It’s hard to believe we’ve been in Africa over a week, but also amazing to realize how much we want to remember just from this first week!
I've tried a sample of 3 photos to Picasa, and it took half an hour--so enjoy these pix; there won't be a lot coming in the future:
http://picasaweb.google.com/paulasway/Africa1Sample#slideshow/5432909344587677314
Windhoek, a city of 250,000, is prosperous, clean. It is fairly spread out, with almost no bus service. Br. Mark said, “This isn’t Africa.” German/Afrikaans influence in street names (---strasse; notable exceptions: Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe Drives.) It’s a big tourist area for people drawn to the desert—Namibia’s claim to fame, game conservancies, and parks. We arrived early afternoon after our two flights- JFK to Johannesburg and Joburg to Windhoek. David had lied about the 20 hours in air; it was only 14.5 hours plus 2 hours. So it wasn’t so bad. Good leg room, OK food. David slept little, I didn’t at all—it felt like daytime. That evening, after a nap at the very clean, simple Windhoek Lodge, a guest house that served breakfast, we enjoyed a pork chop dinner with the Brothers and Maryknoll priests Fr. Ed, who lives in Windhoek and works at the Catholic hospital and teaches at the local seminary, and Father Mike Bassano, whom we had met in 2002 in Bangkok. He was visiting from Tanzania (his current post) after the Maryknoll Africa conference in Nairobi. Fr. Ed lives with another priest who had a birthday party to attend.
Sunday, we attended Mass at the Cathedral (said by Fr. Ed and assisted by Fr. Mike.) The singing was some English, some a native language, nice and lively. Afterwards, Mark, Loren, Ed, Mike, and David and I had lunch at the Spurs, a Western (i.e., US Southwest)-themed restaurant similar to the Outback Steakhouses. Lots of hamburgers, ribs, steaks, fries. Fr. Ed was celebrating his birthday one day early, so most of the guys had chocolate malteds. Then we walked a few blocks to a crafts center, shopping about five minutes before they closed at 2pm. The streets were almost deserted on a Sunday afternoon. After another afternoon nap, our group of six joined four Maryknoll nuns, a couple more priests, and Mary Beth—a former Maryknoll Lay Missioner who now runs an after-school program for a local parish, at the nuns' residence for another celebration of Fr. Ed’s birthday. It was one of those major milestones. We enjoyed pizza, beer, wine, and getting to hear them swap stories. It turns out Fr. Rick Bauer, one of the priests, attended Cal Poly in Animal Science in the late 70s and took David’s course—AGB 301. He didn’t recall a prize of Thunderbird wine at the end of the term for the Biggest Loser in the commodity trading game, so he probably had the other teacher of the course. (Doug, do you recall him?) Several missioners were comparing who had served in the most continents—one was trying to figure out how to get stationed in Australia, and then Antarctica, to make a clean sweep of it. My favorite story was Mary Beth telling how excited she was to have just purchased mud flaps for her bicycle—her main mode of transportation. She was tired of the strip of mud up her back and front after a ride in the rain. She said she came in and exulted, “Look Father, my pants are dry!” And the father said, “Too much information!”
Frs. Ed and Mike convinced David & me to join them on a Game Drive on Monday morning while Mark and Loren ran some errands in Windhoek, and we’re so glad we took them up on it. We drove about a half hour north of Windhoek to a commercial park (there are many of them), along with two priests from the Seminary staff. For the ride, we rode in an open sided but roofed 4x4 vehicle, crossing small waterways and such, to get close to the animals that live in their preserve. We got some great photos of several antelope varieties: springbok, hartebeest, wildebeest, oryx, and eland (The oryx is Namibia’s national animal and appears on all their currency.), and one crocodile. There were a couple families of wart hogs—cute little ugly guys. Then we saw the giraffes—groups of them—families, pairs, singles, one off by herself probably in labor; young (lighter spots), old, a group of youngsters all nestled into the grass. Such beautiful animals! Then the real treat—the rhinos! Two adults and one calf crossed the river we were coming to and just walked right up to our vehicle. I tried to keep very still and inconspicuous while taking photos and a bit of movie footage. I could have reached out and touched the closest one, but I was quite happy just to take in how rough their skin looks and how big that horn is! Can’t wait to get some photos up online for you to see. Then we zipped back to Windhoek and were delivered to Mark and Loren for our ride north. That was interesting! At first, Mark was going to put us on the bus, because their four-door pickup had been totaled in an accident and they now have a regular-cab Nissan pickup. However, the bus would have reached the turnoff to our compound about midnight, and if we could all be in the pickup, we’d be home by 8:30. They had rigged a canvas canopy over the pickup bed (one of their morning errands had been to order an actual canopy, which will be delivered from S. Africa to Windhoek in a couple weeks) and bought a 6” thick foam mattress for the back.
So we started with David and me in back, and then rotated through all the riders during the 8+ hour trip (about 700+ km)—everyone had turns in front; David even got to drive part of the trip. The only downside was the exhaust fumes, but you could put your nose to the side in the space between the tarp roof and the pickup bed for fresh air. (Hey—this is real Africa! We’re not in Windhoek any more!) The countryside coming up from Windhoek looked like green Texas country. They’ve had some early rains--the desert transforms itself usually from February through March, but it’s already verdant!
David enjoyed his driving stretch, almost no stops in 259 km—except for a few cows crossing the road. We saw plenty of people walking along the highway (paved, condition better than some we’ve seen in California!), many women and school children carrying water. A couple women had 5-gallon buckets on their heads—must have some strong neck muscles! And the sunset was unreal—a sky you wouldn’t paint that way because it had too many types of clouds and color contrasts.
We arrived after dark and were shown to our home for the next ten weeks—a spacious guest house with an interesting layout. But maybe I should save details about our site here for the next chapter. After some dinner that had been saved for us, we staggered to bed and slept until about 9:30 the next AM. We are slowly settling in—I can now find our guest house in light or dark (we got temporarily lost coming over to dinner, and again going back that first evening.) We’ve been introduced to many people, especially the ones with whom we’ll be working. Mark, Loren, and Charles (the pastor of this parish and host of the parish house where Mark and Loren live) invited us to join them reading the evening prayers of the Divine Office. That has been confusing, but nice.
Wednesday, Mass was at 5:45PM, and it was a special children’s Mass, at which they sang to welcome us to Nyangana. The music is typical African, 2-3 part singing, complete with drums, clapping, occasional ululation, and dancing. And afterwards, they processed out in song, brought us through their song line to a big circle outside and then sang and danced for us. Then everyone came up to shake hands. The Mass was an amazing treat—and apparently typical of their Masses (except maybe for the dancing afterwards). Lucky for us, Fr. Charles said the Mass in English. In the mornings, I’ve worked a bit with Nyangana Maria (whose family name is the same as the name of this area, since it was named after an early settler). She is just called Nyangana, usually. The computer lab is well-designed and carefully monitored. There are a few students finishing up the course, who are already working for someone. The news Thursday was exciting: three people signed up for the Business Skills course which begins Monday. Two more stopped by and told the folks working on the Women’s Residence that they’d be moving in on Sunday. Mark can’t wait for them to actually sign up. He’s been told people don’t have much money in December and January—Christmas bills. But they’ll have the money they need for the course in February. And apparently they’re in the habit of waiting until the last minute to commit. Gee, where have I seen that before? He’s decided I would do well to wait for a week before starting the secretarial skills in case several people show up during the week, so I’ll be a lab assistant next week, helping get the ones who do start on time going on computer skills. They use a Typing Tutor program to learn 10-finger typing and must be able to do 18 wpm before learning Word. They also start immediately on Rosetta Stone to improve their English. To graduate they need to type 30 wpm, along with many other requirements. I spoke of Mark’s new women’s residence, which is just being finished in time for the new session. His main builder, Danny, has built a brick wood-burning oven and just painted it Thursday. As soon as the paint dries, they’ll be able to fire it up and see if it draws properly—a bit of a concern since this is the first oven Danny has built. The stove occasioned a visit, with David invited to come along, to a nearby corporate farm to procure a piece of scrap metal for its top surface. The funny part is, the farm they visited is the site David had pegged as Nyangana from his Google Earth research, complete with center pivots and air strip. We would have been sleeping in the farm manager’s office! (Nyangana is about 20 km. east of the this location) So David got the complete tour, including pumping stations to bring water up from the river, discussions of equipment maintenance, the works. And then the manager’s boss, a CEO over the farm operations for the multinational corporation (they also have mining), also stopped by and shared info about the finances of the operation. David was in his element! He even got a big bag of butternut squash to bring back here and made a sales pitch for Mark’s business school—the farm might send some workers to it. This farm land is leased from the tribal properties; it is not a small operation—840 hectares with 16 center pivots and three pumping stations. The company is in negotiations to write a 20 year lease and then would plant some permanent crops. Now the crops are corn, squash, onions.
Thursday was Loren’s typical shopping day for groceries and supplies in Rundu, so David went along to help pick up items needed to equip the women’s residence—like, broom, dustpan, mop, and such. The trip took them all day—and it was brutally hot in “the city.” (At least David made it sound hotter than we were experiencing around here!) Rundu actually has 5 supermarkets, a two-story shopping center with escalator, all the necessary building supply places, banks, all you need to live here. But there is a strip of sand 20-30 feet wide between the street and sidewalks, so it is a dusty and not very attractive place. While they did that, I worked with Nyangana, getting copies of the materials I’ll need for the first few lessons. And we spent an hour or two getting her acquainted with PowerPoint and Publisher. She’s on the upper end of the range of computer users I’ll be working with—fully trained in Word, Excel, and Windows. Then in the afternoon, I did a load of wash. Their washing machine has a decent capacity and takes only about 3 hours to complete its cycle—but at least it’s automatic! I’ve used less sophisticated systems in Thailand. It was a strategic mistake to wait until lunch time to start—lots of the heavier stuff didn’t dry on the line by early evening, so I had to hang it around our house overnight. I was lucky it didn’t rain that afternoon.
While my clothes dried, and in another session the next afternoon, I spent hours fighting with slow internet connections to do a little banking online. My thanks to all of you for keeping your email correspondence down to simple, short and sweet notes. I have turned off my Facebook account for the next few months, so don’t be alarmed at my disappearance from that scene. Unless it’s obviously something we really need to see, we won’t be opening any attachments. You may be thinking I’m exaggerating, but it took me about three tries at 5-10 minutes each to open Chase Bank’s log-on page. I almost cried when they told me that because I had changed my ISP, I had to request and retrieve a special access code from our email address or phone number to log on. Just a quick process, they said. Of course, by the time I got Cal Poly’s main site, then the log-in page, then the email page opened, the Chase connection was long gone. The next day the access code was there, and it only took about 2 hours to fight through the rest of the online banking.
Friday, David and Loren attended a meeting with a youth group down the road, while I took on the job of putting grommets into the tops of the shower curtains made by a sewing cooperative in Rundu the day before. I told Mark I had no idea when I made some flags for Christmas presents about 1988 that this was what I was training for! Then we hung the curtains in the almost finished showers, and they look great. By now, I’m tired of writing, so you are probably tired of reading. I’ll close with the Friday pre-dinner treat. Loren and Mark generally have popcorn and a beer, so we joined them on their screened-in porch to enjoy the cooler evening air and watch the birds and squirrel in the yard, before our typical dinner. Next week I’ll start by telling about the food, our house, our entertainment Friday evening, and the big event on Saturday in Rundu.
