The Beginning

After the relative lush beauty of Mozambique I worried that I would find Namibia ugly, that a year spent in dusty browns and heat without the relief of shade would be a challenge. It’s amazing just how very different the southern tip of a continent that is more than any other homogenized as a single entity can be. To my eyes, newly energized and excited, Namibia is beautiful. Just coming out of rainy season, I expect this to be as beautiful as she gets but I’ll take it. Fields of pale green grasses wave in the wind, interspersed with wizened trees that still seem parched despite their crown of green. Five hours north of Windhoek, the capital, the scenery begins to change and glimpses of water appears. What starts as small ponds in the middle of fields soon turns to small floods, remnants of the rainy season. Our new home in the north is located in the Oshavango Delta which means that it is subject to the seasonal flooding of the Oshavango River to the north, just on the border in Angola. A government project and an engineering feat, an open concrete ‘river’ has been built traversing the entire north of the country where the majority of the population lives, harnessing the water and channeling drinking water to those who would otherwise not have any.

My new home is located in what is technically the headquarters of Humana in Namibia. To the left of the entrance of the centre a straight paved road that goes on and on towards Oshakati, the second largest town in the country and about an hours drive away. To the right of the entrance the same straight road continues, shimmering in the heat, towards Outapi, our nearest town about 10 km away. Across the street stands a little town consisting of about 20 buildings, many of which are homegrown shebeens, or bars, and a bright yellow shop where we have begun to make friends with Selma and Helena, two ladies who work there seven days a week to earn money at the expense of not seeing their husbands or children for weeks or months. Goats, cows and numerous donkeys roam the fields and roads.

The DAPP centre houses four separate projects: Child Aid, TCE, a vocational school and a private primary school. Child Aid seems to focus on agriculture although I am not certain of that; it also runs a preschool. The vocational school teaches students 18 and above and offers courses in blocklaying & plastering, Community Development, and Business. The only thing of note about the primary school is that it currently employs Patty, a Peace Corp volunteer from Hawaii whom I hope to be friends with.

We live at the back of the centre, in a small compound designated to DI’s. Brian and I sleep in one of six small round huts, whitewashed with a blue door, single window and thatched roof. We are currently the only DI’s occupying the huts but are told another volunteer is due in at the end of May. Lying in my little round hut I am not woken up by cocks crowing as in South Africa, but rather the painfully ugly braying of donkeys just over the fence. Standing outside my door in the morning, I turn right and walk the 50 yards to the pit latrine, next to which is the concrete garbage pit where we burn our trash. Another 50 yards straight ahead of the hut and I enter a structure made of corrugated iron, the shower area. Outside this structure stands a table where I do my laundry in a selection of buckets. To the left of the showers stands the main building, a large whitewashed brick structure with a red iron roof. Inside is the kitchen and living area where we spend the majority of our time. There is a sink that works, an oven that does not work, an electric stove with two burners, two refrigerators, and a built in seating area that serves as the living room. Our water, source directly from the canal across the road, is treated with chlorine and comes out of the tap but is still cloudy with silt. Drinking water has to be boiled, cooled, and passed through a Brita-type filter which we found after some searching in Oshakati (it cost USD$30!). After some elbow grease, TLC, and three shopping expeditions it is becoming a very comfortable space. Outside in the ‘courtyard’ between the huts is a thatched shaded area and picnic table.

The bugs aren’t too bad. We are slowly reclaiming this compound as our home, as it had been left unused for several months before we got here. The latrine is my least favorite place, as there are often spiders in there, especially under the toilet seat. Once I lifted the seat before I sat and found a fairly large lizard sitting there. The mosquitoes are surprisingly few and since we keep our door and window closed we have stopped sleeping under our mosquito nets, which I hate. The most annoying thing by far are the flies, which descend upon you the moment you step outdoors and fly in circles around your head as if riding the rollercoaster of their lives.

Much of our time is spent outdoors since the weather is always sunny and, frankly, there is no TV. I am learning to slow things down. I water the plants. I sit in my white plastic chair and watch the beautiful birds fly from tree to tree. There are three brilliant red birds passing through that like to bully the small brown ones who live here year round. I plan on building a birdfeeder. I talk to the herd of half wild dogs that ‘protect’ the center, getting them used to my voice so they no longer go into attack mode when they see me (useful when you have to get up in the middle of the night to pee in the toilet 50 yards away). I am reading a book on Pilates. Sunday I tanned outside and then took a dip in the ‘pool’ – a blue plastic tub the size of a garbage can I had filled with water and left to warm in the sun. Although cramped for space, sitting outside in cool water under a hot sun and blue cloudless sky, under a tree filled with birds coming and going over my head, I couldn’t help but feel lucky. Some people pay a lot of money for this ‘true African experience’, this ability to live even for a short while outdoors.

And I get to do this for a whole year.