And So the Learning Starts!

I finally feel like I can write a proper blog post about the things we're actually supposed to be doing here-learning! My body decided to be less hateful today so I was able to actually participate in everything.

After falling asleep at 9:30, and waking up at 6 I feel like I'm slowly conquering my jet lag. We started the day with group reflection of yesterday's tour.While I was unable to contribute to the discussion, it was fascinating to hear how everyone felt about Windhoek culture. Apparently they went through Katakura, which is an area of Windhoek where people are living in poverty. Think tin shanty towns without running water and electricity. We spent much of the reflection discussing how Namibians from outer villages move to Windhoek to either find jobs or, more common, have access to schools for their children. Often these people give up having running water and electricity in their home villages just so that their children can go to school. We also talked about how happy people are even though they have so little. Nespect said that this is because they simply do not know of any other life. Many may have lived in the slums of Windhoek for years, but have never even traveled to the richer part of the city.

After our group discussion we had a guest speaker. Jennifer Gatsi who talked about Namibian women's Health Network . She told us about the stereotypes that HIV positive Namibians have to face, and how hard it can be to get the treatment they need- even when the government offers free treatment to everyone.



After a delicious lunch(made more delicious by the ability to keep down the food) we left for the National Museum of Namibia. The Museum is in the oldest building in Windhoek- a fort that Germany built in 1905 during the colonization. The tour was...sad, as much as I dislike saying that. The museum was mostly empty, and the things that were there were things like copies of old photographs, a copy of the Constitution, and flags. It left me feeling like there should be so much more. There was barely anything said about the concentration camps, or the horrors that Germany inflicted on native Namibians,or even more about the indigenous people.  The best section was the part of the fort that had large fake rocks with native drawings/carvings set into them.

Looking out onto Windhoek

Brandi and I checking out an old narrow rail train. 

A mix of the very old fort and the very new skyscrapers

After our tour we convinced Nespect to let us walk back through town/go shopping. It was so great to be out  exploring a new city.  We got a LOT of stares, I guess large groups of extremely pale white girls in colorful sundresses are not the norm here. However, people were quite nice- many stopped us just to say hi and ask where we were from. Eventually the heat got to us(it was supposed to get up to 97F today) so we walked back to CGE(Center for Global Education, our house for the next two weeks) to soak in the pool.