Namibia: Part Two

On the way back from a short bit of wandering, I heard music coming from our campsite. I remembered that we were to be entertained by a musical group before dinner. The group was an a capella vocal group of five guys, each dressed in some sort of traditional shirt and black pants. There were three drums that they would use for some of the pieces and they introduced each one in English. They were really good! I asked one of the men (actually, they were all between the ages of 18 and 22, I believe), Linus, later about how they learned to sing and he said they were all in a choir together as kids, and continued singing from there. They sang in Oshivambo, a native language of one of the peoples of Namibia, even though Linus said that many people know English, Afrikaans and a native language, depending on their background. They did a great version of the Lord’s Prayer and Amazing Grace in English. They had did some choreography with a few of the dances that were pretty cool. And they asked for audience participation in one of the songs where they were jamming on the drums. The SAS photographer was on our trip and later he came up to me and said that he got a good picture of me dancing. Hooray. :-/ haha.
I talked to two of the guys in the group, Linus and Bobby, and got my picture taken with them. Linus told me to look them up on Facebook. How cool is that? Anyway, I talked to them so long that they started serving dinner, so I grabbed a plate and had some of the stew and rice that was served. The desert was AMAZING. It was like this sweet, moist bread pudding that is served with this warm, syrupy cream over the top. I was told later that it is called Malva pudding. It was so good –and this was at a campsite, so I’m sure there are other places where it is 100 times better.

After dinner, everyone just hung around, especially since there were clouds, hence the “cloudgazing.”The stargazing guide showed up and set up the telescope hoping that the weather would clear, but there were only stars in a bit of the sky for about 10 to 20 minutes. I still went over and talked to the guide, Arnold, who was 23 and was under the employ of his mother, Lynette who showed up later. She came to tell Arnold to pack up the telescope so that they could drive home and pointed out some of the places the stars and constellation would have been if it weren’t cloudy. Perhaps it will be better in Cape Town and I’ll get to see the Southern Cross. There has been usually wet weather in Namibia so far this year, considering that it is a desert climate and usually only gets a ridiculously small amount of rainfall normally. Liz, my roommate, went on the camping trip the next night and said that she knew it was unusual when even the guide was taking pictures of the rain.

A bunch of people sat around the campfire talking, so I sat down. There happened to be one of the camp workers who was watching the fire in one of the chairs who started talking to a girl next to me, so I decided to join in the conversation. Eventually, I moved to the seat next to him because I figured I could probably get another chance to talk to the American kids on my right, but I wouldn’t have another chance to talk to the Namibian guy on my left. His name was Saki and he first asked about what kind of sports I liked. His English was OK, but his accent made it a little tough for us to talk. He said that he likes the English Premier League and that everyone gathers to watch the games, sometimes even paying just to go somewhere and watch them on TV. I tried to ask if they liked rugby there, like I know they do in South Africa, but he seemed confused, which might mean they don’t. He said he liked the work outdoors with the camping company. Then I asked about his family –he said he has four brothers and two sisters and that he was the second oldest. He said that all his siblings get along well. He was 27 and told me that his girlfriend of three years was as old as me –born on August 9. “I remember him asking. Strange to think that his girlfriend and I were born about two months apart in entirely different places, leading entirely different lives. Saki did not study any further than grade 12. Much like in the United States, he said that if you’re poor it’s difficult to get money from the government unless you have very high marks in school. He said that his girlfriend did not go to university either. I should have asked what his girlfriend and his parents did for a living, but I didn’t think about it at the time. Saki did, however, tell me that he only wants to have one girl and one boy, because if you’re poor then you can’t afford to have all those kids. This is particularly interesting to me because of my studies in sociology. It goes to show that even in Namibia, which would fit the profile of a less developed country I think, younger generations are deciding to have less children (which, of course, could be different when Saki actually has kids). That was a really fun conversation and then he asked if we could get a picture together –which I happily did. Then, he gave me his address so that I could send him one. He also asked to take one in the morning when it was light out, so we did that too. I think he had a genuine interest in what I was like as an American, as was I in his life as a Namibian. It was refreshing to talk to someone on that level, rather than just someone trying to hassle you as a tourist. Pretty cool.

The night in the tent was fine –they gave us too many blankets, though, because it was kindy stuffy in the tent. I guess we should have opened a few more flaps before we went to bed. I saw two dragonflies in the tent –one we shooed out and the other I don’t think we did –so I slept kind of light because I was paranoid about the bugs. Other than that, I actually woke up a few mintutes before our trip leader started yelling, “Breakfast!!”at 8 a.m. Breakfast was yogurt and granola. Then, for some reason, the vans weren’t supposed to pick us up until 11. It was so hot and everybody was so tired that we mostly just sat around in the pavilion, some playing cards, most just talking. The vans didn’t actually arrive until about noon and we were supposed to be back at 12:30 p.m. Not, like it really mattered, because I didn’t have anything else planned for the day, but it was kind of annoying. Although, in the van –which, for somehow had the air conditioning on while blasting really hot air from under the seats –I sat next to Yash and had a nice, long conversation the whole way back about his girlfriend, Ariel, which he knows from Boston where he goes to school. And I talked a little about Tim, of course. Just a little, haha. So that was nice.

We got back to the ship and there was a general consensus that we should take a little time to regroup, then I met a bunch of people who all wanted to go to Swakopmund around 3 p.m.
There was a large group of about 12 people, but I mostly stuck with Yash and his friend Anchal (who’s name I don’t think I’m spelling right). Anyway, we took a cab outside the port with a girl name Kara, who was really nice –she’s from San Francisco and I mentioned that Lauren’s from Windsor. (She said she had been to the Windsor Waterworks, a water park, and remembered the jingle, but Lauren has never mentioned that to me.) Swakopmund is a cute medium-sized walkable town with lots of little stores that have both some African and German influence, since Namibia used to be a German colony. We went into a bookstore that had books both in English and in German. We saw a lot of SAS people getting ice cream at one place –partly because it was Sunday and almost everything was closed, partly because, of course, it was hot. Then we passed some people who also wanted to go up Woermann tower. The tower is only about 4 or 5 stories high, but is taller than almost everything else in Swakopmund. It was built as a part of the lodging for the management of the Woermann trading company building as a landmark. It was built at the turn of the century, but by 1924 it was used as a school hostel up until 1972. We took lots of pictures at the top.

After that, we walked down to the beach! It was free, public beach lined with houses that were either rented or owned. Actually, in the house behind us there were other SASers who had rented it. That was the first time, after seeing ocean for almost a month that I got to actually go in it! Well, technically, we just stuck our feet in, but same difference. It was awesome. When I thought of Namibia before, I would have never thought of such a place, with a beach and pretty little houses. It was great. We spent some time there and afterwards walked down the street to where there was an open air market of sorts. They were lots of people hawking African carvings in the shape of animals, bowls, baskets, necklaces, rings, and other things like that. I bought a couple small things, which will remain unmentioned because they’re presents! I kind of wanted to go closer to the lighthouse, which we even saw with it’s light on later in the evening, but the group wanted to go get dinner. We were meeting some other SASers at a pizza place, but there were lots of people in the tiny restaurant. Yash, Anchal and I started walking around to try and find another place, but nothing close seemed to have vegetarian food for them, so we resolved instead to go watch the sunset on the beach and go back to the pizzeria. I saw some old Volkswagens there! After a moment, I realized it was probably because of the German people who live there. Pretty cool. I got a pizza with bacon, garlic, pineapple and BANANA on it. It was awesome! After dinner, it was about 9:30 p.m., so we just caught a taxi back to Walvis Bay to retire on the ship, even though we were going to try and go out to a bar that some people had mentioned earlier called the raft, but the guys didn’t want to chance it being closed on a Sunday night. No biggie, I was tired from camping the night before anyway.

Speaking of catching a taxi –I realized about 5 minutes after we got out of the taxi that took us to Swakopmund in the afternoon that I had left my water bottle in it. I had gotten the driver’s number because he had mentioned that we should call him when we wanted a taxi back, but by the time we tried him after dinner he said it was too late for him to drive out to Swakopmund and back, so we should try again in the morning. Since I was on a trip on Monday morning, I waited until after we got back in the early afternoon and called the driver, who’s name was Saari, back again. I had hopes that he remembered who I was and had asked if he still had my water bottle and he seemed like he did, but when he found me outside the port Monday he said he had cleaned out his taxi and had it at home or something like that. Oh well. My only emotional attachment to it was that it had my Spain sticker and a Morocco sticker on it. I happen to have an extra Morocco sticker from the Hassan II mosque and of course, a few new stickers from Namibia, so I think I will start putting them on the back of my laptop. If I leave that in the back seat of a taxi, I think I would have a heart attack and, I haven’t taken it off the ship at all yet, so I’d say the laptop’s a safer bet.

Anyway, the last day in Namibia next!