he held off. I spent the nights sitting outside my room looking up at the brilliant stars and Milky Way, waiting for my room to dip below a hundred degrees. This waiting period was only followed by climbing into the cage that was my mosquito net covered bed. I would leave the door open against the wishes of my Meme, if not I may have passed, and would wake up very early in the morning to close it before she could notice. Our home-stays ended with a massive party of all the students and their families gathered under a tree eating, exchanging stories and songs. I left the next morning arms filled with everything from a traditional bow and arrow to a full cooked chicken and Papaya for my journey. As I left I received my last broken English exchange from my Meme and sister who explained, “we love you too much my child from America, do not forget us.” I am quite sure I won’t and hope I showed them half of what they showed me.