Southern Tour

Well, I finally did it.  I left Windhoek and headed south for the first time, and I had a blast!

Hiking

My hiking experience was overall pretty good.  I got free rides the whole way except for the last leg to the small village of Bethanie.  My trip started Sunday morning with a free lift to the Windhoek southern hike point from a friend of another volunteer who was picking up a computer I fixed for her.  As soon as I got out of the car I found a hike to Rehoboth in a nice BMW driven by a pretty wealthy grocery store manager.  While going down the road in nice leather seats I found it difficult to imagine I was actually hiking in Namibia.  The ride was nice, but each crest in the road threw the car around like a big boat on bigger waves.  I found it odd that a nice BMW would handle so poorly until I noticed that he was driving more than 220 kph!  Suffice it to say, we made it to Rehoboth in no time.

The Tuesday morning hike to Mariental was not as nice.  This particular morning happened to be the first in a series of very very cold ones.  I arrived second at the hike point and waited on the side of the road for two hours as more and more people joined us.  About two hours later everyone at the hike point spontaneously started gathering their things and heading to the gas station near by.  Apparently, someone made some sort of signal and everyone piled into the back of their truck.  Not wanting to travel for two hours in the cold in the back of a pickup, I held back and was soon the only one left standing on the side of the road.  Not 20 minutes later though, a small moving truck stopped to pick me up.  Another free ride- yeah!

Wednesday's hike from Mariental to Keetmanshoop was even more eventful than the previous day.  I got a ride in a semi truck after just ten minutes at the gas station, but before we even left the station there was an "air lock" and the truck broke down.  I waited with the driver for the mechanic for ten minutes before deciding to look for another ride.

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Can you guess what's in these crates?  Live chickens.  No joke.  Each milk crate had three or four live chickens in it.

For the next three hours I wondered from semi to semi, car to car, talking and trying to mask that fact that my only interest in these people was their destinations.  I did have some very interesting conversations however, and met some even more interesting people.  One was a scandinavian traveler who was flat broke and trying to get to South Africa.  He had spent the night on the sidewalk outside the gas station and looked pretty bad.  I also met a South African truck driver who was transporting live chickens which were stuffed in milk crates on a flat-bed semi.  When I asked sarcastically if they survived the trip, he responded matter-of-factly "most do."  I spent about 30 minutes chatting with three oversized transport crews who were moving a bunch of machinery for a mine.  One truck had one of those huge earth movers, another had a huge water truck and a third had a rock grinder.  They had plenty of stories of off-loading accidents, stolen dump trucks and angry wives at home (too much to get into here).

After a full three hours of waiting and talking I found a hike through one of the oversized-transport crews. 

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Just outside Keet's: these guys walked what must have been at least 10k from home to find wood.

This time it was an Angolan with short wirey dreadlocks and a lazy eye, his wife and an empty flat bed semi.  This being my first ride in a semi I found driving so high off the ground a very odd experience.  It felt simultaneously exhilarating and lethargic being so far up from the ground but also seeming to go so slow.  They left me on the highway just outside of Keetmanshoop, which was kind of weird... but free!

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The turn off to South Africa, like much of the highways here, perfectly straight.

From Keet's I paid for my first ride after waiting nearly five hours at the gas station.  WIth no luck there, I walked several K out of town to the road-side hike point and waited for about 30 minutes after which a combi (large minivan) stopped to pick everyone up.  I overpaid $50 for the ride but considering the options it was fine with me.

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The turn off to Bethanie; literally the middle of nowhere

The most sureal experiences of the whole trip was being dropped by the combi at the turn off to Bethanie.  I stood there on the B1 watching the white combi plow off into desert; only the sound of the wind crawling across the dirt and a few dried bushes to keep me company; thinking "what the hell did I just do?" 

From Bethanie, I got an arranged lift with Erikka back to Keet's which (we didn't find out until that morning) was in a two-seat pickup, so Erikka sat on my lap for the 70 minute drive.  From Keet's we took the train back to Windhoek, a very long 12 hour ride on a very slow, creaky train.  I wouldn't have been very surprised to see a seam engine pulling the thing.

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A poor shot of our sleeper car.  The seat back folded up to make bunk beds.

The train was quite an experience.  We arrived at the station a bit late and weren't able to find the business-class coach that we had purchased tickets for.  Instead, we got a sleeper car that had no door and was next to the toilet- both mistakes I'll never make again.  While watching episodes of Lost (season 2) we had to continually chase off drunks who would stand in the door trying to watch.  Sleeping was difficult even with the rythumetic rocking of the car due in large part to the hardness of the beds, coldness of the room and noisiness of the train itself.  Despite the odds, I did manage to get some winks in and was pretty happy to get off the following morning. 

The Towns

Rehoboth

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Courtney.  For some reason every picture I take of her has three elements: warm smile, gesturing hands, and a mysterious comic strip feel

Courtney's site is Rehoboth, a small Baster (a tribal distinction) community spread thin like butter across the foot hills to the south of Windhoek.  Here the language is Afrikaans through and through.  Even at their school assembly Afrikaans was spoken, in direct opposition to the educational mandates in Namibia but not in the least unusual.    There are a few tarred roads, many more dirt ones and a single stop light.  When walking in Rehoboth the abnormally wide streets and large lots give the illusion of city planning until you find odd dead ends and segmented housing blocks that make it feel more like a KOA camp than a city.

Courtney says that the Baster community prides itself in it's building talents (apparently less so in city planning) which is evident in the architecture seen. Also, after Namibian independence, Rehoboth tried to become it's own sovereign government (the Independent Republic of Rehoboth) but ultimately was assimilated into the new Namibia.  

I had fun working on the computer lab at Courtney's school: Rehoboth High.  It was the first true thin-client computer lab I've seen in Namibia, consisting of 30 trimmed down PC's and one state-of-the-art server.  I once didn't care for thin client solutions but am now seeing the many benefits, first among them the ultra cheap cost and easy maintenance.  There are however serious software limitations, made all to clear when I tried to get the school's administrative software to work on them so that the teachers could all enter grades at the same time.

Mariental

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Computer labs at two of the high schools in Mariental.  Very nice.  Very new.

Beth Dixon and Megan Tracy's site is Mariental, a larger city in the south that is host to a lot of old racial tension.  The town is quite big and takes some time to walk around in.  The TRC (Teacher Resource Center) where Beth works is in an old hostel and is quite nice.  Teachers go there to use the Internet, type and take computer classes, among other non-computer related teaching activities and I am wholly ignorant of.  Megan took me to two schools with labs, both of which had very nice thick-client labs of 30 computers each.  I am still amazed at how many nice computer labs there are in Namibia and am now planning a computer lab fixing tour to return to these sites and re-setup these labs properly. 

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The computer lab in the TRC in Mariental.

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Megan demonstrating one of many methods employed to combat frigid air.

Earlier this year during the rainy season Mariental had a disasterous flood who's affects can still be felt.  Megan said that many businesses have closed their doors as insurance companies refuse to renew policies and pay out claims.  Unlike Rehoboth, Mariental is not growing and is even in a slight decline. 

Keetmanshoop

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Jay brought a bunch of street kids to meet me- what a welcome!

Jay and Shoni's site is Keetmanshoop (or just Keet's), a good sized city that is considered the gateway to the south.  Jay and Shoni live in a community center in the location (Seblata), a good walk from town.  This community center is the nicest and most active I've ever seen.  Even as I visited on a Wednesday there was a business conference taking place, a sewing class, and people using the computers, weight room and music room.  Their flat is just a few steps from the center itself, which means that every five minutes or so there is a knock on the door from someone wanting either Jay or Shoni.

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The computer lab at the Keet's community center.

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Janet and one of her learners enjoying a milkshake in Keetmanshoop.  Janet, Erikka and I all went back to Windhoek together on the train.

Jay took me on a tour of Seblata and the informal settelment.  What suprised me most was how friendly and warm the settlement felt.  In Babylon (Windhoek's newest setelment) the plots are small and crowded together.  In seblata the streets are wide and the plots are quite large.  We stopped and talked to a few resitents and I got the impression that it was actually a very nice place to live.  Imagine: no bills, no taxes, and every day stresses that amount to no more than finding fire wood and a bit of meat. 

Keet's is growing pretty fast in many directions.  There are satellite campuses for UNAM and a South African collage, as well as a large hospital and several large industries.  Town itself feels much like parts of Windhoek: tall buildings and bustling streets.

Bethanie

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Erikka, Janet and  one of their Namibian friends (is it horrible I can't remember her name?)	Janet, Erikka and I.  They made an awesome dinner of vegetarian enchiladas and brownies.  A great end to a great tour.

Erikka and Janet's site is Bethanie, what used to be the largest city in the area and now is one of the smallest.  Bethanie consists of one tarred road with a few intersecting dirt roads, two primary schools and one high school.   I got a complete tour of Bethanie which lasted an hour only because we stopped to talk to every shop owner and passerby along the way. 

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They painted their kitchen green which makes it look like a radioactive zone from outside at night.

Erikka and Janet are completely happy here.  They've gotten to know every person in town and enjoy small-town life.  Their recent discovery of a large orchard and vegetable farm near by made them feel for the first time guilty of having such a nice site.  For me, Janet's piano topped off my whole southern tour.  It was so nice to sit down and unwind, I had almost forgotten how therapeutic the hammering of keys is for me.

Overall my southern tour was amazing.  It was especially good to see other volunteer's at their sites and to be the guest instead of the host.  Now I have mental images when these volunteers talk about their projects and their sites.  I can't wait to get out again to see more.